serbokl

Looking for how to deal with the fact that Dahua doesn't appear to provide for Authentication in its NVR e-mail set-up. Suggestions appreciated.

Thanks for your comments on audio function, too, buellwinkle. And by the way, I enjoyed reading your helpful information over at networkcameracritic.com! With an eye toward figuring out how to use the audio function I read the manual for both the HFW3200CN IPC and the NVR3208 recorder and found virtually no truly helpful details. I will paste directly below what is said by Dahua regarding audio. Some of what is said sounds a little strange to me and my background is in electronics. "2.3 Bidirectional talk 2.3.1 Device-end to PC-end Device Connection Please connect the speaker or the pickup to the first audio input port in the device rear panel. Then connect the earphone or the sound box to the audio output port in the PC. Login the Web and then enable the corresponding channel real-time monitor. Please refer to the following interface to enable bidirectional talk. At the device end, speak via the speaker or the pickup, and then you can get the audio from the earphone or sound box at the pc-end. 2.3.2 PC-end to the device-end Device Connection Connect the speaker or the pickup to the audio output port in the PC and then connect the earphone or the sound box to the first audio input port in the device rear panel. Login the Web and then enable the corresponding channel real-time monitor. Please refer to the above interface (Figure 2-5) to enable bidirectional talk. Listening Operation At the PC-end, speak via the speaker or the pickup, and then you can get the audio from the earphone or sound box at the device-end."

Thanks buellwinkle for your suggestions. I looked very carefully at the encoding options and don't see any way to flip-flop the main and sub stream. It would be a perfect solution if the NVR3208 provided for it. I even broke down and read the entire 138 page manual and saw no reference to how to benefit from the substream. It's like the substream is there for a selling point but don't plan on actually benefitting from it on your smartphone. The problem is if you set the main stream to CIF right before leaving the site the recorded video of your MP cameras will be very poor. If you leave it set to 1080P then the IP Cam Viewer on the phone will have a heart attack.

Regarding a typical IP MP digital camera that has audio input and output RCA connectors, I'm trying to understand what is actually going on inside the camera. First off, is the audio in and out normally a line-level signal? Is an NVR camera tapping into the audio and recording it along with the video? If so, what the heck is the audio out RCA jack for? Please help me understand what is going on here.

My understanding of substream function is that it is primarily for lower bandwidth situations such as viewing cameras on a smartphone. I use IP Cam Viewer on an Android phone with great success except I'm finding only the high-bandwidth main stream video from my HFW3200CN/NVR3208 is being received by the phone. IP Cam Viewer is unable to process all the video from the HFW3200CN 2MP camera. The substream function is of course ticked on the camera GUI. Please, will someone tell me how the substream ONLY can be received on the phone? Maybe this is question for the IP Cam Viewer author?

Follow-up: The video on the HTC Incredible mobile phone is now accurately rendered. It is just as good as it is on the two PC's which use Q-See provided software. This improvement occurred when the independent developer of the mobile phone program "IP Cam Viewer" made changes in the H.264 coding. IP Cam Viewer is for the Android OS and the developer takes his work seriously. He is constantly improving IP Cam Viewer. Q-See is lagging way behind in providing any software for the Android platform.

Thanks for your comment. I probably should have mentioned that all of the referred-to images are remote via the Internet. The DVR does have a separate set-up for the mobile phone though. It is uses the same port as the Internet browser circuit uses.

Colorwise the smart phone picture I get from one ip camera looks exactly like the one I see on 2 different computers. Whereas the pictures I get from two wired cameras feeding a DVR have completely different color rendition on the phone but are OK on the computers. The phone has great colors on everything except for the stuff coming from the DVR. I don't think naming brands involved should matter very much. If nothing else, isn't this sort of weird and/or interesting? Any ideas? Thanks.

All three of those screenshots were made with an Internet browser. Not that it matters but they were captured with FastStone Image Viewer which is one of the best image handling programs I have ever seen. Thanks for the tip on the AverMedia 1304. From my short looking around it seems those tend to be available mostly overseas and not so much in the USA. Where did you find yours? re video quality: I think it makes more sense to use less compression and more hdd.

There was an unanticipated delay in getting and installing the CAT5 baluns for the SIR-4160 camera but they are now installed. I cannot see any difference whatsoever in the picture quality after the baluns were added. The original cat5 run between the QSD9004 dvr and the SIR-4160 camera was about 20-25 ft. When the baluns were installed it was shortened to about 15 ft. Below, I will try to make accessible screenshots I made of the original LTCMRH3508 camera (no IR cut filter, no baluns), the new Samsung SIR-4160 w/o baluns, and the 4160 with baluns. There is only the one camera on this system right now. I'm thinking the H.264 compression of the 9004 is limiting the potential picture quality ot the 4160 and I'd appreciate comments from experts regarding this, especially ones that would quantify possible improvement that might be expected by going to a higher quality mepeg4 dvr.

I'll will be glad to post some comparison photos, assuming I am permitted to do that. But to be fair and accurate we need to do this after I install the cat5 baluns that I ordered today. In the meantime I'd sure like to know whether I should expect a 25-30 ft. cat5 run w/o baluns to show a significant picture improvement with them.

I recently replaced a relatively inexpensive LTCMRH3508 camera with an SIR-4106. The problem is that the rest of my system is pretty crummy so a really good, responsive answer to your question is not possible, plus I am a newbie. At the same time I made the camera switch I also switched from siamesed RG-6 to cat5 and I still don't have any baluns to put on the cat5. I am also suffering, I am told, from relying on a cheap dvr running H.264. Even so, the 4160 does clearly outperform the 3508, especially during the day. The 3508 has no IR cut filter. About the only two things the two cameras have in common is that they both are very difficult to focus - way too touchy. A nervous person with shakey hands could NEVER focus either one of these cameras. I have very steady hands and find it difficult. Other than that, the build quality of the Samsung is excellent. It is supposedly pretty much state-of-the-art for an ordinary bullet camera. Its OSD menu allows a wide range of adjustment. I will likely get another one as I expand my system. No thread hijack intended here but I wish I knew if I can expect a video improvement when I put baluns on the current balunless cat5?

sounds like you answered your own question So the described connection speed alone could make a significant difference? In that case I could move the little Panasonic "R2D2" wannabe to the site that has only a 800 Kbs connection and see what the difference is. btw - Since my original post on this thread I replaced the clunker LTC camera at that site with an SIR-4160. While the Samsung's video is noticeably better than the LTC, it is still not comparable to the very nice picture produced by the little Panasonic pet monitor. After laying out several hundred $ for the SIR-4160 that finding has me scratching my head for sure. Thanks for your comments.

Sorry I wasn't more clear. The two cameras are located at two completely different locations. When I said LAN I was on-site for the checking, and when I said WAN I was at the other cameras site, 6o mi. away. For the Panasonic I'm using Panasonic's viewnetcam.com (via IE7) for access and I'm accessing the Q-See dvr with their D9-Viewer program. There's a fast 1800 Kbs adsl line at the Panasonic site and a 800 Kbs Roadrunner Lite connection at the Q-See site.

I have a little Panasonic BL-c131a CMOS mpeg4 camera w/server and the relatively good image quality when observed on its LAN is not lost when observed over Internet WAN. I also have a LTC CCD camera connected to a Q-See 9004 dvr running H.264. In comparing the two, there seems to be a lot of image quality loss with the latter equipment when going from LAN to WAN. I'd appreciate comments regarding how normal and/or typical this situation is and whether or not the difference is attributable to one system running jpeg4 compression and the other H.264. TIA