kujo999

GeoVision or Avermedia or some other brand? I am looking for a PCI DVR Card that provides the absolute best image quality I can get. Can someone give me some pointers? I current have the NV7000. So far, I like the product, but I can't help but wondering if there is something out there that is better. After all, what's the point of spending money on good cameras but the image quality doesn't capture the details that you need to catch the perp?. Any help would be apreciated. Thanks guys.

I have four cameras attached to this board. It has been working great up til now, but now it seems that this image jitters a little from the top to the bottom. Of course, this affects skews the image quality and sets off motion detection. Does anyone know what could be causing this? I haven't contacted Avermedia about it yet, but I was wondering if some of the folks here knew what it was. Thanks!

I just got a QD360 Q-See dome camera. It looks like it's built OK, but what do I know? I installed it yesterday and I am getting a really lousy picture. Of course, the "manual" doesn't tell what the settings are and how to use them. There are three rings: 1. Focal length 2. Focus 3. One saying Open and Close, I am clueless about what this does. Is this kind of a standard (the three rings)? Perhaps that way I can find out how to properly adjust the camera instead of just guessing. Finally, are these cameras any good. I am looking for a dome camera that is small and unobtrusive (like this one), and has a great picture, at least 480~500 lines. See great in the dark. Is there a particular manufacturer I should be looking at. I don't want to break the bank, but I don't want crap either.

I am looking at some of Surveilux's day/night domes. Does anyone know about this brand. If you had to get a day/night OUTDOOR dome, which brand is the best? Thanks!

I have an Avermedia NV3000 presently. The software and board work fine, but I am not pleased with the image quality. If I can't get images that are clear and can easily identify a perp, what's the point? To that end, I'd like to ask a question of this group. For the money, is there any particular brand that is better than another, esp. as it relates to a) great image quality b) good software and c) price/benefit ratio. I'm not a cheapskate but I'd like to get the best board I can for the least amount of $$. Thanks!

What justifies the extra $200? I can't answer that yet. All I know is that in order to get 30fps I had to step up to the next model which is the 5000. I like the fact that this one is much more expandable than the 3000 as well. I wanted the extra frames because should I ever need to produce footage I don't want to miss anything; any nuance of what happened. Some have said it's overkill but I disagree. You can miss a lot of detail when capturing at 5 fps or less, which is about what the 3000 was giving me (remember that 30fps has to be divided among 4 cameras). How is the picture on the 5000? I have not yet perfected the image and I have been trying different cameras. I have almost hit a sweet spot, but it's take a little more time for me to settle on the right combination. I have a feeling that in order for me to get the kind of image I really want, I am going to have to move into pretty expensive cameras. The cameras in the $200~300 range just don't seem to be doing it for me. What I want is an image that you'd get from a very good camcorder. I am not sure that's possible unless I get a pricey box cam. But realistically, I can probaly live without a near perfect image. I'm just a perfectionist. Once I get the cams tweaked and set up properly, I'll post some shots.

Excellent ideas. I'll try looking at the scheduler when I get home tonight. Thanks!

I just returned the NV3000 and now have an NV5000. So far, so good. The main thing that helped me to choose Avermedia again was the support. The 30 fps is nice and much better than the 3000 in that respect. I am having a strange problem where the only way I can do motion recordings is by setting up alerts on each camera. This is probably the 7.3 software and doesn't have anything to do with my cameras or the card itself, however.

You might want to check out the thread that I opened regarding "NV3000 Jittery Images". We ended up talking about the pros and cons of using AMD over Intel. I too have a AMD CPU and and Asus motherboard that uses the NVidia chipset. I am being steered in the direction of just going out and getting a new mobo and an Intel proc.

Interesting. I am actually an Intel-man myself. It seems that every time I by AMD I regret it, yet the Intel stuff I buy I can re-use for years. True, it costs a little bit more but it more than makes up for the cost in reliability. The reason I am trying to use the AMD is to re-use a box that I once use for my HD HTPC. So, I may look at picking up a new board and cpu. Avermedia did contact me about the issue as well and the guy mentioned first off that it may be a power supply issue (which is what you cited). I am going to go through the task of trying to isolate the offender and see if that fixes things. Thanks for your help!

Why the P4? Are they using P4 specific extensions or is it just mainly the dual-core architecture? After all, the X2 is dual core! Are you sure that the speed and type of processor is that is causing the jittery video? I wonder if it might be more cost-effective to trade up to a DVR card with hardware based encoding.

CPU=AMD Athlon X2 3800 Video Card=NVidia 7600GS (Gigabyte) Chipset=nVidia GeForce 6160 + nForce 430

We'll I am using a high-end NVidia card that I used for my HTPC. If the card easily handles HD content it should have power to spare for DVR purposes. The CPU, Motherboard etc, all higher end gear should be more than enough. This same PC was used to encode multiple streams of HD content without so much as a hiccup. If that's not enough, then I'd say the software/encoders suck. I am capturing D1. The card is only grabbing 7 frames max per channel. Max frames per card is 30. So at the most, the PC would need to encode 30 fps. Although, if the video quality isn't that great, then the encoder is going to use more CPU. Anyway, I still haven't heard back from Avermedia. I apreciate you guys helping me with this.

That's a good idea about isolating the cameras 1 at a time and also feed in a signal from sat or a vcr. I'll upload a snippet when I get home later today. I've also contacted Avermedia...haven't heard back from them yet. Thanks VST_Man!

It seems like it is happening on all the cameras. I don't know if it has anything to do with the video compressor I am using (Advanced MPEG4), or if it has sometthing to do with the deinterlacing (mode:2). or something else altogether. The cameras I have are kind of middle of the road. Each is using a Sony Super HAD 550+ rez, CCD. So these aren't super cheap cameras. I have 1 Vitek Dome, 1 CNB dome and two Q-See (don't laugh) bullet cameras which, believe it or not, have been great performers so far (they are the higher end bullets). It almost seems as if there is a problem with syncing the frames coming from the camera with the software that is displaying the frames. Thanks!

I am trying to set up remote viewing using the NV3000 card. The documentation says (in Engrish) that you go to the OSD and the select Network Setup and from there you can figure out what the MAC address is. Well, I don't see any Network Setup in the OSD. Anyone out there know how can I obtain this address? Thanks!

Any idea? Any brands that are better than others?

Here's the update. I got everything set up last night. I registered a ddns, fiddled around with my router to do port forwarding and lots of trial and error. It took me about 2 hours, and franky I was amazed that I was able to get it done. Thanks to all who helped me. I couldn't have done it without you and Avermedia tech support.

Thanks all for your replies. When I heard MAC address the first thing I did was do an IPCONFIG /ALL. But then trying to decipher the text, it looks like they wanted me to swap the CD-Key for the MAC address...OF THE DVR card! They even have "instructions" on how to get that. The problem is, that's wrong too. I did manage to get in touch with avermedia US. I got a very quick response and as it turns out, I don't need the MAC address at all. AverMedia really needs to hire someone who speaks proper English, I can only imagine what confusion is being caused with their other translations. To their credit, they have been very responsive and that's comforting. I am going to try out their recomendations now and see if they work. Going in....wish me luck!