micksgonefishin

The 1TB Caviar Black was giving me that "not recognized" trouble Ubefore/U anything was installed on it. NoneTheLess, once it was sorted out the performance was absolutely outstanding! But my customer called with a BSOD a few days ago. It was reporting the new hardware conflict thing. I "fully" powered down the system for a couple minutes and when I brought it up, it came up way slower than it was previously. (Like 45 seconds instead of the characteristic 15 seconds of these i7 systems.) It would get to the Windows "flag" bootup screen and cute little graphic stars would stutter as the little stars floated around the Windows flag. Then it would Blue Screen Of Death on me. The message was always that new hardware change thing. After 5 (I think) "full power downs" The system finally came up and is it's smokin' fast self again. The reason I did it 5 times is because it began to finish the boot up process and startup further and further. It got to the point (about 2 minutes) when the system would be fully up when things would begin to stutter, (a matter of 1-2 seconds) then BSOD. After the 5th (maybe 6th) the system became stable and has been running continuously for the past few days. I DO STAND CORRECTED THOUGH: This bad Caviar Black is actually a 1.5TB not a 1TB as I stated before. I'm installing a 2TB Seagate Barracuda XT running @ 7200 with 64MB of memory tomorrow because I'm a little leary of WD presently. I imagine thats why you went to WD from Seagate after your problem. But I'm seeing a possible coorelation here. Aren't you? Maybe we should stay away from 1.5TB drives entirely. Mick

LoL CocaCola! On the "turning the Crap off" advice! Todd, I was wondering if the 4 bad hard drives were Western Digital Caviar Black 1 Giggers? I had some funky problems even getting them to format with Win 7 (Win 7 couldn't even see the drives! I thought I had bad drives.). To fix the problem I had to use a Windows Vista CD to format the drive then quit the installation after Vista formatted the drives. Then Windows 7 was able to see the drive and complete a good install of the OS. Really good access/read times! Smokin' fast drives after you smack them around! Even though I have them working I don't trust them. Whats goin' on WD??? Anyways, Geovision has just sent me a patch to support the wonderful audio capabilities of the Vivotek IP7161 (AAC audio codec). I'll fill everybody in once I get it installed Thursday evening 6/3/10. I've added a private youtube video that anyone can see through this forum only. CLick on that redirect link a couple posts ago and scroll to the bottom if you want to see/hear the audio problem I incurred under the 64-bit Windows 7 Operating System environment. Mick

Here's a link to a video I privately posted on YouTube for anyone who wants to hear and experience this strange problem.

I had a customer request a server that is expected to have a long technological lifespan. So I researched and pieced together a rather wonderful and stable machine consisting of: (NOTE: This is an IP GV-NVR server setup) Windows 7 Pro 64 bit Gigabyte GA-EX58 ud5 (Ultra Durable / thicker copper traces) MB http://www.gigabyte.us/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2961 Intel socket 1366 2.66 i7 920 proc http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=37147 Running @ 2.86Ghz because the MB automatically OC'ed it (I did return it to stock 2.66 but it did not remedy audio problem) and through testing appears to be very stable @ 2.86 so I left it alone. 6 Gigs of OCZ PC1600 memory (with hopes of GV writing SW that addresses more memory in the future) (Don't use this memory unless you know how to manually input timing speeds - USE CORSAIR because the MB doesn't automatically detect OCZ timings!) Speedstream 4160 DSL modem in bridged mode to Netgear WNR3500 Rangemax router Netgear WNR3500 Rangemax Gigabyte Router http://www.netgear.com/Products/RoutersandGateways/WirelessNRoutersandGateways/WNR3500.aspx plugged into the Gigabyte port of a NetGear FS726P switch Netgear FS726TP http://www.netgear.com/Products/Switches/SmartSwitches/FS726TP.aspx 24 port + 2 Gigabyte port PoE switch (For some reason it didn't seem to supply enough power to the AcTi 8511 PTZ camera, I had to supply power the 8511 via its stock PS to get it to work properly) 2 AcTi 3511 Day/Night IP camera's 1 AcTi 8511 PTZ 1 Vivotek IP7161 IP camera (which has a phenominal mic that must have been plucked from the bionic womans head!) OK, this whole GV-NVR kit is running smoothly. It's processing and storing video stored on its own dedicated partition without any problems. The only problem is with the audio, I CAN get audio using the camera's proprietary softwares. (The Vivotek audio is unbelievable as mentioned before) Through the Geovision v8.3.3 SW is where the problems occur; First the AcTi camera's: When I tick the Enable Audio and Record Audio boxes in the GV camera setup configuration window I get 2 loud "pops" and then this crazy "digital noise" sound. The adjustment sliders to the left have absolutely no effect on the noise problem. Even sliding the adjusters on the Sensitivity and Gain down to zero have absolutely no effect on the sound, or the volume of the sound! I blamed it on the external mic I had and went out and purchased a new logitech PC mic with the same results. I realized that AcTi requires that you use "mono" mic's so I went out and purchased a stereo to mono 3.5mm converter jack which had only 2 contact area's making it mono. (Both of the PC mic jacks had 3 contact area's on the male part of the jack as if they were stereo mic's) This did nothing to remedy the problem. Do I have to purchase amplified mic's for AcTi camera's? According to AcTi it requires an 8 kHz Unbalanced 1.4Vpp/1Vrms 3.5mm jack and even the cheapest mic's sold here in the US have twice that frequency response! (16kHz) So you might conclude that the mic's I'm using are exceeding the camera's frequency threshold. Well here's the clincher! When I powered off the 8511 and removed the mic and powered it back up and kept audio enabled in the Geovision software the "crazy digital noise" was still present! (Anyone got any idea?) Second, the Vivotek IP7161; (Much shorter story! ) As I mentioned I get very sweet audio using the Vivotek software. So the camera is transmitting AAC codec audio flawlessly over the network. When I go to the Camera Config screen in Geovision, the 2 sliding adjusters for Sensitivity and Gain are operational (or,, well,,, are moveable) but the 2 tick boxes for enabling audio and recording are grayed out rendering audio from this great camera useless through Geovision v8.3.3. I could use this single cameras microphone to cover the entire establishment but I can't enable the audio in GV. And the Audio in the "Audio1, Audio2, Audio3,,,,," section is also grayed out for this camera. Note: I have updated the realtek drivers for this motherboards sound chips. Note2: Everything is working great except the sound therefore I didn't disable hyperthreading before writing this post. I will repost after disabling HT on Tuesday April 20th with the results. With everything else working I doubt it will make a difference but you never know with these pesky machines. I promised (and gambled a little bit) that I could deliver a technologically advanced system for this guy and now I have a rather disturbed customer as a result of this problem and any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Mick (Afterthought --- 6 hours later) I just remembered a problem I had in the past. I had a mic problem with a PC with very similar distorted digital sounds which was caused by the computers' sound software set to digital input instead of analog. By switching from digital to analog in the systems sound software the problem went completely away and the mic functioned perfectly. But this can't be the problem because this is an NVR and all the audio is arriving in digital network packets?!? So am I listening to sound packets that the geovision software isn't assembling correctly???? By The Way --- If a person speaks loud enough near a mic, the speech DOES come through although it is terribly digitally distorted. They kind of sound like angry aliens.

Man! - Rory! I really appreciate your concern and input! I already gave that some thought and I was going to implement it but the customer has cooled his jets (after I rebated 1200 ) and he's willing to wait for Geovision and I to figure this out. Besides I would have to coordinate the audio with the video somehow. But if he was still erupting like an Icelandic volcano I was going to do it.

Under the General Settings -> Camera / Audio Install -> IP Camera Install -> Configure (button) -> Preview & Audio Setting The Wave Out and the RecAudio boxes do allow checking. When I do check them I get a flatline in the audio monitor with a few loud "pops" every minute or so. Adjusting the Gain Control makes absolutely no difference! When adjusting the gain all the way down the sound does not change at all. BUT! I do get very faint audio under a layer of distortion. Everybody sounds like "angry aliens" or like a CB picking up a side band channel but you just can't place what they are saying. As you saw in the picture the codec button simply isn't available to choose any codecs for any of the camera's. The "advanced codecs" check box is also missing. You can go ahead and show that picture if you want. Its a public area anyway. I've checked and unchecked everything in those 2 area's as well as other places. Today I uninstalled 8.3.3 and installed 8.3.4. The same issue is occuring under 8.3.4. I'm starting to think it has something to do with the NVR portion of the software, like somethings wrong with the audio Setup Information, like theres one too many spaces in the code somewhere. I just tried reinstalling the audio codecs portion of the geovision software by running the application "GeoCodecReg" application but to no avail.

Hey guys, they are working on it and yes they have agreed to rebate the dongle purchase price. I came back here today to do a bit of brain storming, I'm going to uninstall 8.3.3 and install 8.3.4 and see if anything changes. By the way this is what the camera settings tab looks like. Notice the lack of audio codec button missing! It is missing for both the Acti camera's and the Vivotek cams.

Yes, they use dongles and they are very easily upgradeable. All you have to do is just click on the dongle in my computer and use a small program in it to add additional camera's The quality of the video is excellent although I beleive it is limited to 1240 X 960. "Don't quote me on that one, I know the 960 is correct but the 12xx might be off" Yes, the regular ol' video log is used as well as others such as data logs for requesting other data such as how many people entered and exited the establishment during the day. I'm trying to stick with Geo and use all of its capabilities for they are very handy and a very good selling point. The analyticals are one heck of a contribution. I chose Geovision because it has the most capabilities. People counting, object tracking, facial recognition, missing objects detection, PTZ tracking, image quality enhancing, visual automation to name a few.

I had a customer request a server that is expected to have a long technological lifespan. So I researched and pieced together a rather wonderful and stable machine consisting of: (NOTE: This is an IP GV-NVR server setup) Windows 7 Pro 64 bit Gigabyte GA-EX58 ud5 (Ultra Durable / thicker copper traces) MB http://www.gigabyte.us/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2961 Intel socket 1366 2.66 i7 920 processor http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=37147 Running @ 2.86Ghz because the MB automatically OC'ed it (I did return it to stock 2.66 but it did not remedy audio problem) and through testing appears to be very stable @ 2.86 so I left it alone. 6 Gigs of OCZ PC1600 memory (with hopes of GV writing SW that addresses more memory in the future) (Don't use this memory unless you know how to manually input timing speeds - USE CORSAIR because the MB doesn't automatically detect OCZ timings!) Speedstream 4160 DSL modem in bridged mode to Netgear WNR3500 Rangemax router Netgear WNR3500 Rangemax Gigabyte Router http://www.netgear.com/Products/RoutersandGateways/WirelessNRoutersandGateways/WNR3500.aspx plugged into the Gigabyte port of a NetGear FS726P switch Netgear FS726TP http://www.netgear.com/Products/Switches/SmartSwitches/FS726TP.aspx 24 port + 2 Gigabyte port PoE switch (For some reason it didn't seem to supply enough power to the AcTi 8511 PTZ camera, I had to supply power to the 8511 via its stock Power Supply to get it to work properly) 2 AcTi 3511 Day/Night IP camera's 1 AcTi 8511 PTZ 1 Vivotek IP7161 IP camera (which has a phenominal mic that must have been plucked from the bionic womans head!) OK, this whole GV-NVR kit is running smoothly. It's processing and storing video stored on its own dedicated partition on the hard drive without any problems. The only problem is with the audio, I CAN get audio using the camera's proprietary softwares. (The Vivotek audio is unbelievable as mentioned before) Through the Geovision v8.3.3 SW is where the problems occur; First the AcTi camera's: When I tick the Enable Audio and Record Audio boxes in the GV camera setup configuration window I get 2 loud "pops" and then this crazy "digital noise" sound. The adjustment sliders to the left have absolutely no effect on the noise problem. Even sliding the adjusters on the Sensitivity and Gain down to zero have absolutely no effect on the sound, or the volume of the sound! I blamed it on the external mic I had and went out and purchased a new logitech PC mic with the same results. I realized that AcTi requires that you use "mono" mic's so I went out and purchased a stereo to mono 3.5mm converter jack which had only 2 contact area's making it mono. (Both of the PC mic jacks had 3 contact area's on the male part of the jack as if they were stereo mic's) This did nothing to remedy the problem. Do I have to purchase amplified mic's for AcTi camera's? According to AcTi it requires an 8 kHz Unbalanced 1.4Vpp/1Vrms 3.5mm jack and even the cheapest mic's sold here in the US have twice that frequency response! (16kHz) So you might conclude that the mic's I'm using are exceeding the camera's frequency threshold. Well here's the clincher! When I powered off the 8511 and removed the mic and powered it back up and kept audio enabled in the Geovision software the "crazy digital noise" was still present! (Anyone got any idea?) Second, the Vivotek IP7161; (Much shorter story! ) As I mentioned I get very sweet audio using the Vivotek software. So the camera is transmitting AAC codec audio flawlessly over the network. When I go to the Camera Config screen in Geovision, the 2 sliding adjusters for Sensitivity and Gain are operational (or,, well,,, are moveable) but the 2 tick boxes for enabling audio and recording are grayed out rendering audio from this great camera useless through Geovision v8.3.3. I could use this single cameras microphone to cover the entire establishment but I can't enable the audio in GV. And the Audio in the "Audio1, Audio2, Audio3,,,,," section is also grayed out for this camera. Note: I have updated the realtek drivers for this motherboards sound chips. Note2: Everything is working great except the sound therefore I didn't disable hyperthreading before writing this post. I will repost after disabling HT on Tuesday April 20th with the results. With everything else working I doubt it will make a difference but you never know with these pesky machines. I promised (and gambled a little bit) that I could deliver a technologically advanced system for this guy and now I have a rather disturbed customer as a result of this problem and any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Mick (Afterthought --- 6 hours later) I just remembered a problem I had in the past. I had a mic problem with a PC with very similar distorted digital sounds which was caused by the computers' sound software set to digital input instead of analog. By switching from digital to analog in the systems sound software the problem went completely away and the mic functioned perfectly. But this can't be the problem because this is an NVR and all the audio is arriving in digital network packets?!? So am I listening to sound packets that the geovision software isn't assembling correctly???? By The Way --- If a person speaks loud enough near a mic, the speech DOES come through although it is terribly digitally distorted. They kind of sound like angry aliens.

I beleive I know the answer to this problem. Geovision support sent me a mail stating that they are no longer supporting Vivotek camera's 2 way audio. And the supported camera lists do have a "No" in the 2 way audio catagory now. But! I still have issues with their beloved AcTi camera having distorted audio. This camera is transmitting MPEG4 as well. When you install this software you have to choose which model card your using or GV-NVR. Well this is a complete IP setup so of course I'm installing the GV-NVR portion of the software. I think whats going on is that a lot of processing takes place on their cards including some audio. With a complete IP system their is no proprietary GV hardware anywhere on the system and I think the software (all by its lonely self) is having issues decoding MPEG4 audio correctly. I'm going to order an AcTi 4301 which transmits (or can transmit) in the H.264 audio codec instead of MPEG4 and see what happens. If it works they need to state that GV-NVR does not support MPEG4 audio and they need send me one free 8 camera dongle for figuring this out for them. I have one angry customer thats never going to network me after all. I still haven't received that link for 8.3.4 yet either

By the way ! Along with the "disabling the hyperthreading" experiment today I decided to mess with the Netgear FS726TP switch to make sure it is transmitting every bit of data throught the workgroup. And it is just a stupid workgroup switch.

One of the cameras is a Vivotek IP7161 for which they are adding another 3 or 4 more to thier supported list. So thats what I'm so excited about. The added support for the Vivotek camera's They are removing the IP 7161 from their supported list but the new arrivals are transmitting for what it appears, in the same audio codec which is AAC. AAC codec is contained within MPEG4. The AAC audio codec is contained within the MPEG4 format on the 3rd out of 4 layers of MPEG4 information. (By the way this sytem is running AcTi and Vivotek cameras) So my main point is that my system's camera's are all reporting to the geovision software in MPEG4 which is the movies standard and so is geovisions! So I'm totally wanting to blame my designs hardware, but it just seems to be a protocol problem between geovision and the cameras!?! I get great audio outside of the geovision 8.3.3's software! I am praying that version 8.3.4 will address these problems in a Win7 64bit environment. They claimed that 8.3.3 would support such a system but we're defiantely having problems regarding audio over here! I've requested a link to the download of 8.3.4 but haven't got the email yet. I'll let you know if .4 solves the goofy audio problem. Mick

Disabled hyperthreading and it didn't remedy the problem. I'll just wait for them to send me the link to v8.3.4 and try that. C'MON 8.3.4! WORK FOR ME!!!

I hear what your thinkin Yeti but the speakers are plugged in directly to the motherboards speaker outputs on the back of the server. I also get clean audio using two different camera manufacturer's proprietary software outside of the GV v8.3.3 I went and disabled hyperthreading today but to no avail. I requested a copy of 8.3.4 which was just realeased within the week, I have a feeling 8.3.3 had many issues and mine was probably one of them seeing that the 2 versions were released so close to each other. So we'll have to see how this new version behaves in the Win7 / 64 bit environment. I really hope it works with MPEG4 audio this time. 8.3.3 worked great in every aspect on this rig except the audio was just crazy.

Through further reading, the AAC audio codec is contained within the MPEG4 format. Soooo, Geovision is making a mistake by excluding the IP7161 from its supported cams list. It is transmitting MPEG4 which they support. Heading to worksite now to disable hyperthreading and see what happens. I beleive this has something to do with the hardware design of my system which is clearly listed at the beginning of this forum subject. Will update later. I did fill out 8.3.4 request form and awaiting download link still.

WoW! JJ! I didn't know this! I'll kick the tires on this .4 and let you know Thanks for the info! I appreciate it! Mick PS: Geovision has contacted me regarding the Vivotek IP7161 and they are taking it off the supported camera list for their software won't support the AAC codec that the camera transmits. They really should write AAC (Even though I'm not a big Apple fan) because it appears to be the next evolutionary standard after MP3. (same bit rate, much better quality) Yes AAC has been standardized. "AAC has been standardized by ISO and IEC, as part of the MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 specifications." It appears to have been developed by a conglomeration of Apple, AT&T's Bell Labs, Dolby and Sony.

I still don't think this is the problem because of the audio outside of GV

Hey Geovision! Realtek ALC889A The Branding Icon of the Realtek chipset is "RtPgEx64" (Win7) and the Assembly Version is 6.01.5386 If your listening

OK! I am confident then with going with a notable sound card vendor as a possible solution. I really appreciate your advice because I am getting nothing but nonsense from Geovision. Thanks again!

I was going to withdraw this post because I thought you were having problems with 32 bit but I see you have installed Win 7 64bit which I have gotten 8.3.3 to work with some audio probs but its working none the less. Here's my second (revised) opinion on your situation. You may have a few years old computer and chipset that may or may not support 64bit. For example; When you purchased your PC you purchased it with a 32-bit OS. Therefore the vendor would have saved money by installing 32bit memory to run with the 32 bit OS. Even if the Motherboard supports 64-bit they may have installed 32bit memory. Go into Device Manager and check out the properties of your memory or download or run a memtest application from memtest.org or start64 OR BETTER YET! Use the memory testing tool from Windows. Go into your "search" box and just type "memory" and something called "Memory Diagnostics Tool" should pop up! Save anything you are working on before running the tool because the computer will reboot into the memory testing application. I believe after the Windows memtest tool is finished, it will mention whether the memory is 32bit or 64bit. I imagine you downloaded GV 8.3.3 as I did from Taiwan once they validated your purchase. If you (R. click) -> "explore" or "open"(<-In Win 7) all the folders that were downloaded you'll find one called "local". In that "local" folder I found "setup"'s for 32-bit and 64-bit. Try to find that "local" folder and choose the 32-bit installation .exe and tell me how it goes. If you actually did get a v8.3.3 disk, goto ->my computer -> r.click over the disk drive with the gv sw in it and choose -> "explore" or "open" to search the folders for the local folder.

I'm thinking this may be Geovision's v8.3.3 decoding properties because I can get sound from both the AcTi's and Vivotek cams not using Geovision. It only happens through the Geovision software. So I don't think I'll make the bet. But I think I may try the video card if I can't get this resolved within a whole day of working on the project. The thing that gets me is that probably 70% of the motherboards out there are using Realtek sound chips which is making me feel its not the chips. Plus! I do get audio just fine outside the Geovision v8.3.3 software, also re-enforcing the notion.

Not sure, but I just put it on a Dell Optiplex 755 with internal audio, no problems but then it is not cutting edge technology as the systems are a few years old with Core 2 Duo 2.3Ghz and DDR2 667, and it is using XP Pro SP3. OK, if its working on that dinosaur then it must be my onboard sound chipset. I'll go get myself and my customer a PCIe sound board not based off of the generic onboard Realtec chipset. I'll update when the machine is functioning fully with audio.

I hear ya, but, It should be working because they stated it would work in that environment. Plus, I would be fulfilling my customers request based on their claims of functionality!

I built this system following Geovision's claims to v8.3.3 They stated it was designed for Windows 7 64-bit so that's how I designed it!

Thanks Rory 4 the idea! Could you tell me an audio card (probably Creative) that you know is actually working with 8.3.3? The reason for the up to date technology is that the customer wanted future capabilities unrestricted. This machine does work flawlessly and is superquick with any benchmarking SW I throw at it. (for burn in) It really will be a perfect machine in a year or so I imagine, but so far the only problem I encountered was with Geovision 8.3.3 audio problem. Thanks, Mick