Billyk

Hey folks, found this while looking about for yet another .264 file player! I work in Law enforcement and constantly get disks with this stuff and no player. At any rate, the Swann seems identical to the Lorex 10 and would not play the disk of .264s I just received. The good news is the the Lorex 11 player did the job perfectly. Here is the link http://www.lorextechnology.com/security-dvr-and-surveillance-dvr/16-Channel-security-DVR-with-iphone-and-andirod-support/prod180002.p Hope it helps someone out! Good luck, Billy

Hi, New to the forum and to CCTV Analog and Digital. I need to come up to speed pretty quickly and truly appreciate any and all assistance. I am the Network admin, and AV goto person for a large District Attorney's office, over 150 ADAs on board! What I get is requests to help with video evidence provided by the local Police and the establishments involved in crimes. A lot of the stuff is from time lapse and / or multiplexed tapes. What I need to do is get something to help me get a clear version of what I am sent. Can anyone get me started, give me some idea of what questions I should be asking, anything!?!? Thanks again in advance for anything you can do to help me. Cheers, Bill

I have need of connecting one camera (Vitek VH49B2) to two monitors. one wll be about 25ft away and the other about 150ft. Should I anticipate any problems driving these and purchase a distribution amp? How should I split the feed? Thanks, Bill

Thanks all! The short end is terminating into a consumer DVD recorder, the long end is terminating int a 29" Sharp? CCTV monitor. This is for an interview room at a local PD. It is out of sight of the main area so they want to be able to view the interview from the dispatchers desk while recording it. Thanks again.

Look here http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/howto/auth.html

I have had similar troubles... Sometimes though it was the ISP connection. I had to deal with about 500 connections all over the country and there were definitely some bad areas. Just a suggestion but try pinging an outside connection, like the place you are trying to get out to using this: ping /l 1047 /n 100 IPADDRESS where IPADDRESS is the site you want to get to. the l (that's L) switch is packet length as the default length for ping is too small and the n switch is how many times to repeat it. What you want to see is how many dropped packets. This would raise hell with the credit card service connections as the places I was dealing with were McDonald's, Wendy's etc. Alythough I do have to admit I did replace a few LinkSys routers! Good luck, Bill

I am planning on using this in an interview room situation. The specs look good. I need it to be able to get a good image to a DVD recorder and a monitor. One install has to got to a DVD recorder and monitor about 25' away and another monitor 150' away. Do you think I may need an amp to push the signal that far? Audio will be supplied by a Crown PZM-11 mic in the ceiling. Thanks for your input.

My store of choice: Wild Oats

GHOST may suck but it does the job and I mentioned GHOST 'cause you can pick up a copy for next to nothing. I am building 85 new PCs this week and next; using a bootable USB hard disk makes it quick and easy! The hardest part is taking them out of the box!! Anyway does not matter what image program you use, just use one. I really do think it is worth the extra effort. Redundancy is also good. A second drive in a duplex arrangement might not be a bad idea for critical systems.

Perhaps I am a lucky one. I grow a fair amount of veggies each year, buy my beef by the cow from a local farmer, grass fed beef humanely grown and treated is a real treat. Eggs I get from a local organic egg farm with free roaming chickens fed organic diets. Chicken we buy from another local farm. Even our water is reverse osmosis/ deionized filtered with a tap at the kitchen sink. I do watch what my family eats, it costs a bit more, but it tastes great and we feel good to. It has taken quite a few years and considerable effort to get this far but it was worth it.

What projector for instance? What is the output of the DVR, my experience is more PC than CCTV but there are many projectors; a lot do VGA, XGA, etc Then some include composite, S-Video and component. I am looking at a InFocus on my desk that does everything I listed. Does that help? If I had a DVR I'd try t but I don't have one at the moment.

Don't know if this helps... Have you looked into PIC? If you Google it there are many automation resources involving PIC compatable controllers, etc.

Details??

What model # router and what version of IOS??

Here is a suggestion. I use it all the time, it is cheap and very easy to do. Find an older version of GHOST. You can get the older versions for about $5-10.00. After you build a customers or your machine just as you like it make a bootable ghost image, then if anything fails like the hard drive or an upgrade goes sour, just boot with the image disk and reload and you are right where you were when you made the image. Very handy especially when you have a lot of identical or nearly identical machines. I have about 200 or so PCs to maintain and would not be caught without it.

Here is my favourite CPU sensing utility: CPU-Z. Should tell you all you need to know.

From a network admins perspective, these d*mn updates are a painful necessity. I use an update manager to assist me in rolling out my updates and patches. I have over 300 nodes to deal with, workstations, servers, etc. That way I control what gets updated and when. When MS announces a patch, I download it, test it on my more finicky systems and then decide where to roll it out. I also use the corporate edition of Symantec AV for virus protection, it makes it very easy to manage the updates for the AV code and signature files. One of my servers is at a state police HQ and sometimes its a bear to get at it when it goes down. I invested in a IP remote power switch and have not had to travel there since. That may be a decent solution to some of the remote sites I read about here. I guess what I am saying is if you have enough installations out there this may be a good way to manage them or a value added service to enhance your offerings. Just my $.02 Bill

Some of the PDs in my district have both systems a motion activated, digital system with cameras everywhere in the station and a dedicated system in one of the interview romms with a separate camera and mic going to a DVD recorder for specific interviews. Best of both worlds and they get very good recording of the interviews.

alanb, thanks for the input. I am hoping this is the case. I understand about the watermarking and is what I was thinking was going on. So far I have been able to get around some of them by outputting SVHS from a laptop's TV out into my capture card. That allows me to make a DVD for easier viewing. I guess some of the proprietary apps are too smart for this and blank anything on a second monitor. I think I will need to visit some of the PDs in my district to see if the copy we get is available in AVI, it sure would save a lot of grief. Regarding the legal aspect, as far as I know and what I do is that these originals in their original form are the evidence admitted into court for the trial. I am just trying to make easy viewing for the attorneys, both defense and prosecution. As long as it can be assured that these are copies and the original is available we have not had any problems. As a mater of fact I have to clean up jailhouse phone call audio a fair amount as it is usually lousy. It has been used in court for a jury more than once. Again as long as the original is there, it is usually not a problem for enhanced copying. Again, thanks for your help.

That is THE forensic system out there. As a matter of fact it is the main one the lab uses (at least the guy I talk to). A decked out in full regalia setup is about $30-40k and requires a good bit of training. Not to say I wouldn't mind getting trained and getting a set up! Your spot on about the pro stuff. There are a lot of nasty things out there. You'll see me around for a while as I figure out how to do it right so I can offer the right advice and answers! Thanks for all your input, Bill

Thanks, That is what I was doing...must be total crap source material. I have been doing VHS to DVD with this setup and the quality is quite good. At any rate we are going to purchase a decent Time Lapse VCR and handle the muxed up stuff on a case by case basis. I really don't want to sink a lot of money in this. Any ideas on a software de muxing kind of thing. I know the forensic workstation folks claim to be able to do anyones mux but I have been unable to find just an app for that. Thanks again! Bill

I too am interested in this. I am the network admin and AV go-to for a mid sized DA office, 42 police departments and 100 ADAs. I have put together a nice package for our Sexual Abuse interview rooms, we have six of them in our district, and now some of the PDs are interested in the setup. I am using a good quality dome camera, boundary mic in the ceiling all going to a pair of consumer grade DVD recorders. I am using a phantom power/preamp on the mic for line level to the DVDs and the camera output is sufficient for the records. The biggest problem I have with some of the DVR setups that some of the PDs use is that they only produce output in a proprietary format with it's own viewer application. It is a real PIA to convert them into something we can use. Are they all like that?

I have a capture board, Turtle Beach's Video Advantage. I cannot get the time lapsed video stuff I have been trying to look at come out smooth and often looks worse. Am I missing something?

WOW, great thread, just what I am looking for! I work for the DA's office and need to be able to view these types of evidence more and more. What bryan1656 stated is spot on. We need to see the evidence relatively clearly and are not looking to do anything fancy. If that type of thing is needed it goes to the labs for the experts to deal with so there are no evidentiary type problems. Thanks for all the info, I'm off to see the boss and get an ok to purchase some of the recommended devices. I will be sure to post my results. Bill

Thomas, thanks I will be sure to immerse myself. CollinR, that's a whole other subject, I did a fair amount of research on my own (that's how I found this forum) and through the state. There is a whole branch of this stuff, forensic video. We have a lab in the state that would deal with that. Things like getting a better facial image, license plate, etc. I am not looking for anything as deep as that. The equipment for that sort of thing is readily available if you can afford it and would take a department to deal with it. I am just looking for a reasonable investment to assist the ADAs to view the evidence as we receive it. I also make copies for the defense attorneys as well. Thanks again! I really appreciate it. Bill