Soundy

I agree with thewireguys' assessment, there's no way you're going to do this and have it be both effective and reliable without putting some money into it.

This is true... but at the same time, we regularly see people (in real life as well as on forums) who think that they're going to buy these cheap package systems and then do things with the video like they see in the movies and TV... then when they can't, they come here wanting to know how to improve things, at which point we have to tell them, "Sorry, what you bought is junk and will never come to close to what the salesdroid told you." THIS is the kind of expectation people get: Even a $50,000 system won't be any more of a DETERRENT than a bunch of dummy cameras... CCTV rarely PREVENTS crime, and none of the professionals here will claim that it does. What it DOES hope to do, is catch the perpetrators and successfully prosecute them. Better quality components go a long way toward that. PROPER SYSTEM DESIGN AND INSTALLATION goes a lot farther. A properly-selected and position $50 camera will almost always give better results than a poorly-positioned $500 camera... unfortunately the type sold with package systems (such as those you have) are rarely "properly selected" - they typically have a fixed lens at a "middle ground" focal length that's neither wide enough to capture a large area, or tight enough to get significant details; they typically have very poor low-light capability and compensate for this by slapping in a bunch of two-cent IR LEDs, which end up either not illuminating anywhere near the distance promised, or are TOO bright and wash out anyone who gets close enough to be recognized; and in relation to that last point, they're usually grossly over-sold by the marketing sheets, their capabilities being exaggerated beyond belief. That's the simple truth. If you want it sugar coated, I'm sure we can do that for you, but we wouldn't be doing you any favors. If the cameras are sufficient for your needs, great! If they aren't, well... hindsight will tell you to ask about what to buy and how to design the whole system, BEFORE you buy. I thought Tom already answered your question: there are few cameras that use that type of connector, and far fewer, if any, that would actually be pinout-compatible with your system. So the short answer to "best non-BNC camera??" is, none. The rest of it wasn't intended to bash anything, it was intended to explain the reason for this... if something is low-end, outdated, or just plain crap, well... call a spade a spade. And all that aside, I gave you another answer as well: you have the pinouts for the system's RJ connectors... it should be a simple matter to build some kind of adapter to connect those jacks to BNCs to connect to better-quality, readily-available, industry-standard cameras.

There's really little functional difference between RS-422 and RS-485 - check some of the info here: http://www.omega.com/techref/das/rs-232-422-485.html - you SHOULD be able to just connect your controller's TX pins to the camera's RX pins and away you go (my experience, you may have to swap polarity AFTER both devices are up and running, or you may have to use the camera's TX pins rather than the RX... experiment a bit). If that fails, try something like this: http://www.commfront.com/rs232-rs485-rs422-serial-converters/RS485-RS422-Converter.htm (not an endorsement of this product, just the first thing that came up in a Google search).

Actually, the monitor in question does have FIVE BNC inputs... red, green, blue, plus horizontal and vertical sync. You have to use all five. A VGA cable has all the same signals in it. The problem, once again, is that in order to run higher res over a single coax, you would need to design, perfect, and introduce an entirely new analog video standard, and then get manufacturers to buy in.

with this type of connection the camera is old .... and was available in Kits. and would only work with that kit. so if you had a rj samsung system you could not use say the philips rj cameras each company had there way of rj connection some 12v some 7.5 so not compatable with each other. Yep... same goes for the other hallmark of the cheap kit systems: the mini-DIN connectors... again, everyone uses a different pinout, so you can't mix'n'match camera brands. There's really no quality loss by using those types of connectors over BNC; the cameras aren't junk BECAUSE they use RJ or miniDIN connectors... the use of those is merely an indicator of a camera that's built to the lowest common denominator, that falls down in a lot of other areas, and is designed to simply be "foolproof" to plug in and go. In fact, I've used some Pelco cameras that have an RJ45 jack on the back... their associated wall mount comes with a short cable that plugs into that and then breaks out to standard power and BNC tails after passing through the mount. They do this, one assumes, because the connector is cleaner and more compact and thus allows a cleaner mount design. But in this case, the assessment of a "junk" camera was not based on the type of connector used; that came mainly from the camera's price and lack of any discernable brand name, both of which are also good indicators. As far as "quality non-BNC cameras"... since you have the pinouts, you could probably adapt just about any standard camera to plug into that machine, although you might want to consider powering it separately.

Sure, you could use that... do you really WANT to run VGA cables between your camera and DVR? I mean, you could just use analog component video too, and get up to 1080p... heck, my old 21" Sony monitor did 2048x1536 over VGA cables... but the cost and logistics of cabling that will be a nightmare... AND either way, you'd have to convince both camera and DVR manufacturers that it's a viable way to go. Don't know if you could sell them on the idea of a camera with an HD-15 connector, or three BNCs...

Yes, there are also lots of cameras that operate on ONLY 24VAC. This particular one looks suspiciously like a National Electronics NLC-5700. The point was simply that 12VDC and 24VAC are not the only voltages used for CCTV cameras; the example I sited was an IQEye IQ-A11 dome. In fact, many "dual-voltage cameras", by virtue of having internal regulators, will actually accept anything from 10 to 30V, DC or AC. Maybe we're both wrong: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current In any case, capacitance aside, I still don't see how DC vs. AC would make even a measurable, let alone functional difference at 24V over a couple hundred feet.... unless you have a multimeter that's accurate to a half-dozen decimal places.

Analog video is limited to 525/625 vertical lines (NTSC/PAL). Period, end of story. That's not an opinion, that's a simple fact of the video standards that were created in the '50s. To go beyond that would require that someone introduce a new analog video standard... and then get almost EVERYONE to adopt it, for it to become economically feasible for ANYONE to do it. Given that there are already two fully-digital standards currently in use, and others being developed, good luck getting anyone to even give a second glance at any attempt at a new analog standard. As noted, some manufacturers are trying to get beyond D1's 704 horizontal pixels, up to 960, but that's just taking the same standard and sampling it differently, giving you maybe 30% higher resolution in one dimension. Vertical resolution has still hit a very old, very immovable wall. You could sample it at a higher rate, but the source itself would still be maxing out at that same limitation. And still run smack up against the same limitation in resolution. It's like taking a 1967 VW Beetle and slapping pinstripes and ground effects on it and a booming stereo in it... it may look and sound good, but underneath it all, it's still just a Beetle, and it's still going to take an hour to go from 0 to 60.

Just off the top of my head, it sounds like you'd be better off using PC-based DVRs on the sites, so you can code some custom recording software, rather than trying to battle the confines of a closed standalone system. Better yet, maybe look at using IP cameras at the stores, and connect them directly to the head office via VPN, and do all your processing there.

I don't think AC "travels" any better than DC, but it IS very easy to step up or down with a transformer... so long-distance transmission can be done at much higher voltages, which definitely do have lower losses, and then stepped down to the necessary voltage when you get to local circuits. Stepping DC down involves a lot of loss in itself (or did, until the advent of PWM switching power supplies), and stepping it up is far more complex (or was, until the advent of PWM switching supplies). 24V should see the same loss over a given wire at a given distance, whether it's AC or DC... 12VDC and 24VAC are the *most common* two supply voltages in CCTV, but not the only ones (I've seen some models of cameras that support 12VDC or 24VDC but not 24VAC).

Oh sure, there's all kinds of steps they could take... the question is, at what point does it become "too much effort" and they just move on to an easier target? Your average B&E thief doesn't want a bunch of complication, they just want to smash, grab, and get out fast, especially if they don't know what they're going to get out of the job. We're not talking about going after state secrets or the Hope diamond or anything that is worth a whole movie sequence's worth of high-tech gadgetry and special effects.

Analog TV is still limited by NTSC/PAL video standards... 960H notwithstanding, it has a finite area for growth. It'll stick around for a long time, I'm sure, because for the lowest-common-denominator factor.

Aside from that camera being cheap junk, the main problem with your plan is that your cable will be too long and the camera will drop out when the IR kicks on at night, as the extra current draw will likely cause excessive voltage drop over that distance.

That's an example where a sign might have the desired effect: if he sees the place is under surveillance, he may simply decide it's not worth his time and move on.

I don't know if even a GV tech could tell from those pictures, but if there's no serial number, I would RUN away from this one - GV won't support it without a serial number.

Gonna depend somewhat on the "class" of criminals you're defending against... if it's mostly crackheads and junkies, most of them aren't going to be looking at the signs. Your average cat burglar will probably be a little more deterred, depending on how persistent he is.

Sure, that's why dozens of different brands (and non-brands) of both cheap and quality cameras use them. As Sean suggests, that spec alone on a camera means very little.

Sounds like a good plan... only drawback with a PTZ is, it still only sees one direction at a time, and while you're moving it to watch one area, it will miss the other area. Considering they tend to cost a lot more in the first place, I think you'd be better off just using the two separate cameras there.

That is correct. There's a great little demo here, that lets you compare side-by-side: http://www.panasonic.com/business/security/demos/PSS-recording-rates.html The review is incorrect. That will depends somewhat on the content of the scene (and to a very small degree, maybe, on the framerate, depending on the type of compression - I-frame vs. image-based). If the system is using a CBR (constant bitrate) codec, you may see no difference at all until things start changing rapidly in the scene. If it's a JPEG-based compression, noise and artifacts in higher compression levels may only be noticeable if you have a lot of smooth areas. And so on...

One of our local "major" ISPs uses these models extensively - if you have the login, you CAN do a fair bit of configuration. In this case, the password is simply the name of the ISP ("telus"). Who is your ISP? It may be possible to look up the default password, somewhere out there on the 'net.

More to the point, exactly what remote cameras are these? It sounds like you're connecting to someone else's publicly-accessible cameras, and they've set limits on how long any one person can be connected.

You also need a VMS that can support dual streaming for this to work. That camera is only half of the solution. Not necessarily. If you can access the camera's streams via direct URL, your NVR just needs to be able to record the primary stream... then you plug in the URL for the low-res stream into your remote browser (granted, this only gives you the live view and not playback, but the OP didn't ask for that). Note that some cameras can give you a reduced version of the primary stream as well - on an IQ511, you can take the basic URL to send an MJPEG stream - "http://camera.ip/now.jpg?snap=spush" will give you the full stream - and add the modifier "&ds=x" where x is a scale factor - &ds=2 will scale each dimension to 1/2 (so, a 1280x1024 image only sends as 640x512, with the relative reduced bandwidth); &ds=4 scales each dimension to 1/4; and so on.

Bandwidth is probably the biggest factor - most residential broadband has fast downstream but fairly limited upstream speeds. VMS could have an effect as well - if it's re-encoding the video to a smaller stream, that will take time to process and add some delay. Not necessarily - it depends on how many cameras you're trying to view/stream at once, and whether the VMS is re-encoding them to a smaller stream. thanks sir, how come the analog has 0 delay on streaming? It won't have ZERO delay; there will always be SOME, even if it's not readily apparent. Most of this is probably due to the fact that you're dealing with far lower resolution, thus less processing is required... That depends on the camera. Those that support dual- or multiple-streams will allow you to do this.

Sorry to say, that's pretty much what it comes down to. Almost all DVRs, if they export video to other media, will provide SOME way to play it on a computer... otherwise exporting it is kind of pointless. However, not all of them do it *by default*. You may have to check for "default" options... you may have to instruct the customer to always make sure to tick the appropriate checkboxes when exporting video. Again, this will vary widely depending on the particular DVR you're dealing with. Just as a side note: you may want to check the documentation (if it exists) for the differences between various export options. Using our Vigil DVRs as an example: their native recording and export format is Aztech-compressed MJPEG, but they can also export as AVI using any available installed codec. The AVI files will be playable on pretty much anything... HOWEVER, they do not have time and date stamp information, and they cannot be "authenticated" (to prove that the video hasn't been tampered with). The native format requires its own codec and player, but it embeds such metadata as checksums (to confirm that the file hasn't been edited), time and date info, POS data, and even video analytics data. The player itself can always re-export as AVI if required, but I always advice clients to export as MJPEG (or what they call "Authentic Video" format FIRST, for the reasons outlined above.

CCD vs. CMOS *really* isn't as big an issue as the industry makes it out to be. If anything, all else in the camera's design being equal, you probably wouldn't see a difference until you got well into the megapixel range. There are many other factors that have an impact long before CCD/CMOS becomes an issue. Fuzziness, frankly, is more likely a lens issue... first, that the lenses are quite possibly not focused properly... and second, that they're just plain low-quality plastic lenses.