SunnyKim

Hmmm, No more peddling cheap IP cameras from China ????

The lowest delay could be achieved by a cheap analog camera and an old color TV monitor. This kind of old system do not carry any memory to store a video frame or to display, therefore the most lagless system.

3D NR is good for night time noises when low lighted. But 3D NR needs extra bandwith for DRAM. That's why I asked to turn off the feature, if set or enabled. Please note most of SoC chipsets are designed to cover 4Ch/8Ch/16Ch application. Not for 12 Ch, as in your case. Your DVR could be designed for 8Ch. But you may be using it for more cameras, or for more number of frames to be compressed and stored. You may change (switch) your DVR box for testing.

As I see the video channel being mixed from other cameras, the CPU must get overloaded. To be specific, seemingly the DRAM bandwidth over full. Are they all analog cameras or analog HD cameras or IP cameras? You may turn off 3D NR-Noise Reduction, if the feature is enabled. Most of Chinese products claim a bit more than they could chew.

It seems that you have done almost everything. Whether your system can be DVR or NVR, it seems overloaded for the SoC chipset inside the box. Too many cameras. You may completely remove one or two cameras off the box and observe the flickerings still there.

First try out the conventional analog camera (CVBS, NTSC or PAL). If it fails, you could blame "bad cable", or "bad DVR". If OK, then you can assume the cable and power supply is OK. Then move on to test analog HD cameras. For analog HD(TVI,CVI,or AHD) on RG59, 1000 feet might seem to be the longest distance for an Analog DVR to reproduce(receive) those camera(analog HD) without much degradation of video quality. The EX-SDI cameras can go further. We tested EX-SDI system (camera + dvr) OK upto under 700meters. You may check out "eyenix.com" for the system vendors they recommend. So called "Hybrid DVR" can decode out all camera signals, the conventional analog camera, Analog HD, HD-SDI, and EX-SDI.

Have you heard about EX-SDI? We tested the system in our Lab. Up to 700 meters, no problem on RG59 cable. Check out eyenix.com who probably can introduce to you, camera makers and DVR makers.

Wow, they have been working 20 years every day and night !!!. You may be able to save "Cameras and Cabling", as they are. Buy an Analog DVR, Monitor, and Harddisc.

.The chip makers are now all in China. The video quality and performances have improved a lot. The set makers with high brands are also in China. Go for Hikvision or Dahua. They provide menu for your tuning the parameter. Try yourself and find the best parameters for your application. FYI, go for Wiki and understand "Constant bit rate control", or "Variable bit rate", or "Combined both", which fluctuates between Min/Max bit rates that you bind.

I do not buy the claim that H.265, in most cases, gives 40% more efficiency than H.264. It could but on a certain scenario, on a certain video size. But it could not, vice versa. I like to see the cases being reported on the actual fields. Just like amount of 15 days storage, compared between H.264 DVR and H.265 DVR mode switched, as we see both standards are supported by new DVRs, available in the market.

Check out the system: EX-SDI at eyenix.com. We tested out the system on the conventional cable of length of 700 meter. It definetely offers much higher performance for longer distance than HD-SDI, HD-TVI, HD-CVI, and HD-AHD. EX-SDI seems to be based on that a slight compression can reduce the high frequency component in a signal content, using low frequency as a carrier frequency, therby gaining much longer distance in forms of digital data comunication (TX and RX wise).

Image sensors are expensive with good low light performance. Not sure whether Longse actually uses them for their cheap cameras. In addition to shortening shutter exposure time, you may turn off 3D-NR option, if set any.

Its exposure time is too short. Very Dark video you would get. You decide whether the setting is good for your special application.

You may ask Lorex for a possible update of firmware. Possibly one of many causes, you can tell them. In the night recording, the bit rates can go a lot higher than the expected value with the current setting of parameters in their firmware. Being driven into an unknown state, till the watch dog timer does reboot the system back again.

Time to give it a break. Time to say Bye. It has been working 7/24 in a harsh condition for at least 10 years. No devices working that hard, TVs/Cars/Phones ....

One more option: Buy a new NVR and place it near your LED monitor. Connect the NVR to the Network Interface of your Hybrid DVR, outputting the compressed streams for the video data.

New DVRs for analog camera can output the compressed bit stream through its Network Interface. That becomes the same as using 16 IP cameras.

HD-TVI or HD-AHD cameras provide 2MP resolution (Full HD of 1080P X 1920Width at 30FPS rate) on a conventional BNC cable. You can buy Hybrid DVRs that can also support the conventional analog cameras (PAL/NTSC).

You may search USB DVR at ebay, amazon, alibaba. You may not buy the USB DVR below U$10. It may look like a pen, a tiny DVR. That's mainly for 1 Channel. You may buy the diffrent kinds, USB DVR, near U$20, 4Ch to 8 Ch. You may use it for a single channel. Yes, you may buy analog cameras below U$20.

LP9511, Not being a programmer for PTZ camera, but please allow me to add a couple of cents more. Please check out "Wiki UART" and its relevant standards for hardwares (RS232, and RS485). It defines two way signaling (RX and TX). Probably all the cameras hooked on a single wire are supposed only to listen to the signal transmitted from the controller. Probably the controller do not allow the cameras to talk back to it. Thus, the programming could be a lot simpler, my guess. The camera ID is supposed to be programmed (set) differently in each PTZ camera. The controller needs to know the camera IDs through registrations to the controller, my guess. The operation scenario would be as following, my pure guess. The operator selects the camera and sends a certain command to the selected camera. My guess is that All the cameras are to be programmed to listen to the controller,all time. Each cammera can understand that the command is not directed for itself when the command carries a different ID from its own ID. Only the camera who does match with the ID broadcast from the controller would follow the command. All other cameras would ignore the command. These could be found in the manual of the PTZ controller, I guess.

HD-TVI is promoted by HikVision. Rather limited by the number of suppliers. Therefore, rather expensive than HD-AHD system. More suppliers and manufactuerers, thus less expensive for HD-AHD cameras and DVRs.

There, in this forum, guys who are obsessed with IP cameras, from Hik or Dahua, even though no way to get direct help from them. You do not need to get mad against them. But remeber always these guys do not help you out when you are in trouble.

If you like to avoid cabling work, you may buy HD-AHD DVR that supports analog cameras at the same time. Link the network cable from the into your PC, substreaming compressed file. Install a software on your PC that does decompress the file and display video.

Sure, avoid this product though. I think the new revision has vent holes now. I wish I could find an HD version of this unit! Please allow me to explain why the USB DVR can not support HD size video or kinds. The interface is UBS2.0 which allows Max 480 Mega Bit Per Second. In terms of Byte, 60 MBPS. But considering communication over heads and bufferings for smooth processing by CPU on PC or Laptop, it allows Max 23 MBPS, narrowly passing D1 Sized Video Data of 30 Frames Per Second. For 4 Ch, the video previewed and recorded is to be limited to CIF sized (352X 240, NTSC) for each channel.

Could you please post the picture of your DVR - 4Ch USB?