cchan

Just added 3 more sample/test videos so there are 5 now. In particular, I added some nighttime video clips. To recap: Clips 1 & 2 - recorded late afternoon, with all 4 cameras recording simultaneously. Clips 3, 4, & 5 - only a single camera was connected during the recording. #3 gives you an idea of the scene during the day for comparison to 4 and 5. Camera was just placed outside of my front door for this test, similar view as #1 and 2 but different location. #4 is at night - Street is lit by a streetlight to the right off camera, but otherwise no other lighting on the pathway, plant on the right, lawn, and outside of the house on the left, that is from the camera's IR LEDs. #5 - I decided to turn the front house lights on/off to see what adding visible light does. Resolution is certainly lower at night than day... how does this compare with other cameras? Thanks again to flynreelow for hosting these.

Dixit - yes, all 4 cameras were recording simultaneously.

Yes, through a window. Not particularly dirty, but not clean clean either. So can we safely conclude that it seems like this NVR is capable of recording around 4x 1080p cameras at ~15fps?

flynreelow is helping me to post a couple of short clips I extracted from my Swann NVR for all to see, as I don't have a good place to post them. I haven't installed the cameras outside, so what I did was hook up all 4 cameras, and placed them on a window sill. So the videos are all looking out through a double paned window. You might notice some reflections in the corner areas. Also, I haven't bothered with updating the time yet, so it's an hour behind from actual time due to DST. All 4 cameras were recording. I extracted clips from just one of the cameras. I don't know if these are a good test since there is limited motion. The first clip still had pretty strong light before sunset, the second was getting close to sunset so the lighting is dimmer. I made the clips of cars going by on the street, since there wouldn't be much other motion to judge. I don't know how may FPS we're getting, but I will say that these clips look smoother than I originally thought - but my earlier impression was based on video recorded in dimmer light than today, so maybe that affects FPS? Outdoor night/IR shots obviously wouldn't work through a window due to the LEDs, so I don't have samples of those. I can say that I did try it out inside a little at night, and the LEDs seem powerful enough to light about 50 feet very well (longest distance inside my house from where I've got the system). The fan is loud, looks to be a small one on the right side of the case. Maybe only ~1 inch diameter? In a non-scientific approach, I used an iPhone decibel app - it measured about 55-60db right next to the fan, versus ~40-45 for a quiet room. I hope someone figures out if other cameras can work with the Swann NVR. The camera configuration in the NVR says it supports ONVIF.

I doubt it is recording all 4 cameras at 60fps. I recorded some video from all 4 cameras simultaneously, and then exported the video. The properties of the export file says its 60fps, but watching a car go by, there is a little bit of "skipping" so even I know it's not 30fps. I'm not technical enough with video, but more than happy to work with someone who is.

Ah, sorry didn't explain that well - to clarify, yes, I am able to get video to the TV over an HDMI cable. I just had to change the video output setting to the 720 or 1080p display sizing and it works fine. The resolution choices -were the two "TV" (720p or 1080p) and three 4:3 computer screen resolutions (1024x768, 1280x1024, and 1600x1200). My TV just didn't like the default 1024x768 setting, so I had to hook up a VGA monitor to change it to a resolution that made the TV happy (only the 720 or 1080p works). Not sure if it is just my TV (a Samsung 55", only a few years old), maybe others support 1024x768 over HDMI? Or should perhaps Swann have set the resolution to 720p as the default? I could see a non-sophisticated consumer seeing nothing on their TV and return it thinking the video output is broken. FYI, one can use both the HDMI and VGA display ports at the same time, assuming resolution is set to something both support.

Hi all, new to the forum, been watching and researching... Decided to try this new Swann system from Costco for home, instead of the Q-See. It arrived via FedEx this morning, had a little time to play around with it. I have no real prior security camera system experience but decent home networking/tech experience. I plugged the NVR and cameras together in front of the TV to give it a test. From a user standpoint, it was relatively easy (at least for a more tech saavy consumer) in that I just connected it to a monitor, plugged in the cameras and got it showing video on screen without a lot of work or configuration. So far it "looks" good, but we'll see after it actually gets installed and I hook it up to the network, and actually try recording footage/stills. One comment to note - I first connected the NVR to a HD TV via an HDMI cable. The TV wouldn't show an image because the mode wasn't supported. So I dragged out a computer monitor and attached it via VGA cable, which worked. Looks like the default output resolution was set to 1024x768 IIRC, which my TV didn't like. MaxIcon, the cameras come up in the Swann system as model SWNHD-820CAM, firmware says V4.0.9 build 130106. A couple of pics of the cameras attached.