Would you believe it, I actually had some success last night in this area!
I changed the ; mmalcam_control_params value
to mmalcam_control_params -ex sports -ev 25 --shutter 256000
the auto_brightness on
the brightness 255
the contrast 1
the saturation 5
and the hue 0
.
I also found that jpgs performed better than movies so set output_pictures on
and picture_type jpeg
.
I found whatever I did, nothing changed. I tried so many combinations of brightness/contrast etc, I gave up, until last night.
They changed my street lighting to LED, which made it much worse. I had to act last night or get a load of black jpgs; so I had another play and bingo.
The biggest change came with playing around with mmalcam_control_params -ex sports -ev 25 --shutter 256000
, but I'm not sure if the combination allowed this to have an effect.
I also found setting the motion.conf file to user and group motion allowed me to play with the settings using motions web interface, which is useful.
You have to restart motion each time you make a change, for the change to take effect, just a point to remember.
Good luck,
Reggie.
p.s I also wrote a script to automatically change the motion.conf from "day settings" to "night settings" and back again, if your interested.