In Search of full D1 recording DVR cards that records to AVI

[FranciscoNET 0]

In regards to Geovision, the 600 has replaced the 250 now, though you might still be able to get some 250's from dealers with overstock and at low prices, but just make sure its not a clone.

 

According to :

http://www.geovision.com.tw/english/product/GV-600.htm

 

Quote:

Total Recording Rate

At 320 X 240 Resolution 30 fps (NTSC), 25 fps (PAL)

 

Rory, I appreciate the suggestions and input you have given me, but these Geovision GV-600 cards records at maximum 320x240 which is slighly lower what my current cards are doing which is at 352x288 (CIF) which is 32 more pixels horizontally and 48 more pixles vertically which I know is not that much of a big deal, but if I had to choose between the GV-600 QVGA cards and my QX-DVR CIF cards, I would be of my best of interests to pick the QX-DVR CIF cards, its cheaper, quality is a little better than the GV-600 and its realtime per channel. (there is no point for me replacing a NON D1 card with another NON D1 card)...

 

Rory, what is the chceapest (4CH) GeoVision cards (model) that they got that does full D1?

 

Thanks.

[rory 0]

According to :

http://www.geovision.com.tw/english/product/GV-600.htm

 

Quote:

Total Recording Rate

At 320 X 240 Resolution 30 fps (NTSC), 25 fps (PAL)

 

Rory, I appreciate the suggestions and input you have given me, but these Geovision GV-600 cards records at maximum 320x240 which is slighly lower what my current cards are doing which is at 352x288 (CIF) which is 32 more pixels horizontally and 48 more pixles vertically which I know is not that much of a big deal, but if I had to choose between the GV-600 QVGA cards and my QX-DVR CIF cards, I would be of my best of interests to pick the QX-DVR CIF cards, its cheaper, quality is a little better than the GV-600 and its realtime per channel. (there is no point for me replacing a NON D1 card with another NON D1 card)...

 

Rory, what is the chceapest (4CH) GeoVision cards (model) that they got that does full D1?

 

Thanks.

 

They will record in 720x480.

 

What they are telling you is that you will only get 30fps in CIF Mode, this is how all or most DVRs are, where you want the maximum frames that the card offers, it is most always be in CIF mode only, short of using a hardware compression card and even only very few stand alone DVRs. So yes it WILL do D1 recording, but if all cameras are recording at one time it will not be 30fps. In fact, I never record in D1, i use 640x480 as the file size is much smaller and yet the actual video size and quality is barely a difference. Also, you can change the recording size per camera, so set some at CIF and some at D1.

 

What it is, alot of DVRs will advertise say 120fps or real time but they dont tell the client it is only if they use CIF mode, so for example with the GV1480 it will do 480fps but only if you are recording all in CIF, so if you use D1 then it is 120fps or less - with smart motion recording though most of the video clips can be visually close enough to real time to hardly notice a difference (on the combo cards, and depending on the number of cameras with motion, faster quad CPU can also help gain more).

 

BTW have you looked at Nuuo? I havent used it but as an example their 16ch hardware compression cards are half the price of Geo's hardware compression cards, and their software looks like it has alot of the same features. Their smaller cards dont seem to be any cheaper then Geo's though. But in theory you could stack 4 of their 16 channel hardware compression cards to get a 64 channel system as most of the processing is done on the card. I think they have 4 channel hardware compression also.

[Tranquilino 0]

FranciscoNET, May I recommend to you the QX2006 DVR Cards? They display at a beautiful sharp 640x480 per channel, and its very cheap. I get mines at $33 each 4 CH.

 

As far as the QX2006 software goes its very stable, more stable than GeoVIsion based on my tests. Geovision crashes and hangs the system when the dvr has had a 1 to 2 weeks of uptime, with QX2006 my server has had uptimes in excess of 8 weeks without a crash/system hang.

 

Af far as a list of DVR cards that you can buy I dont have a list, jus the VGA QX2006 recommendation.

[rory 0]

Geovision crashes and hangs the system when the dvr has had a 1 to 2 weeks of uptime

 

This is incorrect, unless one has a bad system or is using a pirated card.

 

with QX2006 my server has had uptimes in excess of 8 weeks without a crash/system hang.

 

No DVR should ever have a crash/system hang, I would have another look at what kind of systems you are building.

[FranciscoNET 0]

FranciscoNET, May I recommend to you the QX2006 DVR Cards? They display at a beautiful sharp 640x480 per channel, and its very cheap. I get mines at $33 each 4 CH.

 

As far as the QX2006 software goes its very stable, more stable than GeoVIsion based on my tests. Geovision crashes and hangs the system when the dvr has had a 1 to 2 weeks of uptime, with QX2006 my server has had uptimes in excess of 8 weeks without a crash/system hang.

 

Af far as a list of DVR cards that you can buy I dont have a list, jus the VGA QX2006 recommendation.

 

Tranquilino, I appreciate your suggestion, but the QX2006 software's Display Resolution is NOT the same as the RECORDING Resolution. If you didn't knew that just examine any of its .AVI video files's properties and you will see that all of them are 353x288 resolution. I am looking for full D1 (Display and Recording all in D1). Some DVR card vendors would say "Our cards is D1" but what they wont tell you is that its for Display only, we had to deal with some of those types of cards.

 

Thanks anyways and welcome to the forums!

[Tranquilino 0]

Geovision crashes and hangs the system when the dvr has had a 1 to 2 weeks of uptime

 

This is incorrect, unless one has a bad system or is using a pirated card.

 

with QX2006 my server has had uptimes in excess of 8 weeks without a crash/system hang.

 

No DVR should ever have a crash/system hang, I would have another look at what kind of systems you are building.

 

Rory, When I was using geovision I got those cards from Ebay, I searched there for "Geovision DVR" and got the cheapest buy it now price I could possibly find for a Geo 4 CH card. The package arried fast from Geovision's Hong Kong Distributing Center. It was basically a PCI device, a small miniCD white labeled "Drivers", and lots of black and white pages paperclipped together labeled "user manual". I instaled everything and it ws working well, just that I had to restart the dvr manually like once every week to prevent hangups, but besides that it was a great product, then I moved on to QX2006 because I wanted 640x480 quality.

 

FranciscoNET, May I recommend to you the QX2006 DVR Cards? They display at a beautiful sharp 640x480 per channel, and its very cheap. I get mines at $33 each 4 CH.

 

As far as the QX2006 software goes its very stable, more stable than GeoVIsion based on my tests. Geovision crashes and hangs the system when the dvr has had a 1 to 2 weeks of uptime, with QX2006 my server has had uptimes in excess of 8 weeks without a crash/system hang.

 

Af far as a list of DVR cards that you can buy I dont have a list, jus the VGA QX2006 recommendation.

 

Tranquilino, I appreciate your suggestion, but the QX2006 software's Display Resolution is NOT the same as the RECORDING Resolution. If you didn't knew that just examine any of its .AVI video files's properties and you will see that all of them are 353x288 resolution. I am looking for full D1 (Display and Recording all in D1). Some DVR card vendors would say "Our cards is D1" but what they wont tell you is that its for Display only, we had to deal with some of those types of cards.

 

Thanks anyways and welcome to the forums!

 

FranciscoNET, You are absolutely right! After examining my videos I found out they were of 352x288 quality when I right clicked them, choosed properties then clicked at summary, there I read it. I can't believe this, all this time I though I was recording at 640x480 and my distributor never told me this. Here is what I dont understand, if the QX2006 software is receiving videos at 640x480 and presenting them at the computer screen at that quality, then why is it not recording at that same quality? Why is there a discrepancy in recording and displaying resolutions?? Is there any body here that uses QX2006 that can help me? Maybe I got my settings wrong somehow?

[rory 0]

Rory, When I was using geovision I got those cards from Ebay, I searched there for "Geovision DVR" and got the cheapest buy it now price I could possibly find for a Geo 4 CH card. The package arried fast from Geovision's Hong Kong Distributing Center. It was basically a PCI device, a small miniCD white labeled "Drivers", and lots of black and white pages paperclipped together labeled "user manual". I instaled everything and it ws working well, just that I had to restart the dvr manually like once every week to prevent hangups, but besides that it was a great product, then I moved on to QX2006 because I wanted 640x480 quality.

 

That was not a real geovision card (pirated), so it came with hacked drivers and cracked software, no wonder you had problems. GeoVision has a China division but they do not sell to end users and that Hong Kong place you purchased from was just another outlet selling pirate hardware/software. Just going by the fact that you bought it from Hong Kong, It had a CD with a white label for the drivers (instead of the original CD), and it had paper clipped pages for the manual (instead of a real booklet), that alone tells us it was a clone. Since I was using GeoVision from 3 or so years ago, it always had 720x480 resolution in live and record.

[Tranquilino 0]

Rory, When I was using geovision I got those cards from Ebay, I searched there for "Geovision DVR" and got the cheapest buy it now price I could possibly find for a Geo 4 CH card. The package arried fast from Geovision's Hong Kong Distributing Center. It was basically a PCI device, a small miniCD white labeled "Drivers", and lots of black and white pages paperclipped together labeled "user manual". I instaled everything and it ws working well, just that I had to restart the dvr manually like once every week to prevent hangups, but besides that it was a great product, then I moved on to QX2006 because I wanted 640x480 quality.

 

That was not a real geovision card (pirated), so it came with hacked drivers and cracked software, no wonder you had problems. GeoVision has a China division but they do not sell to end users and that Hong Kong place you purchased from was just another outlet selling pirate hardware/software. Just going by the fact that you bought it from Hong Kong, It had a CD with a white label for the drivers (instead of the original CD), and it had paper clipped pages for the manual (instead of a real booklet), that alone tells us it was a clone. Since I was using GeoVision from 3 or so years ago, it always had 720x480 resolution in live and record.

 

That was not a real geovision card (pirated)

Rory, I think you meant "That was not a real geovision software" big difference, the software part I would understand the possibility of being pirated, but the actual physical pci device card? How can something that is hardware be pirated. So I cam make more sense of what I am trying to say let me use the "Pirated Windows" example here,

when a person falls victim to software piracy and purchases a computer system pre installed with a pirated version of Windows XP can a person says "Well, since it came with a pirated version of Windows XP, then it must have a pirated mainboard, a pirated hard drive, a pirated video card, etc....." any person that hears that will just start laughing becaues everyone knows that there is no such thing as a pirated mainboard, its a hardware product that is tangible and you get to touch it for real, it has real components, chips, capacitors, resistors, transistors, etc, same applies for the dvr card. This dvr card is real, has real components, real microchips, real capacitors, real resistors, etc, nothing here looks fake or fisherprice types of make belief fake toy items. its as real as it can get, it fits into a pci slot, when the drivers are installed it shows up under device manager, so as real as that it can't get any rear-er.

The question here would be how I can get a genuine geovision software for my geovision cards, it looks the people from china either stole the geovision dvr cards and pirated the software as to not require a license key, that way they could afford to see it alot cheaper, in that case I would not mind purchasing a genuine geovision software that can work with my geovision card. So where can I go to obtain the real stable software, I already got the card just missing the real software.

[rory 0]

Rory, I think you meant "That was not a real geovision software" big difference, the software part I would understand the possibility of being pirated, but the actual physical pci device card? How can something that is hardware be pirated. So I cam make more sense of what I am trying to say let me use the "Pirated Windows" example here,

The card is not a Real GeoVision card, and the Software is cracked and the drivers are hacked, pretty much what I said.

 

Ofcourse the card itself is not "pirated" in the sense that you and I might otherwise understand it, but it is a "clone" - or cheap Knockoff. In this industry we also call it a "Pirated Card", which encompasses both its being a copy of the original and using cracked software with hacked drivers.

 

Geovision use to get its cards from UDPtech which is strictly a card manufacturer in Korea. I believe they still do but some things have changed on them since I last checked. As I am not privy to the inside workings of either Geovision or UDBtech i cannot elaborate any more then that. Bottom line is the cards are copies of the Geovision cards, they make them out to look like the real thing, but they are far from it.

 

The Driver files are made for these NON Geovision cards but are reconfigured to "appear" as if they are for Geovision, Software is cracked to "work" with those driver files and the card, using older versions of the software. Although these copies and cracked software crash and have all kinds of issues, people buy them, in fact, it is rather genius of the Chinese when you think of it, and they are great sales people. But ofcourse they know they are above any International law also. However most of that is based in Hong Kong. Dont get me wrong, the Chinese do make great products, not all are making cloned cards and cracking software, it is still just a very a small minority.

 

More info:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3301

[Tranquilino 0]

Rory, I think you meant "That was not a real geovision software" big difference, the software part I would understand the possibility of being pirated, but the actual physical pci device card? How can something that is hardware be pirated. So I cam make more sense of what I am trying to say let me use the "Pirated Windows" example here,

The card is not a Real GeoVision card, and the Software is cracked and the drivers are hacked, pretty much what I said.

 

Ofcourse the card itself is not "pirated" in the sense that you and I might otherwise understand it, but it is a "clone" - or cheap Knockoff. In this industry we also call it a "Pirated Card", which encompasses both its being a copy of the original and using cracked software with hacked drivers.

 

Geovision use to get its cards from UDPtech which is strictly a card manufacturer in Korea. I believe they still do but some things have changed on them since I last checked. As I am not privy to the inside workings of either Geovision or UDBtech i cannot elaborate any more then that. Bottom line is the cards are copies of the Geovision cards, they make them out to look like the real thing, but they are far from it.

 

The Driver files are made for these NON Geovision cards but are reconfigured to "appear" as if they are for Geovision, Software is cracked to "work" with those driver files and the card, using older versions of the software. Although these copies and cracked software crash and have all kinds of issues, people buy them, in fact, it is rather genius of the Chinese when you think of it, and they are great sales people. But ofcourse they know they are above any International law also. However most of that is based in Hong Kong. Dont get me wrong, the Chinese do make great products, not all are making cloned cards and cracking software, it is still just a very a small minority.

 

More info:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3301

oh wow I didn't know it was possible to pirate hardware wise, I though piracy was only limited to software. Well, if these chinesse people are creating their own dvr card and hacking the geovision software and drivers to make it work with thier non-geovision dvr cards, they why can't they just develop their own software, or perfectionize any one of those open source projects if they dont want to start from scratch, that way they will have their own products 100% legit and would be in the position to compete with geovision and others, why go thru all this trouble in coppy catting when it seems clear they have the know how to create their own products themselves.

Now, I am holding a dvr card with pirated geovision software, is there another software I could try that will work with these cards while reamining 100% legit? I would hate to throw out these cards because the physical cards is not the problem, its the software that was chosen to make it work in this case, as what I have learned so far. I am assuming that these cards are generic and will work with any generic driver, right?

[Soundy 1]

oh wow I didn't know it was possible to pirate hardware wise, I though piracy was only limited to software. Well, if these chinesse people are creating their own dvr card and hacking the geovision software and drivers to make it work with thier non-geovision dvr cards, they why can't they just develop their own software, or perfectionize any one of those open source projects if they dont want to start from scratch, that way they will have their own products 100% legit and would be in the position to compete with geovision and others, why go thru all this trouble in coppy catting when it seems clear they have the know how to create their own products themselves.

 

There are plenty of other legit cards and software made in China, but for some, it's a lot less effort to tweak someone else's, thus gaining the benefit of their name.

 

Now, I am holding a dvr card with pirated geovision software, is there another software I could try that will work with these cards while reamining 100% legit? I would hate to throw out these cards because the physical cards is not the problem, its the software that was chosen to make it work in this case, as what I have learned so far. I am assuming that these cards are generic and will work with any generic driver, right?

 

Well, you've already bought it, so you might as well keep using it, if you want - NOT using it won't change things at this point, other than maybe addressing your stability problems. But yes, any software and drivers that work with those chipsets should work with the card.

[FranciscoNET 0]

oh wow I didn't know it was possible to pirate hardware wise, I though piracy was only limited to software. Well, if these chinesse people are creating their own dvr card and hacking the geovision software and drivers to make it work with thier non-geovision dvr cards, they why can't they just develop their own software, or perfectionize any one of those open source projects if they dont want to start from scratch, that way they will have their own products 100% legit and would be in the position to compete with geovision and others, why go thru all this trouble in coppy catting when it seems clear they have the know how to create their own products themselves.

 

There are plenty of other legit cards and software made in China, but for some, it's a lot less effort to tweak someone else's, thus gaining the benefit of their name.

 

Now, I am holding a dvr card with pirated geovision software, is there another software I could try that will work with these cards while reamining 100% legit? I would hate to throw out these cards because the physical cards is not the problem, its the software that was chosen to make it work in this case, as what I have learned so far. I am assuming that these cards are generic and will work with any generic driver, right?

 

Well, you've already bought it, so you might as well keep using it, if you want - NOT using it won't change things at this point, other than maybe addressing your stability problems. But yes, any software and drivers that work with those chipsets should work with the card.

Tranquilino, if you do decide to continue using these cards I have a few tips for you that will help you at least maximize stability. Since on your previous posts you mentioned that the software will get frozen like in a week or two of the DVR UP TIME, then you may want to consider automating a system restart once every 3 days (or once everyday if you want). You can start by opening up notepad and typing the following there:

shutdown -r -t 15 -c "Restarting DVR for Maintenance Free Operation"

then click on SAVE, on the save field type the following:

*.*

then press enter (this will enable you to save notepad documents in any extension of your choice)

then just give it any file name (but it has to end with .bat), example:

c:\restart.bat

(the "c:\" part will save the DOS batch script on the root directory of Drive C, you can see it by opening up "My Computer" and entering Local Disk C:, there will be that file).

 

Then open up Scheduler (Start > Control Panel > Scheduled Tasks) and create a new scheduled task pointing to c:\restart.bat with instructions to execute it every day at 5 in the morning. You will need to have a password protected XP user account before you are able to create scheduled tasks, if you do not have a password protected user account then create a new user account.

Example: create a user account named "tasks", and set a new password for that account (example password: psswd09), at this point you will have two user accounts in your welcome screen which may prevent automatic logins, to set automatic login for the main user account you use for the DVR just download TwealUI (google it) and set your desired XP user account to autologin every time you start the DVR (dont forget to set your correct password (if any)for that account to autologin, if it does not have a password, still click on the password but, but on the password field leave it blank and press OK, this will tell TweakUI that the account to be set for auto login does not have a password)

Then, go back to Task Scheduler and create that task to set c:\reboot.bat to start every day at 5AM or every 3 days at 5AM and on the User Name field type the password protected user name you created for this purpose. example: Tasks

Then on the password field for that user account type the password you created for it. My Example: psswd09

then press OK, if no errors showed up then the tasks has been created successfully. To test it right click on your new tasks and then click on Run (make sure your DVR software is running at this time to make sure that Windows has no problems closing it down), the watch and see if windows is able to close your DVR software successfully and see if your system restart.

 

If it does restart then you are set, and you have converted a unstable version of the program into a very stable environment since uptime will be limited to 23.59 maximum hours or 3 days (which ever one you decided to use), there should, at this point, be no reason why your DVR should hang anymore.

 

Now, there is some, badly written DVR software that simply doesn't like Windows closing it down and will get deeply frozen, if that is the case for your software, then there is one more step you need to ad to your automatic restart wheel, you will need to use a program called AutoHotKey (so google it and download it, its freeware), then use AutoHotKey record program to record your move as you prepare to manually exit your DVR program. When the Record program start, dont click on the red "Record" button yet, but maximize your DVR software and make sure its running in the same way and style it looks by default when the software is first ran (the AutoHotKey Recording window will always be the top most window, so dont get worried about it being hidden by your DVR software), at this point then click on the red "Record" button from AutoHotKey recorder, now AHK is recording and watching every mouse click's screen position, at this point start the closing procedure of your DVR software, when your DVR software has successfully exited, then click on the STOP button to stop AHK recording your mouse clicks, at this poing you should see something like this, example:

 

WinWait, QX-DVR - Module-1

IfWinNotActive, QX-DVR - Module-1, WinActivate, QX-DVR - Module-1,

WinWaitActive,QX-DVR - Module-1,

MouseClick, left, 1624, 991

Sleep, 100

MouseClick, left, 1001, 545

Sleep, 100

 

Attention: dont copy my above example script, it will not work for you since your program is different than mines and every program has different "Exit" buttons and positions on the screen.

 

The first step will be to change all "Sleep, 100" to: "Sleep, 3000" this means that instead of waiting 1/10th of a second, your script will wait an interval of 3 seconds before making the NEXT click.

 

Then, you will need to ad "Sleep, 3000" before the first MouseClick instruction, example:

 

WinWait, QX-DVR - Module-1

IfWinNotActive, QX-DVR - Module-1, WinActivate, QX-DVR - Module-1,

WinWaitActive,QX-DVR - Module-1,

Sleep, 3000 // <-- I added "Sleep, 3000" on this field

MouseClick, left, 1624, 991

Sleep, 3000

MouseClick, left, 1001, 545

Sleep, 3000

 

This will make sure that your script waits 3 seconds before starting. instead of starting right away.

 

In my example, the first Mouse Click instructions (MouseClick, left, 1624, 991) will click on my Red (x) button that appears on the lower right corner of my DVR software, then after doing this "Sleep, 3000" line will be executed telling my script to wait 3 seconds, during this time a popup appears in the middle of the screen asking "You you really want to quit the DVR software", it presents me two options "YES" and a "NO", then after waiting the 3 seconds the next MouseClick event gets executed on screen coordinates 1001, 545 (MouseClick, left, 1001, 545) exactly the pixel location where the "Yes" button is located at, clicking on that button which will close the DVR, the software takes about 3 seconds to close, making sure that what ever was on the system's Memory gets commited to hard disk before closing DVR, at that point I want to change the LAST "Sleep, 3000" command to "Sleep, 10000) so it can wait 10 seconds before executing the last line that we are about to ad now. On the last like add the following:

Run, "c:\restart.bat"

Now, the script should look something like this:

 

WinWait, QX-DVR - Module-1

IfWinNotActive, QX-DVR - Module-1, WinActivate, QX-DVR - Module-1,

WinWaitActive,QX-DVR - Module-1,

Sleep, 3000 // <-- I added "Sleep, 3000" on this field

MouseClick, left, 1624, 991

Sleep, 3000

MouseClick, left, 1001, 545

Sleep, 10000

Run, "c:\restart.bat"

 

So, this means that after everything has been executed and your DVR software has been politely quitted "on its good terms" not freezing your system, then finally your script will execute c:\restart.bat (the batch script we created earlier) to proceed to restart windows.

 

So, this means that if you HAD to go the AutoHotKey way, you will need to create (or modify) the scheduled tasks to run the AutoHotKey script instead of running the c:\restart.bat DOS batch script first. So, save your AutoHotKey script, Example, you can give it the following file name: c:\QuitDVR_then_restart_Windows.ahk (note, it must end with .ahk to denote that this is an Auto Hot Key script so it can get executed with the AutoHotKey runtime library).

So, using my example here, just point c:\QuitDVR_then_restart_Windows.ahk to your Task Scheduler with instructions to execute it every 5 in the morning or every 3 days at 5 in the morning and you should be all set.

 

Note:

The DVR software restarting is not only limited to pirated software. Here in my CCTV business we use three main DVR software, DigiVue is one of them, and Digivue is 100% legit that we get directly offline from a mayor distributor that has been in the CCTV business for over 20 years so I am pretty sure they deal with Legit software only. Well, Digivue crashes and exists in about 3 weeks of UPTIME, at first, I just told my customers to manually restart the DVR every week to ensure consistency, but some of my customers are so computer illiterate that they forget to do that, or simply forget how to restart it, so at first this was giving us some problems, and we created a script similar to this and now the oldest Digivue based DVR server we have built has over 2 1/2 years running perfectly, in the eyes of these customers their DVR has a perfect uptime of over 2 years without a single restart, but what they DONT know is that they DVR restarts automatically every 3 days at 5AM. So, if any one out there is having a similar problem with your software, now you have an idea how you can maximize consistency with scripts like this.

 

Hope this helps.

[tomcctv 187]

i am so glad i buy good named cards ................how can anyone put there customer though this

[Soundy 1]

i am so glad i buy good named cards ................how can anyone put there customer though this

 

No kidding.

 

Well, I guess the customers get what they pay for, too - when their vendors sell them systems built on pirate cards and $60 eBay specials, that's what they're gonna get.

[FranciscoNET 0]

i am so glad i buy good named cards ................how can anyone put there customer though this

 

No kidding.

 

Well, I guess the customers get what they pay for, too - when their vendors sell them systems built on pirate cards and $60 eBay specials, that's what they're gonna get.

 

While its true that pirated software tends to be unstable as in "Tranquilino's" example here, in my case I dont deal with pirated software, at least I haven't got any evidence pointing to QX-DVR being pirated, and definitely DigiVue is not a pirated product either.

 

The point is that if you go the Microsoft Windows way, at some point you HAVE to restart your DVR, since there is no such thing as a really long UPTIME when your operating system is Microsoft Windows. I am almost guarantee you that if your Windows based computer has been on straighup for maybe like 20 to 40 days you WILL have to restart it. The only operating system that I know of that is capable of having such as great deal of UPTIME in excess of 300 days straight up without requiring A SINGLE RESTART is Linux, so no matter HOW shinny and perfect your Windows DVR software is, is only a matter of time before you HAVE to restart it because of any reason(s) (maybe such as GDI32.exe, RunDLL.exe, Explorer.exe crashed?? <-- these are strictly windows components that EVERY windows installation has, if any one of them stops responding chances are that you may have to restart your box to ensure continued stability). So a good GeoVision or Avermedia's software can't magically make Windows more stabler than Linux, inpossible. That's why a person may rely on scripts like mines to ensure that a Windows box is that reliable to have it on for all year long and just "forgetting" that DVR there, and still find it recording perfectly well after the year's over.

[kensplace 0]

I cant even recall the last time I had to restart my geovision server un-planned...

 

I think it might have been after a prolonged power cut, and the UPS ran out of power....

 

It just works, and remains stable.

 

Now and again, I will install updates etc and reboot, but other than that, it just sits in its rack and works without any problems.

 

I have seen pirated geovision cards, they look just like the real thing, although the ones i had did not have the hologram the newer cards have (like the one on my geo 1480 card). However, the pirated ones wont work with modern geovision software, they require cracked software, as the 'security' that is present on the custom pic chips on the real geo boards is not present on the fake ones. The chips are present, but the code that is on them isn't as they cant copy that.....

 

I record in full D1 (pal), Im sure the previous versions ran faster though, the new ones seem slower... More sluggish. I will try the latest version soon, Its out I think, to see if its faster, if not I may go back a version or two...

[bpzle 0]

I've kept my Windows based servers running 24/7 without issue... XP, Vista, and soon to be 7. Am I just lucky and never hear a complaint from customers?

[Soundy 1]

Likewise, we have XP, Win2K, and even an ancient Win98-based Capture DVR out in the field that run for months or years without attention or planned reboots.

 

The symptoms that FranciscoNET describes sound like systems built on an un-tweaked, off-the-shelf install of Windows, running all sorts of unnecessary services and with all manner of unnecessary junk installed. Most of the Windows-based DVRs I've had issues with, it's been user-initiated... usually because some unsupervised staffer decided to surf porn sites or install DVD-authoring software or in some other way modify the system (oops, sorry, just voided your warranty!).

 

The factory-built Vigil systems now are using a highly-customized version of Embedded XP; their HD Viewer machines have it running off a CF card, no hard drives at all. These machines are damn near bulletproof. And no, they're not using $60 eBay cards.

[rory 0]

The point is that if you go the Microsoft Windows way, at some point you HAVE to restart your DVR, since there is no such thing as a really long UPTIME when your operating system is Microsoft Windows. I am almost guarantee you that if your Windows based computer has been on straighup for maybe like 20 to 40 days you WILL have to restart it. The only operating system that I know of that is capable of having such as great deal of UPTIME in excess of 300 days straight up without requiring A SINGLE RESTART is Linux, so no matter HOW shinny and perfect your Windows DVR software is, is only a matter of time before you HAVE to restart it because of any reason(s) (maybe such as GDI32.exe, RunDLL.exe, Explorer.exe crashed?? <-- these are strictly windows components that EVERY windows installation has, if any one of them stops responding chances are that you may have to restart your box to ensure continued stability). So a good GeoVision or Avermedia's software can't magically make Windows more stabler than Linux, inpossible. That's why a person may rely on scripts like mines to ensure that a Windows box is that reliable to have it on for all year long and just "forgetting" that DVR there, and still find it recording perfectly well after the year's over.

Explorer.exe is just the desktop shell, Windows can run fine without it. RunDLL.exe also is just another app that is used for certain tasks and Windows can run without it. GDI32.exe should not be crashing unless you have driver issues.

 

Most DVR software have a setting which allows you to set the DVR to restart the PC every X amount of days. I always set mine to restart every 7 days, for peace of mind if anything, or incase there has been any issues, which rarely there ever is. Windows and Linux? Well, I cant speak for Vista or Win7, but XP is not that bad, apps can create memory leaks and that can rise but that depends on the software developer and once one uses a decent DVR card with good software, it should be fine. Even if it did max out then it would just switch over to the page file and use the HDD. XP is not magically stable, actually by default it is very unsecure, and it needs to be setup properly, but that said, Linux needs to be setup properly also. In reality everything is vulnerable. Ofcourse if you install Custom XP setups like I do then one stands less chance of having problems, and it runs much faster.

[rory 0]

Then open up Scheduler (Start > Control Panel > Scheduled Tasks)

BTW this is one particular service that should be disabled on a DVR.

[Soundy 1]

Then open up Scheduler (Start > Control Panel > Scheduled Tasks)

BTW this is one particular service that should be disabled on a DVR.

Agreed. I have a script that I run on every DVR build to disable some services, set others to manual... this is one of its steps.