Thomas

What kinds of speeds are we talking about here? Because your idea of 50 cameras per machine...it's very, very high. And it sounds like you purchaced the cameras already?

Use the method for TCP/IP.

There are some techincal issues that are a little bit harder. Not impossible harder, it just takes some time. But the real reason you see alot of cheap standalones using Linux is that it's free. There are embeded verisons of linux but cost money to use. (Not a GPL violation) There is always some confusion to sales of Linux software. I can burn a Gentro CD and sell it to some one for $1,000,000. As long as I provide the source code for the GPLed parts then I am in compliance with GPLv1 and GPLv2. For instance you can contact Tivo and they will e-mail or snail mail you a copy of the Linux kernal they use. I can not change the licence on it, nor can I sell the copyrights associated with that software unless I am the right's holder. If I build a custom app on top of it that is a seperate binary, that does not automaticly make my application Open source.

Apple licenced it from Xerox Parc. Much differant from stealing it. And they have made a few improvements since then. And Rory you must be looking at pre-OS-X Macs.

Oh the Mac UI is still way ahead. After using MS Office on the Mac, the Windows verison is just painful. Too much time working against the user. And it's very, very smooth Rory, you really should try it if you get a chance.

Some of it comes that much of the UI stuff is after thought rather then the considered the primary method of interacting. Given that the linux boxes I have are ment for server work, I don't have things like KDE or Gnome installed on them. I don't need them for what it does so I don't use it. So I don't press for UI improvements. And a better question Rory is when is Windows going to catch up to the Mac UI?

Sorry, I ment that post for a differant thread. Sorry.

Matrox makes a rather price quad output card.

And S/N ratios are a logarithmic scale rather then simply additive. If I recall my math correctly, the differance between say 45 db and 48 db is double the image quality.

Please turn your caps lock off. It really is painful to read.

As a general rule of thumb you always want to be over min specs for CPU power for any card. Being under can create alot of problems.

You'll run into problems with blocked LOS and cars/trucks that differ on how high thier plates are.

80 or 82 (did you mean 81?) are almost always web servers and almost never e-mail servers.

It's marketing speak. It sounds like they simply use the ability set zones which isn't new and I thought Geovision had.

It sounds like your are entering the industry, so answering a few questions maybe helpful: How much CCTV experance do you have? Why are you entering the industry? What are your expectations?

Keep in mind that DVD's are supposed to give a signal with a S/N ratio in the 60's. Most CCTV cameras are in the high 40's. That's a huge differance.

Oh that part is a given in any industry. I think Fujinon will list the T-Factor on the spec sheet itself. But they don't list it on the package or model number, so it would be useless without the spec sheet.

Isn't the T-Factor a better indicator?

Hrm. First off that has nothing to do with CCTV. That kind of equipment violates most states laws. The subject is closed.

It depends. If he is looking in to the bussiness via a window with the camera he's okay. If he installs them inside the building...yeah, that violates a ton of laws.

We store the video in an .avi shell (.avi is just a container shell, it isn't a format per se). The codec used is set by the user. Is that what you wanted to know?

It's not that easy to do the converistion. Differant codecs tend to have differant CPU useage requirments. Embedded systems generally only have as much processing power as they need and not much more. Switching codecs can increase that requirement and make it physically impossible.

Generally not.

Not enough to matter. Trust me, I talk to 10 people a week who want to try it. For the near future the ability to do off-site storage doesn't work. It doesn't begin to become feasable untill you start looking at 8 Mbps+ speeds. And then it doesn't scale very well.

Most of the webcams are putting out a 160 x 120 image. That's a quarter of the size of a 320 x 240 image and an sixtheenth of the size of a 640 x 480 video frame. Also note that CCTV doesn't compress the image as tightly. Most web cams give you between 3 and 7 fps on a normal DSL connection. So that scales up to 1 to 2 fps for 320 x 240. And under 1 fps 640 x 480. And that's for a single camera. Most remote clients use a few tricks to speed up framerates but you have to make a trade off somewhere.