Rooney

We have monsoon seasons here in Arizona that have multiple lightning events. We install surge protection and ground rods at each camera location and at the head end. The surge protection we use are made by Polyphaser. We install a bnc surge at both ends as well as a surge protector at each power supply. The system has to be "bonded" so the lightning does not "see" the indifferance to ground. Another way to do it is to place ground rods at equal intervals around the building and bond the building to the rods. I would recommend doing both. But, at least do the camera system.

You should be able to without any problems.

If you check the system with a checker like the one pictured above you should be able to find the problem. They also have cable testers that have a digital readout that will give you the distance to the problem. Here in Arizona I have run across systems with intermittant problems due to lightning strikes degrading the coax. We always use surge supression on both the camera end and the control end. Sometimes lightning will still take the coax to the surge suppressor them to ground. That will degrade the coax. I just thought I would throw that out there in case anyone else has had problems with systems after storms. A well bonded system will last longer than a non suppressed system.

I have run into that if we were not able to create a cd or dvd from the DVR itself that is watermarked. We have to create the cd or dvd under police supervision while writing down exactly how we created it. The problem with removing Hdd is the files are compressed ussualy with proprietary software. If the department or courts do not have a copy of the software they are unable to retrieve the information.

Your right that certain (most) manufacturers water marks are bypassable with means that are available. It does however give some viability to the images as compared to images that have been edited that do not have them. Also if a law enforcement official is present when the watermarked images are downloaded and it is obtained as legal evidence it makes it much harder to dispute than someone else downloading it and there is no official chain of custody.

Most DVR's do come with the software installed to export the video. I have run into this problem before trying to export video for Law Enforcement evidence. The problem you have with capture cards and other means of taking the video off the DVR is that the video may not be permissable in court, or may be thrown out because it was "edited". Most DVR manufacturers now include "water marking" for evidence retrieval. This shows that the video or single image has not been edited. With the numerous DVR manufacturers out there the need for standardization is needed now more than ever. The different Codec's for video and the preference of the installer or integrator makes it more difficult for L.E.. My recommendation is to try as much as possible to use the DVR's export program to export the video or images. If you do not have the program on your machine to view the file format it is easy to download a viewer that will enable you to view and enlarge areas within the video. One program that I can recommend that can view numerous differant formats is Irfanview. It will also handle most "water marks".