Soundy

I've used HighWires several times, and they work great. We service a couple of Canada's larger gas station chains, and we're finding as they move to IP, they want megapixel cameras at the pumps, which currently only have analog cameras over coax. The conduit for the wiring is all sealed before the site goes online, so pulling new wire is next to impossible... the HighWires MAKE it possible

You have a couple options for "going digital"... you could pull coax AND Cat5 and have the Cat5 there for future use. Or if it's analog now, you can use HighWires in the future to run ethernet over coax. However, good-quality baluns should work fine with the Cat5; the whole balanced-line concept inherently "cancels" any induced noise in the line.

Yeah, this isn't an issue with the card, but with the software. Hard to give exact directions without either being familiar with that software, or being able to look up the manual, but I think Jamac is on the right track.

Umm... you know there's no such thing as an analog megapixel camera, right? Megapixel resolution (anything higher than NTSC spec) requires a different transmission method, and currently that means IP. I would assume these cameras are currently running over coax, so to use IP cameras, you either need to replace the wiring, or use something like Veracity HighWires. I've used these, and they work GREAT, but they are a bit pricey ($300-$400 per pair). They'll run on 12VDC or 24VAC, so they can be powered off the existing power runs to the cameras. What it comes down to, IF you really need to go MP with these cameras, is whether it's worth it to avoid pulling new wire. The other option, of course, is simply to replace the B&W with regular analog cameras...

I don't think your customer is going to be happy with the results of this exercise: unless the monitors are very high-end with high-quality up-converting, the pictures you get on it feeding it composite video will be grainy and distorted (stretched to fit the wide-screen format). The only way to really make it work PROPERLY is to feed the VGA or DVI output of a computer display into the monitors, set them up as multiple desktops (can be done with multiple video cards) and let the computers scale and display the images properly.

Unfortunately most megapixel cameras don't support auto-iris lenses, which limits their ability to handle a wide range of lighting conditions. If you're finding bright scenes are washed out, you may need to dial down the iris on your lens a bit (most will be labeled "O" for open, to "C" for closed - move it more towards C). Keep in mind that a cheap MP camera ("cheap" being relative to the MP price range) will not compare to an expensive analog camera, the same way a cheap analog camera won't compare to an expensive one. MP cameras start at a higher price because you get more resolution, but if you also want the low-light performance, wider dynamic range, and other things that cost more in an analog camera, well... they'll cost more in an MP camera as well.

Only (cost-effective) way to do it is to find someone with a PAL camera who needs an NTSC camera, and trade with him.

Are we still talking about CCTV use here, or have we shifted to SLRs? I have the EF-50 f/1.8 for my 40D, that's a nice little lens. I've had a few instances where the 1.2 would be even better (for the extra stop of light) although the razor-thin DOF would start getting kinda tricky. Wondering how useful IS would be in a CCTV application like this... I know on an SLR/DSLR body, it's generally recommended to turn IS off when you're using a tripod. I suppose if you camera was on a particularly shaky mount...

Thanks! I have a few jobs that those could be really useful for...

Got a link for these?? Canon L-series lenses are among the best in pro photography... also priced accordingly.

Despite the similarities in technology, photography is really quite a different beast from CCTV. I've been playing and working in photography for probably 27-28 years now, with all varieties of film and digital cameras. Perhaps some more specific questions than, "what am I doing here??" would be a good place to start. When I get home later, I can point you to some good online tutorials as well.

That's the point: SOME, but not ALL. An auto-iris lens simply won't work on a camera that doesn't have the driver for it - the iris will remain closed and you get a lovely black scene. So before choosing auto or manual iris, make sure of what your camera of choice supports.

I would never trust a camera that's NOT focused in the field, once it's in place and adjusted to its desired view. I assume when you set these up on the bench, you've measured out the exact distance from the planned mounting point to the intended target, and you then set up a target on your bench at that exact distance, so you can get the proper focal distance? And of course, you never run into instances where you have to change the mounting location after the fact? Never have clients decide at the last minute that they want to view changed?

Before you get an auto-iris lens, make sure your camera supports it. While it's almost universal on analog cameras, not all megapixel cameras have support for it yet.

I dunno about any others, but the nice thing I find with the IQ cameras is that they all support 12VDC (most also do 24VAC, although a couple models do 24VDC rather than AC), so I just power them off my little 12V gel-cel battery for aiming and focusing.

Unfortunately, 2.4Ghz is the most common band for all manner of wireless consumer electronics. In theory, these devices should be designed so as to not interfere with each other, but that's never entirely the case. Not only is WiFi in the 2.4GHz band, but most other wireless devices, as well as many cordless phones. I've seen a wireless mouse cause a WiFi signal to drop out, and 2.4GHz cordless phones are well-known to cause problems with WiFi signals.

That's a big, "it depends". How long will they be run together? How close together? How much current is the mains carrying? Is it loomex, or BX type cable? Worst case, the interference causes network dropouts... fairly easy to diagnose.

Yeah, a laptop that sources PoE would be a pretty rare find, but there are plenty of ways around it. Carrying a simple PoE injector in your laptop bag would work, for example. I've used the wireless method before as well - just plug a cheap wireless router into the same switch as the cameras and away you go. Or the camera can also be plugged directly into the router at is location, allowing the laptop to link to it wirelessly (you'd need a switch with PoE though, or some other power source). My solution for this was to attach a small board regulator to my 12V gel-cel test battery, and adjust the regulator for the 5VDC the router requires; the battery can then power the router and the camera, and the whole setup can be temporarily placed at or near the camera for setup and testing.

I don't know what format they actually are (since a lot of times, these things are a more common video format under a different name), but you could try installing VLC Player along with a codec pack like K-Lite Mega Pack, and see if VLC will play them... if so, that should tell you what codec they're actually using, and that should then be usable in a number of different conversion apps.

That smacks of the switch having problems with the traffic, to me. What model switch is this? Just so you know, that won't affect the traffic issues at all. If something else is causing the PoE to drop off some cameras, that will bypass that little issue, but that's about all.

Using PoE in a number of sites now, haven't noticed any dropouts. One site, the move was "encouraged" after problems with the initial 18/2 power wiring was frying cameras (we never did figure out why; electricians did all the wiring before we even got there). It's possible these two problems are related. As we've seen in numerous other threads, cheap "home-office" switches will often have problems with the amount of traffic megapixel cams throw at them, leading to delays, dropouts, and latency problems. It's possible your cameras aren't actually losing power, but are simply dropping out (thereby leading the PoE source/switch to think that they've been disconnected and turning off the power to that port). What are you using for your PoE and switches? I've used the LinkSys SFE1000P on several sites (eight 10/100 PoE ports, two fiber/GbE ports) and found it very solid; another site, we're running thirteen 1.3MP cameras on a LinkSys SRW2024P 24-port 10/100/1000 PoE switch with nary a hiccup.

I wouldn't call it a "replacement" really - the pixel IS the proper unit of measurement for an electronic (CCD or CMOS) image sensor, after all. "TV Lines" is a throwback to when tubes were used for imaging and didn't have individual pixels. Unless they're non-square pixels, how do you figure? This is true with any type of cameras, though - there are too many other factors that come into play that are often overlooked, even with standard analog CCTV. Pixel size plays a huge part in the sensor's ability to gather light, and thus in its low-light performance. Lens optical quality is regularly discussed and debated in photography circles, but generally taken for granted with CCTV (one of Avigilon's advantages, in addition to a larger sensor, is the ability to use high-quality photographic lenses). Why is it a loss? It's a limited, inaccurate term. It will tell you the vertical resolution of a sensor, but not the horizontal resolution. Trying to carry over analog terms into an all-digital world is just folly; the sellers may like the ability to snow buyers with meaningless "specs" but it certainly doesn't benefit the end user. Might as well advertise a car by touting its ability to fire up in only three turns of the crank handle.

Could probably sell off the Pelco DVR for a pretty penny and just plop in another Axis, for that matter... those things are incredibly over-priced!

D-oh!

Well, if both systems have a webserver, you can easily view both in the same browser (either on separate tabs, or side-by-side windows). If your IP cameras use a streaming standard like RTSP, you might be able to use something like VLC to view a combination of them (though that might require each camera in its own VLC window).