Soundy

Vigil systems by CAMACC meet all your specs, and they have systems that will provide up to a full 30fps on each of 32 cameras. Keep in mind, though, that will chew up a LOT of space... I recently installed such a system in a restaurant: 32-channel system, 28 cameras total: 23 analog and five 1.3MP IP cameras. All but a couple analog cameras are capturing at 704x480 (4CIF), the IP cams are 1280x1024, and the cameras are averaging around 3fps recording (some 2, some 5, most 3). At that rate, 3TB was giving them a little over three weeks' recording... and they wanted 90 days, so we added a network-attached RAID with eight more 1TB drives - a RAID-5 setup provides an additional 6.5TB of storage. That's why you want to consider a RAID-5 array - if a drive fails, it can be hot-swapped without having to shut down the system. Viewing multiple machines would depend mostly on the client itself. The Vigil client allows you to configure multiple servers in one window, and define camera "groups" with a mix of cameras from multiple servers. Video Insight also makes a 32-channel server (or provides a 32-channel card and server software that you can build into your own PC) and allows multiple servers to be viewed simultaneously via the client; the drawback with their system is that the client is designed for LAN use and really doesn't work well over a WAN internet connection. Consider external RAID storage; for the above-mentioned install, we used one of these: http://enhance-tech.com/products/ultrastor/RS8_ip.html - along with eight standard off-the-shelf 1TB drives. Setup was easy and painless: mount the drives in the drive sleds, plug them into the rack, attach a computer to the configuration port and enter the web-based configuration, and follow the wizard to initiate it building the array. Once the array is built, plug one or both iSCSI ports into the network, add the iSCSI initiator to the DVR, fire up the Disk Management console, and *bam* 6.5TB of storage Note that this is all PC-based stuff, but for the specs you're after you're probably looking for something long those lines anyway... then again, you're not paying "a bit more" for this - you're probably looking at about $8k for that DVR, another $3k for the RAID rack, and then whatever price you get for whatever size drives you put in it (I think we got the 1TB drives for about $200 each, so there's another $1k6). On the bright side, the Enhance rack was less than half the price of anything else I found in its class...

Your client wants to display these cameras, but does he want to record them? If not, you don't even need a DVR, just some quads. For that matter, even if he does want to record, a single DVR and three basic quads would do the job nicely. Here's an example (not recommending this in particular, just an example I found). Most of these have video pass-thru inputs so you don't have to use splitters on your lines.

That's what marketing is all about Frankly, I've never run across a standalone DVR I've particularly liked, most of the ones I've run into have been pretty minimalist (read: cheap machines bought by cheap customers - no offense ) Some don't even provide a way to export video - you basically have to connect some other recording device (VCR or something) to its video output. One of exceptions has been a Digital Watchdog, but I can't speak to their networking capabilities. Usually by the time we get into that price range, it's getting close to the range of PC-based DVRs, which most people prefer (clicking a mouse is a lot easier than tapping your way through a bunch of menus with front-panel buttons). We deal mostly with PC-based DVRs; we build out own using Video Insight, and we sell and install Vigil systems, which are really excellent packages. VI has pretty decent tech support; Vigil's is typically really good and responsive.

Since you're just putting data onto the disc, presumably in whatever format/codec the DVR uses normally (MPEG-4, etc.), "DVD quality" is kind of irrelevant - it will still depend on the record settings of the DVR itself. Whether you export to CD-R, DVD-R, flash drive, external HDD, network, etc. will have no further effect on the quality of the exported footage. The only concern then for export media would be the space required - from the sound of it your clients are wanting to record at full resolution and full motion video framerates (30fps per camera), which even at MPEG-4 is going to take a fair bit of space.

I would expect so... they may also have an answer as to why the adapter isn't working. I've never dealt with them or seen any of their systems, but if there is an update available, that would be the only place to get it. Of course, their support may also be non-helpful or non-existent - I've certainly run into enough off-brand systems where that's the case (as well as a few big-name-brand systems *ahem*GE*coff*).

Yep, i come from a Cisco background so understand MDX. What is MDI? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_dependent_interface Sorry if you already mentioned this, but... you say you've configured the adapter using your desktop, but have you tried plugging it into the laptop when it's in the same location as the DVR? You say the wireless link light is out on the adapter, so maybe it's simply not getting signal from the router? The WLAN light on the router is irrelevant; all it's indicating is that WLAN is active, not necessarily that anything else is connected to it. I have an 8' rack in my computer room; my router, cable modem, desktop machine, two servers, and DVR are all in that rack, and all hard-wired

Okay, my bad... for some reason I was thinking this was a USB adapter or something... that's what I get for posting at 4am. Sorry. I doubt that would have anything to do with it - the problem would have to be in the connection between the adapter and the DVR, not between the adapter and router. Just a thought: are you using straight-through or crossover cables? The page I looked up for that adapter says to connect it to the network device with a "regular cat5 cable", but in order to plug the DVR straight into your laptop you'd need to us a crossover cable... UNLESS the DVR's ethernet port is already MDI to allow you to use a straight cable to a computer, in which case you'd need a crossover to connect the router to it. I dunno if that made sense (it almost doesn't to me when I re-read it) but in a nutshell: if you're connecting the DVR to the adapter with a straight-through cable, try it with a crossover cable instead. If it wasn't supported, they wouldn't release the firmware updates to the public. It's generally safe, as long as you follow their instructions.

Best way to do it, as you note, is plugging your DVR directly into your router. Short of that, if I follow correctly, your PC has a wireless connection to the router, as well as a hardwired connection to the DVR - in this case, you should be able to just bridge the connections, and allow the other machines on the network to see the DVR. The drawback to this method is that the others won't be able to access the DVR if your machine isn't running.

Yeah, as noted, video baluns ARE NOT network devices; they won't work through a hub or switch, and you can't assign them IPs. They typically consist of just a small transformer that takes the unbalanced video signal and makes it a balanced signal over the twisted pair, while the matching receiver balun takes the balanced signal and turns it back into unbalanced (thus the name, BALUN: BALanced/UNbalanced). Most will actually work over any pair of wires - speaker wire, station wire, Cat-3, etc; some just use RJ-45 jacks for the convenience of simply plugging in Cat-5 patch cables. Viewing your cameras from any networked PC means putting their signal on the network somehow, and that means either a network-capable DVR, an IP video server, or IP cameras. Any way you go, though, you have to run all your cameras to one point, be it a video server, a DVR, or a router. The video server box will work fine if all you want to do is view the cameras, but if you want to record them, you'll need a DVR anyway (or NVR for IP cameras), so the video server box becomes redundant.

No. Probably not. XB360 probably has some form of generic driver support for the adapter... I'm betting your DVR doesn't. Your only hope would be if there's a firmware update for the DVR that adds that driver... but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Well first of all, how much "control" are you after? Most software will allow you to zoom on the captured image, but it will get very blocky, very fast. If you want to actually control things like camera movement and optical zoom, you need a PTZ (pan-tilt-zoom) camera, and those tend to be a lot more expensive. Which leads to the other question: how much are you expecting/planning/willing to spend?

Only other possibility I can think of is the video hardware or video driver... compare the brand/model/age of card in the machines that work vs. the machines that don't. One brand of DVR I deal with has a known issue with their remote client on machines with ATI cards: when you go to a PTZ camera, it opens up a separate little controller window; if you minimize the client and then restore it, the controller doesn't come back. On nVidia-equipped systems, it works fine; it's a known problem they have with ATI cards. The tech I talked to about it wasn't sure if it was hardware- or driver-related, but said the development people had a patch for it and it would be taken care of in the next release... In any case, point is, the problem could be specific to the video card. One suggestion: uninstall the video driver and reinstall it either from the bundled driver CD, or downloaded directly from the manufacturer's site. DO NOT allow Windows Update to update your video driver; DO NOT use a generic or third-party video chipset driver. (Rule of thumb: NEVER allow Windows Update to update ANY drivers; in my experience, 80% of the time it either doesn't work, or it breaks things.)

It's always possible the problem is simply the cheap hardware. For an experiment, try plugging a different type of video source, like a DVD player, directly into the card, see if it still has the same issues.

No, terminating the unused inputs will not (or SHOULD not) affect the problem on the other (if it does, there's something very screwy about the design of that card). Have you tried a new cable run? Even if you just string it across the floor for testing... could be a damaged cable, could be running too near a strong EMI source (lighting ballast, A/C compressor motor, etc.), could be bad connectors on either end...

Could be improper loading on the video feed. On my DVR, I split the camera lines off to run to my test bench, and when I connect them to a box I'm working on, one camera on the DVR jumps all over the place until I disconnect it. Maybe check if your DVR has termination options for the inputs ("Hi-Z" vs. 75-ohm), and if you're splitting the line off to something else, disconnect that.

Erm, that was a little hard to follow, but... First, you only need DDNS if the customer is on a dynamic IP. If their connection has a static IP, you can simply access it by using that address in the remote client. As often as possible, I insist my customers get a static IP from their ISP (most have it as a cost-added option), because it simply eliminates the problem rather than attempting to work around it. If that's NOT an option, you have a few others. If your DVR supports a proprietary DDNS service (webdvr, etc.), just use that; the router should have no effect on its operation. It sounds like this what you're trying to do. A DDNS (Dynamic Domain Name System) service is nothing more than a directory service, and your DDNS client, whether on the DVR or the router, just updates the listing when the IP changes. You could in theory have the same address listed with two or three different services (mydvr.webdvr.com, mydvr.dyndns.com, etc. etc.). And IF it comes to needing a new router... I've bought Belkin routers on sale for $15, and basic D-Links go for about $30 regular retail around here. If they're too cheap for that, just buy it yourself, and add the cost into your service call (tack on an extra hour or something).

The router doesn't have to support DynDNS internally; if it's a PC-based DVR, you can just run their client on the machine, or another client like DynSite, or any of a number of Javascript or PERL scripts that can update the DNS. Personally, I have our company domain registered with EasyDNS.com, and use DynSite on customer DVRs to create hostnames under our A-record... for example, customer1.lps-cctv.com, customer2.lps-cctv.com, etc. The best plan, however, is to tell the customer that they MUST have a static IP. Almost all ISPs provide this option, usually at an extra cost, but it eliminates the problem rather than working around it, and you won't have to worry about those panicked support calls when the IP changes unexpectedly and the DNS hasn't updated within milliseconds.

I've never seen a ROUTER block port 80 specifically (some will block ALL ports except those you open; none will automatically forward any ports you don't specify). I HAVE had an ISP block port 80, specifically a DSL ISP on residential connections - there are more than a few of my DVRs out there running their webservers on port 8008 because of this. As for the original poster, the question is a little vague: he doesn't say WHY he's trying to forward any ports, whether he's trying to a remote client, or access via the web, or if he even DOES want remote access (if not, no port forwarding is required). Most routers will allow you to forward more than one port per client, so there should be no reason not to forward all three and just be done with it.

You don't mention if megapixel resolutions are required... D-Link has several WiFi-enabled cameras that provide up to 10X optical zoom, 30fps framerates, and 4CIF resolution... http://www.dlink.ca/products/category.asp?cid=60&sec=0

Is there no display AT ALL, or just no display of the cameras, or..?? I believe the IDR 6016 is a Capture CCTV system (www.capturecctv.com), so their support may be able to help you. One thing, you'll probably need to be sure you have the proper display driver installed for your video card or video chipset, and make sure your DirectX is updated to the latest version. In fact, make sure you have all the included motherboard drivers installed - I've had Vigil rebuilds on some new motherboards not work right until the chipset support was updated to the latest version.

It kinda depends - depends on your connection, depends on whether you have a router or firewall, depends on whether that router or firewall lets you configure port forwarding.

First thing you need to determine is how much you want to spend. Basic "commercial-grade" analog cameras are going to run you about each $250-$350 with lens; you can go cheaper, and you can go WAY more expensive, depending on your budget and your needs. There are a number of DVR card-and-software bundles that you can use to build a system out of a PC - most decent ones will start in the $600-$1000 (minus the PC itself) range depending one how many channels you need, what sort of framerates you need, and of course, the overall quality of both hardware and software. We use Video Insight's packages, they work quite well - check them out at http://www.video-insight.com You can go a lot cheaper by getting a standalone system - basically a unit that looks like a VCR/DVD unit and records to an internal hard drive - but PC-based systems tend to be more versatile, expandable, and easier to use. Hope that helps to get you started. It's hard to suggest much else without knowing at least what sort of budget range you're interested in - I mean, you could put together a used PC and a couple webcams for a couple hundred dollars, or get an all-inclusive DVR-and-camera package like Costco sells for around $600... but as with everything else, you get what you pay for.

Software problem? Difficult to say. Once again, I'm just guessing based on experience with different software. A corrupted database table is just one possible reason, IF your software works this way, and IF it is still in fact recording video. IF that is the case, it would be a matter of running a repair script on the database, or possibly a utility that rebuilds the database from the video data (this is what the Vigil does). But these are all VERY BIG "IFs". I'm just trying to give you an idea of somewhere to look as a starting point - IF you discover that there is no recorded video files for those cameras, then everything I've suggested so far goes out the window. Without the ability to sit down in front of your system, troubleshooting this way becomes a very precise process that has to be done one step at a time.

So yeah, you've paraphrased it pretty closely. To be more precise, someone is bringing you new golf clubs and stashing them in various places around your house, but not telling you where they are Now as I said off the top, I know nothing about the Netsafe system or whether it works this way; however, problem sounds similar to database-related problems I've had on other systems, so I'm taking a wild yet educated guess that it might be something similar. So why only two cameras? Well, let's assume for a moment that it is a problem like this - it could be because of the way the software uses the database. For example, if it's using a separate table for each camera, and the tables for those two cameras are corrupted, it could affect ONLY those two. The first thing I'd suggest checking (I think I mentioned it already, not sure) is the data drive, where the system places its video files, and see if there's actually recorded footage for the "missing" cameras. On the VideoInsight system, for example, you define a folder for the video storage (d:\video, perhaps), and the software creates a folder for each camera inside that (d:\video\cam1, etc.). In each camera folder, it creates a folder named for the date (d:\video\cam1\19aug08 or something along those lines). Then it starts a new video file, named for the time it was created (d:\video\cam1\19aug08\102352p.avi), and keep recording to that file until it hits the maximum size you designate (I usually tell it to max out files at 50MB), at which time it will start a new file. The Vigil system creates a Data folder on the drive or drives you configure (d:\Data), then creates a folder for the date (d:\Data\20080819), and inside there creates a folder as each hour of the day progresses (d:\Data\20080819\00 for the hour between midnight and 1am, \01 for 1am to 2am, and so on up to \23). Inside each hour folder it creates its files, a new one every minute, named xxyyzz.mjp, where xx is the camera number, yy is the minute, and zz is the second. So to see what camera 3 recorded between 11:05am and 11:06am on the 15th of July, you'd look at d:\Data\20080715\11\030500.mjp (most of them, the seconds are 00, but some vary - I have no idea what the criteria is). Anyway, this long-winded diatribe gives you an example or two of what to look for: find the folder where your system stores its data (should be in the settings/options somewhere), and look for folders and/or files with names indicating dates, times, and/or camera names/numbers, to see if those cameras are in fact recording video. This will, of course, depend on the Netsafe storing video in discrete files in a manner like this - not all systems use this method, so again, this is just a suggestion.

Just a correction (I musta been half-asleep when I wrote that), Vigil's AZTECH codec is based on Motion-JPEG, not H.264. The files created are all .MJP extensions.