too many DVRs.....head will explode!

[bike_rider 0]

Ive also ran across PC Cards. Are there any pros/cons with PC cards? Would it be cheaper to build a PC with a PC DVR card?

 

Any thoughts?

 

I have a PC card based system and I would not recommend it unless you like to tinker with computers. Adding in PC config details, OS stability issues and upgrades to the mix, etc isn't worth the hassle for most people.

 

 

I love tinker with stuff! I have a ton of computer components lying around to build another PC. But your right, it would be another server I would have to maintain.

 

Oh, there is always something to tinker with with video setups. Lights, PIR motions sensors, remote access to your system securely. The fun never ends.

[SoM3_Idi0t 0]

I think this is the best choice for what Im looking to do .......AVerDiGi EH5216H Series

 

Altho I did come across another post here. Someone mentioned the avermedia IWH3216.

 

I cant find it anywhere. Anyone know where to get? and the price on it?

 

Between to 2 which is better?

[tomcctv 187]

I think this is the best choice for what Im looking to do .......AVerDiGi EH5216H Series

 

Altho I did come across another post here. Someone mentioned the avermedia IWH3216.

 

I cant find it anywhere. Anyone know where to get? and the price on it?

 

Between to 2 which is better?

 

 

 

Hi the IWH3216 has windows O/S it is much higher spec than the EH. you could try contact aver usa for a stockest. its not much more than the EH.

 

[FranciscoNET 0]

Ive also ran across PC Cards. Are there any pros/cons with PC cards? Would it be cheaper to build a PC with a PC DVR card?

 

Any thoughts?

 

I have a PC card based system and I would not recommend it unless you like to tinker with computers. Adding in PC config details, OS stability issues and upgrades to the mix, etc isn't worth the hassle for most people.

 

Actually you are wrong. Just because its a "PC Based" DVR it doesn't HAVE to be unstable. If you know what you are doing, you can make that PC based DVR even more stable and more reliable than those standalone DVR that will quit recording as soon as it stumbles with a bad sector on the hard drive.

 

Here is my setup when I build PC based DVR for my customers:

 

Faronics Deepfreeze is installed (license for that software is included on my final bill for customer). Deep Freeze will prevent any tampering with the DVR. I only instruct Deep Freeze to protect Drive C: where Windows is installed. The video partition is excluded because you dont want the recorded videos to be wiped out when the PC is restarted. I also instruct Deep Freeze to restart the PC every morning at 4:55AM

 

I programmed a MACRO application that takes care of properly quitting my DVR server application just before DeepFreeze triggers the auto system restart at 4:55AM. This ensure that data errors wont accumulate on the hard drive (incomplete video fragments) due to an improper software shutdown.

 

I program another MACRO application with instructions to run a CHKDSK (CheckDisk) scan on the video partition with the /F paratemers (to fix any data errors and patch any bad sectors found within the used up data sections) and then once finished, to immediately start the DVR server software to start recording.

 

With that said, I have yet to have a problem with any of my PC based DVR setups. My oldest DVR that I installed for a customer of mines has more than 5 years operating and the customer has reported that is has never frozen and that he has never has the need to restart the DVR for any reasons and the DVR has never stopped recording.

 

With my setup, Microsoft Windows up-time is limited to a maximum period of 24 hours before a forceful restart happens. Since Microsoft Windows is known to have a very bad long up-time stability issue, that's why I limit up-time to no more than 24 hours. The DVR spends no more than 5 minutes of downtime while performing the CheckDisk to ensure that the integrity of hard drive is OK for the next day before resumming recording.

 

Also, at first, years ago, when I first got into the CCTV industry, I had problems locating good affordable suppliers that offered DVR cards with good software that recorded not using proprietary videos format, this meant that I spent over $1300 dollars in purchasing more than 10 different DVR cards (on Ebay) before I finally found one that I felt comfortable and that it was not going to make my name look bad in front of my customers. During my (expensive) testing session, these cards were tested only at my office and house, all of them, with the exception of 3 of them recorded using any of the proprietary video formats (you know? the ones where the video file extension ends with something like: *.dvr, *.kv, *.vid) that can't be DIRECTLY played back with Windows Media Player by just double clicking it and that your DVD authoring software would not recognize, but it only could be played by the DVR's manufacturer's special playback software, which often times consisted of a very buggy executable that crashed about 35% of the time and that was the only way you could play these proprietary video files in any computers outside the main DVR server PC. What made this situation worse was that before I made each purchase on eBay for these cards that I tested, I sent a question to the seller to make sure that their cards didn't use proprietary video formats and each time I was answered with no, only to find out that the seller lied, and no mention of this was even stated on their advertisement. So, it took me purchasing over 10 different DVR card before I came accross one that ended up being super stable and records directly to a file that ends with *.avi that my DVD authoring software happily recognizes and most video playback software also plays them back which is good for portability, finally I was in business to start installing CCTV with my super stable solution, and to this day, it has really paid off. I have only purchased my DVR cards from this one supplier and I can tell you, right now, that my PC DVR is more stable and has functionalities that blows away any expensive high end stand alone DVR all while keeping all my costs below $400 for all parts that I use to build the PC. Just that I make sure that the power supply unit and hard drive is descent since aside from the DVR card, these two components are what brake down most often in a computer, so it is very common for me to install a 750W Thermalake power supply unit at a 2TB Seagate Hard Drive). Finally, as long as you are using an Intel Based Chipset motherboard, stability will remain with you since most of these DVR cards requires you to use a Intel based chipset motherboard. An Intel 865G has proven to be very stable and successful for me when doing small jobs, its a bugjet motherboard that costs me $65 and includes integrated video and for that prices they give me 512MB of DDR400 RAM, P4 478 CPU @ 2.4GHz and heatsink. That big chunk of component costing me a total of $65, all what I need is the hard drive, DVD Burner, PSU, Case, and of course the DVR card that I purchase now directly from the manufacturer in China and I have a cheap, highly stable PC-DVR. Sometimes I hunt Ebay for a used home edition Windows XP or 7 (if applicable) to save even on money, and the Deep Freeze License is simply passed on to the customer.

 

So YES, it IS possible to have a highly stable PC-DVR system. You might be wondering why I sometimes use the video card (integrated) of i865G since that video processor is not that fast, and my answer is, since the software that comes with my current DVR cards passes directly, as overlay, without any special processing all video signals to the PC monitor, (see it as a virtual multiplexer), there is no video degradation, uncompressed and in full D1 while the part that is processed by the computer is the compressed *.AVI files that are recorded directly to the hard drive. So videos looks always smooth on screen for real time live viewing, even when viewing recording it looks smooth too since typically the customer playback one camera at a time, even playing back 4 cameras at a time looks smooth still. I have also made it a standard to record in 6 frames per second for each cameras installed. When played back, 6 frames per seconds looks like real time, you have to be paying special attention to notice that its not 30 frames per seconds, also that helps to save disk space and prolong data retention since in my area its very common for law enforcent/lawyers to send letters to some of my customers requesting some footage from 30 to 60 days ago for something that happened outside and a 6fps you are able to cover that. For those who dont have an ideal what 6fps is, just imagine taking 6 picture every seconds that pass by. at 6fps everything that happens is still guaranteed to be covered.

 

Now, going back to the standalone DVR solution. If you use a standalone DVR and a bad sector just accumulated on the hard drive, the minute that your DVR reaches that bad sector it stops recording, and most DVR wont even display a warning showing that it stopped recording. Since its a stand alone DVR, you can't install any special software, or write a MACRO for the DVR to scan the hard drive for errors/bad sectors so that it can repair the hard drive and resume recording. Most often, the DVR stays quiely just displaying videos in real time and not recording for months and months until a crime happens and then the owner finally realizes that there are no videos recorded. At which point, the installer looses credibility, the customer finds another installer to install a new DVR/PC DVR in the hopes that this time the incident wont repeat it self. Because I am able to install custom programs and program MACROS on my PC based DVR because in essence its a fully functional computer system, that kind of scenario has never happened to me. for something serious to happen, the hard drive has to fully fail, which it will become very noticeable, as the PC stays on the BIOS complaining that the hard drive has failed, etc for which the customer calls me and I go there right away to replace the hard drive, but I dont loose the customer because of some DVR's not recording for ages.

 

So:

PC-DVR + Stable DVR Card + Deep Freeze (or even Steady State [free alternative]) + MACRO to check video partition daily with daily reboots = a super stable PC-DVR that beats the crap out of any standalone DVR and a happy customer.

[tomcctv 187]

I can tell you, right now, that my PC DVR is more stable and has functionalities that blows away any expensive high end stand alone DVR all while keeping all my costs below $400 for all parts that I use to build the PC

 

 

and end up with a system that only does 6fps ... how does that blow away 30fps ?

 

For those who dont have an ideal what 6fps is, just imagine taking 6 picture every seconds that pass by. at 6fps everything that happens is still guaranteed to be covered.

 

 

that would be six images which works out as 3fps (frame not field) or ips

[bike_rider 0]

While I appreciate your point of view, I think your long response on how much you have to do to make a PC based system work "right" supports my statement.

[rory 0]

more reliable than those standalone DVR that will quit recording as soon as it stumbles with a bad sector on the hard drive.

Come again? How do you figure that?

 

Faronics Deepfreeze is installed (license for that software is included on my final bill for customer). Deep Freeze will prevent any tampering with the DVR. I only instruct Deep Freeze to protect Drive C: where Windows is installed. The video partition is excluded because you dont want the recorded videos to be wiped out when the PC is restarted.

Interesting, so basically its like a Ram drive, but costs money.

 

I also instruct Deep Freeze to restart the PC every morning at 4:55AM

Normally the DVR will do that.

Or just write a simple VBscript and use Windows Scheduler to run it.

Although every 24 hours is a little too much, You can safely run a Windows DVR for at least 7 days.

Additionally since most breakins happen at night, I would suggest restarting it in the middle of the day, which also helps get faster attention for repair if it should fail to restart for whatever reason - unless you are awake at 4am.

 

I programmed a MACRO application that takes care of properly quitting my DVR server application just before DeepFreeze triggers the auto system restart at 4:55AM. This ensure that data errors wont accumulate on the hard drive (incomplete video fragments) due to an improper software shutdown.

Again, you can write a simple VBscript to do all of this, or even a batch command file.

Use the TaskKill and Shutdown commands, and the built in Windows Task Scheduler.

The DVR software should really be doing this though.

 

I program another MACRO application with instructions to run a CHKDSK (CheckDisk) scan on the video partition with the /F paratemers (to fix any data errors and patch any bad sectors found within the used up data sections) and then once finished, to immediately start the DVR server software to start recording.

This doesn't sound like a good idea - you could be loosing video, basically auto fix errors never works good with Windows chkdsk. If the disk is bad, then the disk is bad, no amount of chkdsk is going to save it. Sell the client an APC Voltage Regulator with every DVR, and that would help prevent hard disk errors. To prevent file corruption of open data, the data file must be closed (in this case a video file) and thats where a UPS with AVR would come in - however some software will check the previously opened data file/s and rebuild it properly on app startup so thats not even needed in many cases.

 

With that said, I have yet to have a problem with any of my PC based DVR setups. My oldest DVR that I installed for a customer of mines has more than 5 years operating and the customer has reported that is has never frozen and that he has never has the need to restart the DVR for any reasons and the DVR has never stopped recording.

Thats always a good thing

 

With my setup, Microsoft Windows up-time is limited to a maximum period of 24 hours before a forceful restart happens. Since Microsoft Windows is known to have a very bad long up-time stability issue, that's why I limit up-time to no more than 24 hours. The DVR spends no more than 5 minutes of downtime while performing the CheckDisk to ensure that the integrity of hard drive is OK for the next day before resumming recording.

7 days is fine with Windows XP.

 

Also, at first, years ago, when I first got into the CCTV industry, I had problems locating good affordable suppliers that offered DVR cards with good software that recorded not using proprietary videos format, this meant that I spent over $1300 dollars in purchasing more than 10 different DVR cards (on Ebay) before I finally found one that I felt comfortable and that it was not going to make my name look bad in front of my customers. During my (expensive) testing session, these cards were tested only at my office and house, all of them, with the exception of 3 of them recorded using any of the proprietary video formats (you know? the ones where the video file extension ends with something like: *.dvr, *.kv, *.vid) that can't be DIRECTLY played back with Windows Media Player by just double clicking it and that your DVD authoring software would not recognize, but it only could be played by the DVR's manufacturer's special playback software, which often times consisted of a very buggy executable that crashed about 35% of the time and that was the only way you could play these proprietary video files in any computers outside the main DVR server PC. What made this situation worse was that before I made each purchase on eBay for these cards that I tested, I sent a question to the seller to make sure that their cards didn't use proprietary video formats and each time I was answered with no, only to find out that the seller lied, and no mention of this was even stated on their advertisement. So, it took me purchasing over 10 different DVR card before I came accross one that ended up being super stable and records directly to a file that ends with *.avi that my DVD authoring software happily recognizes and most video playback software also plays them back which is good for portability, finally I was in business to start installing CCTV with my super stable solution, and to this day, it has really paid off. I have only purchased my DVR cards from this one supplier and I can tell you, right now, that my PC DVR is more stable and has functionalities that blows away any expensive high end stand alone DVR all while keeping all my costs below $400 for all parts that I use to build the PC.

The problem was you were buying cards from Ebay.

So you buy all the computer parts, 2TB hard drive, 16 channel DVR Card, 750watt PSU, all for $400?

Also how do you know it blows away any stand alone DVR?

I can get a 16 channel stand alone loaded with features that is guaranteed stable and never needs a restart and that only takes 3 minutes to install at the client's location, for less than that. And this is coming from using features of GeoVision DVR cards.

 

Just that I make sure that the power supply unit and hard drive is descent since aside from the DVR card, these two components are what brake down most often in a computer, so it is very common for me to install a 750W Thermalake power supply unit at a 2TB Seagate Hard Drive).

750 watt?? WHY??

That's a ridiculously huge PSU for a DVR.

It is not needed.

 

Finally, as long as you are using an Intel Based Chipset motherboard, stability will remain with you since most of these DVR cards requires you to use a Intel based chipset motherboard. An Intel 865G has proven to be very stable and successful for me when doing small jobs, its a bugjet motherboard that costs me $65 and includes integrated video and for that prices they give me 512MB of DDR400 RAM, P4 478 CPU @ 2.4GHz and heatsink. That big chunk of component costing me a total of $65, all what I need is the hard drive, DVD Burner, PSU, Case, and of course the DVR card that I purchase now directly from the manufacturer in China and I have a cheap, highly stable PC-DVR. Sometimes I hunt Ebay for a used home edition Windows XP or 7 (if applicable) to save even on money, and the Deep Freeze License is simply passed on to the customer.

Okay so you get an outdated 8 year old CPU and Mobo and memory for $65, I am not surprised then about the low cost. They dont make that hardware anymore so it has to be used or overstock. DVD burner is rarely used these days in DVRs by the way, all you need is USB in most cases. And there is no way on this God's earth that Windows 7 will run stable on that system.

 

So YES, it IS possible to have a highly stable PC-DVR system. You might be wondering why I sometimes use the video card (integrated) of i865G since that video processor is not that fast, and my answer is, since the software that comes with my current DVR cards passes directly, as overlay, without any special processing all video signals to the PC monitor, (see it as a virtual multiplexer), there is no video degradation, uncompressed and in full D1 while the part that is processed by the computer is the compressed *.AVI files that are recorded directly to the hard drive.

Actually your video is being converted to digital so there is processing even if it is just on the card.

 

So videos looks always smooth on screen for real time live viewing, even when viewing recording it looks smooth too since typically the customer playback one camera at a time, even playing back 4 cameras at a time looks smooth still. I have also made it a standard to record in 6 frames per second for each cameras installed. When played back, 6 frames per seconds looks like real time, you have to be paying special attention to notice that its not 30 frames per seconds, also that helps to save disk space and prolong data retention since in my area its very common for law enforcent/lawyers to send letters to some of my customers requesting some footage from 30 to 60 days ago for something that happened outside and a 6fps you are able to cover that. For those who dont have an ideal what 6fps is, just imagine taking 6 picture every seconds that pass by. at 6fps everything that happens is still guaranteed to be covered.

I take it that is 6fps due to PAL?

I would agree that is fine in most applications, and it saves considerably on hard drive space. However it is nothing like real time, 20fps looks real time to the human eye, however its still not real time. 30 to 60 days can be covered with 20-30fps once you install the correct number of hard drives and sizes.

 

Now, going back to the standalone DVR solution. If you use a standalone DVR and a bad sector just accumulated on the hard drive, the minute that your DVR reaches that bad sector it stops recording, and most DVR wont even display a warning showing that it stopped recording.

Actually most would display a hard disk warning. Many utilize SMART and will deal with it appropriately. Additionally it can email you the error. It will also try to recover bad sectors. This is the same whether it is a PC or Standalone DVR. Hence, as with Windows, when the hard disk is bad, if it gets corrupt it will restart and try to recover on reboot. Another thing, with most stand alones the OS is not on the hard drive, it is embedded, so even if the hard drive fails, the system can still tell you there is an error.

 

Since its a stand alone DVR, you can't install any special software, or write a MACRO for the DVR to scan the hard drive for errors/bad sectors so that it can repair the hard drive and resume recording. Most often, the DVR stays quiely just displaying videos in real time and not recording for months and months until a crime happens and then the owner finally realizes that there are no videos recorded. At which point, the installer looses credibility, the customer finds another installer to install a new DVR/PC DVR in the hopes that this time the incident wont repeat it self. Because I am able to install custom programs and program MACROS on my PC based DVR because in essence its a fully functional computer system, that kind of scenario has never happened to me. for something serious to happen, the hard drive has to fully fail, which it will become very noticeable, as the PC stays on the BIOS complaining that the hard drive has failed, etc for which the customer calls me and I go there right away to replace the hard drive, but I dont loose the customer because of some DVR's not recording for ages.

Actually, living here we deal with hard drive failures all the time, we have some of the worst electricity in the world - however Voltage Regulators help to prevent the failures (even had AVRs catch fire from power spikes). When the disk is failing though it will either freeze up or continuously restart - this happens regardless of a PC or Standalone DVR. Point being, I used PC DVRs for several years, and stand alones for even longer, and I dont see anything that sets them apart in this regard. One can run chkdsk until the cows come home but in most cases it wont actually do anything useful to save the drive or data. If anything it might block a bad sector but that is only prolonging the imminent total failure for a little while. And if it finds data in that bad sector the DVR software is hardly capable of using the unrecognizable pieces of data it spits back out into a filecheck format. Again that another nice pro of a stand alone embedded DVR, it will not hang in the bios if the hard disk fails, it may hang for a bit on start up trying to recover the disk and in SOME cases keep restarting but in the stand alones I use it will still startup into the embedded OS and at the least show there is a disk error or if you set it up, it can even email you the error. Heck I ran my stand alone DVR for 6 months with a failed hard drive, I simply set it to record over the network to my home PC.

 

PC-DVR + Stable DVR Card + Deep Freeze (or even Steady State [free alternative]) + MACRO to check video partition daily with daily reboots = a super stable PC-DVR that beats the crap out of any standalone DVR and a happy customer.

I would genuinely love to see a video clip from this super stable cheap PC DVR

[FranciscoNET 0]

I can tell you, right now, that my PC DVR is more stable and has functionalities that blows away any expensive high end stand alone DVR all while keeping all my costs below $400 for all parts that I use to build the PC

 

 

and end up with a system that only does 6fps ... how does that blow away 30fps ?

 

The DVR cards that I use is classified as "Real Time", the 4 CH version can do 120fps and the 8CH version can do 240 (30fps per channel). The choice IS there, I just, by default, design all my DVR's to record 6 frames per second, and no, its not 3 frames per second, there is a slider on each channel that I can use to select between 1fps to 30 fps, I just move the slider to 6fps. I will soon be posting a youtube video so you can see how 6fps on my DVR looks like.

 

For those who dont have an ideal what 6fps is, just imagine taking 6 picture every seconds that pass by. at 6fps everything that happens is still guaranteed to be covered.

 

 

that would be six images which works out as 3fps (frame not field) or ips

 

Nope, not 3 fps, this is not one of those DVR cards where you select 15 fps and you end up getting 7.5fps or 6fps and you end up getting 3fps. In my end, if you select 6 fps, you will get 6 real fps, if you were to frame pause, you will need to skip 6 real fps before the second jumps to the next, you actually get to see 6 movements, not 3.

 

 

 

more reliable than those standalone DVR that will quit recording as soon as it stumbles with a bad sector on the hard drive.

Come again? How do you figure that?

I know, I am known to taking loooong brakes on forums and returning back when I remember about it. It is because of my long busy schedule in operating a 'one man operation' in my CCTV and computer repair business where I am the one who designs and do everything with absolutely no help and no employees of any kind with the only exception of my father helping me from time to time when he is off of his job or on the weekends where he does not work. I have done over 170 different installation, mostly consisting of small 4 to 8 CH jobs.

 

Faronics Deepfreeze is installed (license for that software is included on my final bill for customer). Deep Freeze will prevent any tampering with the DVR. I only instruct Deep Freeze to protect Drive C: where Windows is installed. The video partition is excluded because you dont want the recorded videos to be wiped out when the PC is restarted.

Interesting, so basically its like a Ram drive, but costs money.

 

Yeah, its like ram drive, only that the operating system (Windows XP in the case when I use the i865 Intel Desktop Boards) and my DVR software is non volatile while any changes made (whether malicious or not) is volatile and subject to eradication on the next power cycle/reboot.

 

I also instruct Deep Freeze to restart the PC every morning at 4:55AM

Normally the DVR will do that.

Or just write a simple VBscript and use Windows Scheduler to run it.

Although every 24 hours is a little too much, You can safely run a Windows DVR for at least 7 days.

Additionally since most breakins happen at night, I would suggest restarting it in the middle of the day, which also helps get faster attention for repair if it should fail to restart for whatever reason - unless you are awake at 4am.

 

Yeah, I have been betting on nothing occurring within the 5 minutes that the DVR is down to system integrity checks. I have though of what you said, but the problem is that the customer will eventually forget why the DVR restarts it self in the middle of the day, and will chalk it off as the DVR having some problem which will make my name look bad because the customer will then think that the DVR that I installed him is defective. So, to avoid these possible issues, I selected a time where the business is closed and the owner is not there to see the DVR restarting and running disk checks/integrity tests.

 

I programmed a MACRO application that takes care of properly quitting my DVR server application just before DeepFreeze triggers the auto system restart at 4:55AM. This ensure that data errors wont accumulate on the hard drive (incomplete video fragments) due to an improper software shutdown.

Again, you can write a simple VBscript to do all of this, or even a batch command file.

Use the TaskKill and Shutdown commands, and the built in Windows Task Scheduler.

The DVR software should really be doing this though.

 

Visual Basic is not needed on any of my DVR, My DVR software doesn't require the Visual Basic runtime to run so I just remove VB support when I nLited the operating system, only left there the bare minimum required to explicitly run my DVR software reliably and networking support. Even Internet Explorer support is removed. In the end, my c:\windows folder ends up measuring 189MB and boots in 3 seconds (you get to see "Starting Windows XP" for a period of 3 to maybe 4 seconds before jumping to the splash screen and from there another 2 seconds to enter the desktop)

 

The High Level programming platform that I use is called AutoHotScript and since I am very experience on the AHK syntax I prefer that over Visual Basic where I have little to maybe no experience over.

 

I program another MACRO application with instructions to run a CHKDSK (CheckDisk) scan on the video partition with the /F paratemers (to fix any data errors and patch any bad sectors found within the used up data sections) and then once finished, to immediately start the DVR server software to start recording.

This doesn't sound like a good idea - you could be loosing video, basically auto fix errors never works good with Windows chkdsk. If the disk is bad, then the disk is bad, no amount of chkdsk is going to save it. Sell the client an APC Voltage Regulator with every DVR, and that would help prevent hard disk errors. To prevent file corruption of open data, the data file must be closed (in this case a video file) and thats where a UPS with AVR would come in - however some software will check the previously opened data file/s and rebuild it properly on app startup so that's not even needed in many cases.

 

The DVR software that I use will stop recording if encountered with a bad sector and the Disk error warning is too small for the customer to notice, specially if the monitor is not that huge and is up in the ceiling area, there is no option to further enhance the warning to make it more noticeable, that's the only complain that I have regarding this software. I have learned to mitigate this issue by doing a check disk scan when the DVR is restarted. That way, its only a "its working" to "its not working" affair. Since I know that hard disk total failure is imminent after it starts accumulating bad sectors, I want the next failure to be that noticeable so that the customer can call me and I get to show up to replace the hard drive. I do not want it to be a issue of the DVR not recording due to bad sector, the customer not noticing the Disk Error warning for like 2 months and THEN finally calling me because windows wont boot, to replace the hard drive. with this solution, I ensure that the DVR is recording down to the last usable minute.

 

With that said, I have yet to have a problem with any of my PC based DVR setups. My oldest DVR that I installed for a customer of mines has more than 5 years operating and the customer has reported that is has never frozen and that he has never has the need to restart the DVR for any reasons and the DVR has never stopped recording.

Thats always a good thing

 

Thanks. When you make sure that critical parts that are most prone to failure is NEW, not Refurbishes or used, and comes with 5 year warranty (Hard Drive and Power Supply Unit) you will increase the chances of having a DVR that lasts for years to come. Motherboard choice also comes in handy, I chose to use the Intel Desktop Board because they make the most reliable and durable boards. My choices in graphics/chipset ranges from i865 when its a small job (4CH to less) and i965+ when its a 8CH or so.

 

With my setup, Microsoft Windows up-time is limited to a maximum period of 24 hours before a forceful restart happens. Since Microsoft Windows is known to have a very bad long up-time stability issue, that's why I limit up-time to no more than 24 hours. The DVR spends no more than 5 minutes of downtime while performing the CheckDisk to ensure that the integrity of hard drive is OK for the next day before resumming recording.

7 days is fine with Windows XP.

 

I agree with you, infact, my personal computer in my house is running Windows XP SP3 and has been running reliably for over 60 days already since the last time I did a restart. I never shut down my PC, I just lock the desktop (Windows Key + L) when I am done.

 

Also, at first, years ago, when I first got into the CCTV industry, I had problems locating good affordable suppliers that offered DVR cards with good software that recorded not using proprietary videos format, this meant that I spent over $1300 dollars in purchasing more than 10 different DVR cards (on Ebay) before I finally found one that I felt comfortable and that it was not going to make my name look bad in front of my customers. During my (expensive) testing session, these cards were tested only at my office and house, all of them, with the exception of 3 of them recorded using any of the proprietary video formats (you know? the ones where the video file extension ends with something like: *.dvr, *.kv, *.vid) that can't be DIRECTLY played back with Windows Media Player by just double clicking it and that your DVD authoring software would not recognize, but it only could be played by the DVR's manufacturer's special playback software, which often times consisted of a very buggy executable that crashed about 35% of the time and that was the only way you could play these proprietary video files in any computers outside the main DVR server PC. What made this situation worse was that before I made each purchase on eBay for these cards that I tested, I sent a question to the seller to make sure that their cards didn't use proprietary video formats and each time I was answered with no, only to find out that the seller lied, and no mention of this was even stated on their advertisement. So, it took me purchasing over 10 different DVR card before I came accross one that ended up being super stable and records directly to a file that ends with *.avi that my DVD authoring software happily recognizes and most video playback software also plays them back which is good for portability, finally I was in business to start installing CCTV with my super stable solution, and to this day, it has really paid off. I have only purchased my DVR cards from this one supplier and I can tell you, right now, that my PC DVR is more stable and has functionalities that blows away any expensive high end stand alone DVR all while keeping all my costs below $400 for all parts that I use to build the PC.

The problem was you were buying cards from Ebay.

So you buy all the computer parts, 2TB hard drive, 16 channel DVR Card, 750watt PSU, all for $400?

Also how do you know it blows away any stand alone DVR?

I can get a 16 channel stand alone loaded with features that is guaranteed stable and never needs a restart and that only takes 3 minutes to install at the client's location, for less than that. And this is coming from using features of GeoVision DVR cards.

 

Yes, I know that my problem was that I was purchasing cards from Ebay. I just did not tolerated the high prices that these so called "reputable dealers" were charging, they wanted to eat over 80% of my profit margins if I went with them so I just kept on exploring. I know that many people here thinks that everything made in China is crap and of bad quality or pirated, but the reality is that in China there are good and bad just like in the USA there is good and bad too. The company that I have been purchasing my DVR cards for years is in China and they are a major manufacturer of DVR cards, they are reputable and constantly updates their software. When I begun with them, they were up to version 5.5, now they are up to version 10.6 With Windows XP/Vista and 7 support and I am very happy that I found them.

Just that I make sure that the power supply unit and hard drive is descent since aside from the DVR card, these two components are what brake down most often in a computer, so it is very common for me to install a 750W Thermalake power supply unit at a 2TB Seagate Hard Drive).

750 watt?? WHY??

That's a ridiculously huge PSU for a DVR.

It is not needed.

 

I purchase all of my PC parts from a major distributor in California, I pay wholesale price and a resale certificate is needed to purchase from them. a 750watt thermalake PSU only costs me $55 tax free where in BestBuy a 600W power supply unit would cost me $75 plus tax.

 

I just dont want the power supply unit to be an issue, ever. I tend to go very high on what I really need, power supply unit never fails.

Finally, just because its a 750W psu, that doesn't mean that it is consuming a nominal wattage of 750 all the time, it only means that it can supply UP TO 750w continuously. I estimate that my DVR doesn't go higher than 200W of power consumption at any time.

 

Finally, as long as you are using an Intel Based Chipset motherboard, stability will remain with you since most of these DVR cards requires you to use a Intel based chipset motherboard. An Intel 865G has proven to be very stable and successful for me when doing small jobs, its a bugjet motherboard that costs me $65 and includes integrated video and for that prices they give me 512MB of DDR400 RAM, P4 478 CPU @ 2.4GHz and heatsink. That big chunk of component costing me a total of $65, all what I need is the hard drive, DVD Burner, PSU, Case, and of course the DVR card that I purchase now directly from the manufacturer in China and I have a cheap, highly stable PC-DVR. Sometimes I hunt Ebay for a used home edition Windows XP or 7 (if applicable) to save even on money, and the Deep Freeze License is simply passed on to the customer.

Okay so you get an outdated 8 year old CPU and Mobo and memory for $65, I am not surprised then about the low cost. They dont make that hardware anymore so it has to be used or overstock. DVD burner is rarely used these days in DVRs by the way, all you need is USB in most cases. And there is no way on this God's earth that Windows 7 will run stable on that system.

 

I dont use Windows 7 on these motherboard, only on higher end motherboards for bigger projects where I can use my windows 7 licenses while I get to conserve my Windows XP licenses for the smaller projects for the i865 motherboards.

 

The Intel Desktop Board i865 are listed as New Old Stock. I am surprised that my supplier list it with a 1 year warranty for an old stock product, I guess this speaks of good reliability of the product. This specific motherboard that I choose is very known to last for more than 5 years trouble free. Never had an issue with bad capacitors, north/south bridge failures, etc with these motherboards, THATS what I like about them and for as long as my supplier keeps on listing it there I will keep on buying them by the volume. And for what they give me for the motherboard, a 2.4GHz P4 CPU with heatsink, 512MB of DD1 (samsung and sometime Kinston) you can't beat that price, not even purchasing these 4 components individually). So, I guess I stuck gold twice, my 4CH DVR card that I costs me $35 + shipping from China, and the $65 motherboard/RAM/CPU kit, I couldn't be more happier.

 

So YES, it IS possible to have a highly stable PC-DVR system. You might be wondering why I sometimes use the video card (integrated) of i865G since that video processor is not that fast, and my answer is, since the software that comes with my current DVR cards passes directly, as overlay, without any special processing all video signals to the PC monitor, (see it as a virtual multiplexer), there is no video degradation, uncompressed and in full D1 while the part that is processed by the computer is the compressed *.AVI files that are recorded directly to the hard drive.

 

Actually your video is being converted to digital so there is processing even if it is just on the card.

I guess you are right, there is processing done on the DVR card. All what I know is that these D1 images it is not being processed by the i865 graphics, it looks too good and very smooth and in real time for that kind of graphics processor.

 

So videos looks always smooth on screen for real time live viewing, even when viewing recording it looks smooth too since typically the customer playback one camera at a time, even playing back 4 cameras at a time looks smooth still. I have also made it a standard to record in 6 frames per second for each cameras installed. When played back, 6 frames per seconds looks like real time, you have to be paying special attention to notice that its not 30 frames per seconds, also that helps to save disk space and prolong data retention since in my area its very common for law enforcent/lawyers to send letters to some of my customers requesting some footage from 30 to 60 days ago for something that happened outside and a 6fps you are able to cover that. For those who dont have an ideal what 6fps is, just imagine taking 6 picture every seconds that pass by. at 6fps everything that happens is still guaranteed to be covered.

I take it that is 6fps due to PAL?

I would agree that is fine in most applications, and it saves considerably on hard drive space. However it is nothing like real time, 20fps looks real time to the human eye, however its still not real time. 30 to 60 days can be covered with 20-30fps once you install the correct number of hard drives and sizes.

 

well 20 fps requires me to shorten data retention by a factor a little over by 3. If I were receiving 90 days on a 2TB hard drive at 6 fps, I would be receiving 30 days, to make an example.

 

Now, going back to the standalone DVR solution. If you use a standalone DVR and a bad sector just accumulated on the hard drive, the minute that your DVR reaches that bad sector it stops recording, and most DVR wont even display a warning showing that it stopped recording.

Actually most would display a hard disk warning. Many utilize SMART and will deal with it appropriately. Additionally it can email you the error. It will also try to recover bad sectors. This is the same whether it is a PC or Standalone DVR. Hence, as with Windows, when the hard disk is bad, if it gets corrupt it will restart and try to recover on reboot. Another thing, with most stand alones the OS is not on the hard drive, it is embedded, so even if the hard drive fails, the system can still tell you there is an error.

 

My software displays a "Disk Error" warning, but I complain that it is not too big enough and some customers might miss the warning all together specially those that are not checking too much on the screen. I needed to come up with a way to ensure that this POSSIBILITY wouldn't happen and one way was to running checkdisk scans upon each reboot.

 

Since its a stand alone DVR, you can't install any special software, or write a MACRO for the DVR to scan the hard drive for errors/bad sectors so that it can repair the hard drive and resume recording. Most often, the DVR stays quiely just displaying videos in real time and not recording for months and months until a crime happens and then the owner finally realizes that there are no videos recorded. At which point, the installer looses credibility, the customer finds another installer to install a new DVR/PC DVR in the hopes that this time the incident wont repeat it self. Because I am able to install custom programs and program MACROS on my PC based DVR because in essence its a fully functional computer system, that kind of scenario has never happened to me. for something serious to happen, the hard drive has to fully fail, which it will become very noticeable, as the PC stays on the BIOS complaining that the hard drive has failed, etc for which the customer calls me and I go there right away to replace the hard drive, but I dont loose the customer because of some DVR's not recording for ages.

 

Actually, living here we deal with hard drive failures all the time, we have some of the worst electricity in the world - however Voltage Regulators help to prevent the failures (even had AVRs catch fire from power spikes). When the disk is failing though it will either freeze up or continuously restart - this happens regardless of a PC or Standalone DVR. Point being, I used PC DVRs for several years, and stand alones for even longer, and I dont see anything that sets them apart in this regard. One can run chkdsk until the cows come home but in most cases it wont actually do anything useful to save the drive or data. If anything it might block a bad sector but that is only prolonging the imminent total failure for a little while. And if it finds data in that bad sector the DVR software is hardly capable of using the unrecognizable pieces of data it spits back out into a filecheck format. Again that another nice pro of a stand alone embedded DVR, it will not hang in the bios if the hard disk fails, it may hang for a bit on start up trying to recover the disk and in SOME cases keep restarting but in the stand alones I use it will still startup into the embedded OS and at the least show there is a disk error or if you set it up, it can even email you the error. Heck I ran my stand alone DVR for 6 months with a failed hard drive, I simply set it to record over the network to my home PC.

 

The key to having a durable hard drive in a DVR is by purchasing one that comes with a 5 year warranty, preferably from the brand Seagate.

 

PC-DVR + Stable DVR Card + Deep Freeze (or even Steady State [free alternative]) + MACRO to check video partition daily with daily reboots = a super stable PC-DVR that beats the crap out of any standalone DVR and a happy customer.

I would genuinely love to see a video clip from this super stable cheap PC DVR

 

I will be posting videos on Youtube showing the DVR and the image quality it produces at 6 fps setting.

 

[EDIT: formatting got a little messed up on the "/quote" tags, I dont have any more time to fix it up, so I will have to leave the post as it is, I apologize for that]

[rory 0]

Visual Basic is not needed on any of my DVR, My DVR software doesn't require the Visual Basic runtime to run so I just remove VB support when I nLited the operating system, only left there the bare minimum required to explicitly run my DVR software reliably and networking support. Even Internet Explorer support is removed. In the end, my c:\windows folder ends up measuring 189MB and boots in 3 seconds (you get to see "Starting Windows XP" for a period of 3 to maybe 4 seconds before jumping to the splash screen and from there another 2 seconds to enter the desktop)

 

The High Level programming platform that I use is called AutoHotScript and since I am very experience on the AHK syntax I prefer that over Visual Basic where I have little to maybe no experience over.

Not Visual Basic - Visual Basic Script.

 

Stripped down XP and fast boot is always nice

 

Check this out:

http://www.bahamassecurity.com/software/cctv-software/dvrlite.asp

http://www.bahamassecurity.com/software/windows-setup/nlite.asp

 

I purchase all of my PC parts from a major distributor in California, I pay wholesale price and a resale certificate is needed to purchase from them. a 750watt thermalake PSU only costs me $55 tax free where in BestBuy a 600W power supply unit would cost me $75 plus tax.

 

I just dont want the power supply unit to be an issue, ever. I tend to go very high on what I really need, power supply unit never fails.

Finally, just because its a 750W psu, that doesn't mean that it is consuming a nominal wattage of 750 all the time, it only means that it can supply UP TO 750w continuously. I estimate that my DVR doesn't go higher than 200W of power consumption at any time.

Yeah but take the stand alone for example, 16 channel is drawing 25 watt, 32 channel is drawing 40 watts - people like to hear that during this recession.

 

 

The key to having a durable hard drive in a DVR is by purchasing one that comes with a 5 year warranty, preferably from the brand Seagate.

Thats the typical sales pitch that American companies (eg manufacturers) throw out there - but guess what, we dont have warranty on hard drives in this country, and our electric is much worse than the U.S. The key to your hard drive lasting is using a Voltage Regulator, and keeping the disk as cool as possible. Literally, if I take my computer off the APC Voltage Regulator right now, it will likely be dead by the lunch time.

 

Sounds like you like what you are doing, and that is very important.