Holy Moly Surveillance Upgrade

[LittleScoobyMaster 0]

I recently watched a Geovision demo (the 2 Japan sites) and I have been thinking about upgrading my home surveillance system ever since and I have a billion questions.

 

My current dedicated DVR system may seem a bit funny to some of you so don’t laugh too hard, but here it is:

 

Motherboard: Abit KG7 with AMD Athlon XP2000 (1.6 GHz processor) 768MB RAM (Via chipset so I probably can’t just upgrade to a GV800 without issues)

WD400BB 40 Gig 7200 RPM HD

4 Osprey 100 DVR Cards http://www.viewcast.com/products/osprey/osprey100.html

OS: Windows 2000 Server with SP4 installed.

Software: Gotcha MultiCam http://www.gotchanow.com/text/multicam.html

 

Note: I put together this system quite a while ago before I realized how much better Geovision cards seem to be. I also started it from 1 Osprey up to 4 (upgraded every month or 2 when I wanted additional cams added). The small HD works for me because I review/delete footage daily.

 

This system could theoretically handle 16 cameras but only 4 simultaneously, so I never grew past 4 cameras which Gotcha Multicam can handle.

 

One of the things I’ve always hated about my current system is that the Gotcha Multicam software is limited in several ways and I have yet to find a decent replacement for it.

 

Here are some of the current limitations of Gotcha Multicam:

 

1. No good way to view or manage the live camera streams on a remote system connected to my LAN.

(Currently the only way to do this is to remotely control the server with tools such as VNC, PCAnywhere, etc.) which is quite a clunky workaround to say the least.

 

2. No ability to make the camera masks transparent.

 

3. Software is limited to 4 cameras.

 

4. Video files often become corrupt due to bugs in the software.

 

5. FPS seems low (8 to 14 fps per cam) but this could be a hardware limitation especially since I am not using any compression (I’ve always preferred the best looking quality frames – I don’t like compression anomalies).

 

6. Blown away by Geovision remote software demo. I still can’t get over how slick it seems to be. I like how you can just click on 1 cam and make it instantly become full screen, etc.

 

 

So, this being my current system, does anyone know if this system would run with the Geovision software instead of Gotcha Multicam?

 

If so, I could maybe just do a software upgrade and be done? I would guess that the Geovision software would require Geovision hardware? Has anyone run Geovision software on any non Geovision hardware with good results?

 

I have recently tried out a newer piece of software that Osprey is now recommending called I-catcher Console.

 

http://www.icode.co.uk/icatcher/products/console.html

 

I like what it can do a lot, especially the remote monitoring of live video streams, etc. The only problem with I-catcher is that the FPS I get per cam is reduced to much lower than the 8 to 14 I get with Gotcha Multicam, plus I-Catcher tags the CPU utilization to 100 Percent whereas Gotcha leaves it at about 35 Percent.

 

See, I want to be able to have a system that can view live streams from a remote system on my LAN while the server also records any movement that it detects at near 25 to 30 FPS. Maybe it's just not possible yet (or does it mean a GV900/1000 is required to achieve?)

 

 

I guess what I want is a real professional surveillance system. It would grow to 8 cams if I end up putting together a Geovision DVR server but I want to make sure that I don’t just need a software upgrade on my current system because a nice GV800/900 system would be very spendy and I could live with only 4 cams for awhile longer. (I’d have to go with a new P4 3.0 Ghz machine with a WD740 Raptor (10k RPM drive), etc., etc.

 

Anyway, let me know what you think about my upgrade options. Thanks.

 

BTW, I'm glad to have finally found a great surveillance forum. I can hardly wait to start talking about things like ExtremeCCTV's UF100 and UF500 units (I hope to someday own a UF100 - I dream about the UF500 on a nightly basis but will never be able to afford one unless they flood the market and come down in price which could maybe happen in these crazy days of terrorist activity, etc.) Who knows.

 

Live the dream: UF500

http://www.cctvvideo.com/ufserlonlifi.html

[cctv_down_under 0]

Your Geo card will not work on the Via board unless you use the GV600 or GV250, and both of them are pretty darn slow..almost as slow as a standalone device.

[LittleScoobyMaster 0]

That's kind of what I figured but wasn't sure if it would just not work entirely because of the HINT chip, or if it could work with some side-effects or other issues.

http://www.surveillance-spy-cameras.com/geovision-specs.htm

 

How about running Geovision software on non Geovision hardware such as the Osprey 100? Do you know if that is possible or not? The Osprey has the BT848 chipset which is very similar to the GV800 BT878 chipset and according to the Osprey user manual:

 

Compatibility

The driver is designed to be compatible with all Video for Windows applications. The Osprey-100 package supports all Video for Windows capture driver capabilities that are available to the Bt878 hardware device. It is compatible with software video compressors, sound boards, video editing applications, and videoconferencingapplications.

 

I haven't read too much about the Geovision software yet, I just really like the demo.

 

Also, is Geovision the best surveillance software one can use, or are there others that compare or surpass it?

[cctv_down_under 0]

Geo is by far the best that I have seen for the money, but their marketing sucks, great for the end user but bad for the distributor.

 

The hint Bridge controls the output to the PCI Bus, using other chipsets will result in the system operating for some time then getting confused and rebooting, some SIS chips will work with the occasional reboot due to a system freeze but Via will not really work well at all and it may not ven post with the card inserted, models higher than Gv600 all have the Hint bridge controller