Please help with DVR

Hello all I’m new to forums and CCTV, please be gentle.

I’m Helen. Last October we bought a cctv system. After being plagued with thieves in our garden, cars and house being vandalised. And we have A on going dispute-grievances with one of our neighbours, who have assaulted hubby and me many times. The police advised us to fit the cctv

As they couldn’t prosecute as there was no evidence. We originally we was going buy a 8 camera system. When we rang the shop to place the order the sales man said for another £100.00 he would up grade it too a 16 camera system, we agreed. The system came next day as promised same spec-make DVR and cameras. It’s an adata Apollo LED 16 channel cams 420TVL generic we are both in our 70s (pensioners).

Between us we made the cables set 11 cameras on high-level walls etc, bingo they were working.

Next couple of weeks we got down on the DVR to work out its menu-functions. And purchased 4 better cameras .

Sorry I’ve been so long getting here

My question is when we record on D1 6 frames or D1 25 frames the picture is all grainy. Played back on DVD disk or USB stick on our DVD player it’s the same very bad quality.

As mentioned we bought 4 more cameras 1=540TVL 9-22mm lens 1=600TVL 5-50mm lens 1=700TVL efello 3-12mm 1=ptz 540TVL 12 optical zoom these extra cams you can tell the difference in quality, but every camera played back is always grainy very grainy.

As well our neighbours make frets of violence verbally we have 4 microphones around the house fitted to the DVR

When played back the sound its all fuzzy theres no clear speech.

We have tried every thing with settings etc even bit rates, with no luck.

4 weeks ago a CCTV engineer was fitting a system down the lane from us. I asked if he would look at our system and he came the next afternoon “what a lovely young man” he spent over an hour check in cables PSU’S putting is meter on cables looking at the DVR which he wasn’t familiar with, and said everything was in order and correct, and couldn’t understand why the quality was so poor. He went out to his van and got a DVR and a 540TVL cam, well the differences was unreal a perfect picture.

He rang the shop we bought the system from as normal they hung up on him

We have rang them so many times.

1st they said we had not installed it right

2nd we have the DVR- camera cables next too 240volt elec (no we haven’t)

3rd for £3800.00 we could upgrade the 16 cams (with 700TVL it’s still bad quality)

4th for another £856.00 + vat they would send an engineer out

5th now when we ring the shop they just put us on mute so it cost us more money to say nothing

we asked them how you wire the RS4485 port for a PIR IN as the motion detection is not good again asked us for £856.00+VAT we could have it done. We are in our seventies hubby is very technical on our DVR the RS4485 port both IN & OUT are upside down so you cannot screw wires in (push them in & hope they don’t come out) again the shop as told us to take them to court.

Many thanks for taking time too read this, please if anyone can help resolve picture quality issue and how to wire PIR’S into the RS4485 port, it would be greatly appreciated.

MANY MANY THANKS

Helen

your problem is with the apollo. it is a budget dvr. the problem is it will only record D1 on the first 4 channels and if you pick a high frame rate on those 4 channels then the rest of your cameras will only record in CIF at a very low frame rate.

if you want quality you will need to change your dvr. the cameras you have are fine so please dont spend more money upgrading them..

Hi Tomcctv,

Thank you for your advice.

If we record on channel 1 only, no other channels recording,

And we record at D1 25 or 6 frames with out audio. The picture is poor very bad, even with our best camera. In your opinion should this be correct.

And if you have any advice on recording sound, and the RS 4485 port it would be very much appreciated

Many Thanks

Helen

1. If possible, connect one of the camera's directly to a TV set or monitor, using the same coax cable and power supply you use when it is connected to the DVR. If you are happy with the picture when directly connected but not what is recorded by the DVR, then the problem is probably with the DVR compression quality.

2. I am not familiar with your DVR, but if it is one that has pass-through option make sure it is not set in the pass-through mode. In pass through mode the 75 ohm terminator resistors may be switched out. Then there will be reflections on the coax cables as well as video level too high and picture will be very bad.

Note: I am just a residential user like you, not a CCTV professional.

Hi Helen

From what you have said it definitely sounds like the recording quality of the DVR you are using that is the key. You have some good quality cameras there and should be getting some excellent video footage from them.

Out of interest, the level of service you have been given does not sound good so who did you purchase the system from?

Also can you tell me the exact Apollo DVR model you have?

Hello Keeps.

Thank you for taking the time, and trying to help.

The company name is. AAAAAA On Top Security London A1.

The model Adata Apollo HD LED 16 channel H264 HDMI Networked DVR with DVD-RW & mobile access.

We had the hard drive upgraded from a 500GB to 2TB. Our firmware is correct. Cables are all in good order. We have recorded on channel 1 only, at D1 25 frames, but still we have poor image.

And as mentioned the audio is very important to us.

We are aware we will get such a telling off now. We bought it off ebay. “We didn’t know where to buy a CCTV from” yes we was foolish. And now we know, many of these people on ebay are known as Box Sifters, who trade for six months then vanish. Ebay have been most unhelpful same as Trading Standards. We have learnt in the last couple of weeks they have stopped trading.

Thank you Keeps for your time.

Helen

Hi the apollo lite 16. cant record D1 how ever it will record 4cif on channels 1 & 8 only the rest are cif. but your dvr is D1 in live view (looking at your monitor your images are good)

now the apollo lite has referance to Dahua's. and a member called rory has done alot of work with Dahua software i will pm him the new firmware that came out for the apollo lite in december. he will be able to tell if updating will help or not.

Hello Tomcctv

Thank you very much for your time and effort

I’m not sure about the Apollo Lite, as ours is the

LED model.

We was mislead. we was told this would record in

D1 on 16 channels?

The monitor picture is same as recordings (poor)

If we connect a camera with a connector to the TV or Monitor the quality is good.

If we connect the DVR to the TV using HDMI cable same as normal poor quality. split or full screen.

I believe Dahua is the manufacture of these units.

Then marketed as a Adata-Apollo-Zues and so on.

Thanks Tom and it’s much appreciated you P.M. ing

Rory.

Thanks

Helen

4 CIF, D1, pretty much the same, there can be 8 missing pixels on either side anyway, which accounts for that 16 pixel difference. Its considered D1 Cropped, or 4 CIF. - they call it D1 (marketing?). I record in 640x480 on my Geovision DVRs anyway, which is fine and saves alot of space.

Ok so for specs pertaining to this DVR, lets call it D1. The Dahua will record 7fps (perhaps 6fps PAL) D1 on each channel. If its a 16 channel it will do D1 30fps on channels 1 and 9 - but the remainder will be CIF. If you want D1 30fps (or 25fps PAL) on each channel they have another model for that which costs more.

Ok now that is straight, for the channel you are experiencing the bad image, what is the encoding set to?

If this is indeed a Dahua DVR, what model is it from this link:

http://www.dahuasecurity.com/product.aspx?p=cpyzc&p_kind=3&c_kind=262&c_kind3=

Or is it one of these? I have no experience with these models but should be similar.

http://www.dahuasecurity.com/product.aspx?p=cpyzc&p_kind=3&c_kind=175

Next, no idea on the firmware that Adata provides, but you need to go into the menu and grab us the firmware version, then can go from there. Doubtful its a firmware issue though. Sounds more like a settings issue.

Later today I can help more, perhaps PM me the IP to it with Admin rights (user and pass) so I can login and check the settings.

Otherwise, can you post some images from it?

Easiest way is to connect over the network using the PSS software and then click "snapshot" and then upload that to tinypic.com and post the link here. If you can save a short video (playback, download AVI) and upload that to tinyupload.com, even better.

What type of hard drive is being used?

How are you playing it back, local on the DVR or over the network?

Anyway let me know. Im NOT Dahua tech support (LOL) but maybe I can help.

Otherwise Dahua has a message board on their site for support, and their tech guy "Ivan" has emailed me back in the past regarding questions I had.

Helen, are you able to post some pictures of the "grainy" images? Either photos of the screen, or ideally, some stills exported from the DVR, would be great... "grainy" is a vague description that could mean a lot of different things, most of which would have different causes.