jdowning wrote:
Wiring diagram:
http://www.gliffy.com/publish/3212437/Anyway - have a few questions.
1) What type of balun will there be at the camera end to receive power & video?
Any type of balun will do - you don't NEED one with power pass-through. You can use regular screw-terminal or toolless baluns and just split out the ends of the Cat5e yourself - wire one pair to the balun, two other pairs to the power connector, and leave one pair as spare (I normally use blue for video, green and orange for power, and brown for a spare - no particular reason).
OR you can use the type with an RJ-45 connector on one end, and BNC and power leads on the other end.
It really is up to you as a matter of personal preference.
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2) What equipment will I need in both garages to be able to receive 4x video feeds?
A four-channel balun, or four single baluns. Again, personal preference.
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3) What equipment will I need to send these feeds back to the DVR?
No special equipment needed here.
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4) What equipment will I need at the DVR to receive these feeds so I can plug them into the back of the DVR.
Two four-channel baluns, one eight-channel balun, or eight single baluns. Again, personal preference.
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5) If I have a PTZ control on one of these, I'm aware I'll probably need another pair. If I had another pair going from a camera to the garage, how could I further pass this on?
You could use one pair in the camera's Cat5 run (such as the brown spare in my example) to get the control signal to the camera. To get it back to the DVR however, you'll need another pair available between buildings. Personally, I'd just pull two Cat5 between each building, to have the extra capacity.
I do recall going over this before... the advice given really wasn't "conflicting", it was just different methods to achieve the same end.
Look, this is the easiest way to do it with a minimum of needing to splice wires:
Use something like this at each camera:

- it uses one pair for video, three for power.
Then use something like this centralized in the garage - four baluns *and power* in one unit:

Plug each camera run into one of the jacks, 1 thru 4.
Then plug your run going back to the DVR into the "4 in 1" jack.
Repeat all this for the second garage.
At the DVR, take your two runs from the two garages, and plug them into this:

Then run 8 short coax cables from that to the DVR.
If you want PTZ control, run another wire (be it 18/2, station-Z, Cat5, whatever) direct from the DVR to the camera.
THIS IS NOT THE ONLY WAY TO DO IT, so any different advice is not necessarily "conflicting"... it's just different. However, this is a nice, clean, painless way to do it.