SunnyKim

Looserguy, I can not get into the link that you gave. The reason I asked you to record into bigger size is that the camera gives your DVR, as good as D1 size video. But it seems that DVR scales down to CIF(a quarter of D1), for recording. If color components are not scaled down properly, or hard compression to save recording file size, then such pseudo color artifacts can be appearing. You can narrow down the issues when you plug the camera video out directly to your TV to check whether it is from camera.

Don, As we know, there are not many alternatives to send raw-video(not compressed) data over a long cable. HD-SDI is still expensive. And there are recently coming HD-CVI/TVI/AHD,etc -proprietary schemes around, non compatible each other. Hybrid can support input of HD(either one of 4 kinds above) + SD (analog). Tribrid DVR would support input of HD(either two of 4 kinds above) +SD (analog). That's all my guess.

Thanks MindTwist, Now I got cleared. I hope my wording was offensive, not a single bit.

Can you please identify the decoder chipset for SD employed on your hybrid DVR? For cost down, they may be using a cheap video decoder.

Can you please Record a bit bigger size format,say D1(around 576 X 720) or VGA(480X 640) and play back?

Most of chipsets used in the NVR(ENR????) can support to de-compress the format in MPEG or JPEG or H.264 (more upgraded from MPEG-4-standard compression). The ENR seems not to support MPEG compressed stream, yet. You may contact their tech support team for your ENR. They will tell you whether your ENR can be firmware upgraded or can not be upgraded at all, because the chipset itself may not support MPEG decompression at all.

Can you get rid of balun? You may simply use BNC connector only.

Thanks Don and Wireguy, As we use HD-SDI cameras in our Lab and love its video quality, we thought it would be very popular. And there are some chipset makers for HD-SDI 1080P Receivers, 4 Ch decoder in one chip, Techpoint(USA), Intersil(USA), Magnivision (China) etc.,working hard to improve its capturing performance more robust. Anyway, we would keep your advices in our notes.

Can you please explain why HD-SDI are not better than IP and HD-CVI/HD-TVI? For home, around 4 cameras would fit and cabling distance is not that long. As to cable condition, HD-SDI is more robust than HD-CVI, or TVI for 1080P.

Check your DVR's recording quality and it can really compress each video channel into D1 X 30FPS rate. If you can play back 4 Ch on HDTV monitor (1080P), you can examine their quality as they are about the same size of D1 that each camera sends to your DVR

You just dropped HD-SDI, the best previewing quality with almost realtime(no time lag).

Can you please confirm whether they use their compression standard as H.264 or H.265? No such information available to your link. If not H.265, then it may need their own software for play back. No compatibility with other software providers'.

Can you please give me information on your mother board of your PC? That is, CPU brand (Intel or AMD)? What is the name of mother board Controller chip and its number that controls over some interrupts, and peripheral chipsets on its mother board?

I do not agree with you at this point. They must have encoded (compressed) 1080P at a reduced frame rate. Because the CoDec chipset knows what it can do or what it can not do. The decoding (de-compressing) uses the compressed bit stream, as they are stored (reduced frame rate already). As long as application accepts OK, then OK for all others. I may say that the terminology is confusing. Please allow me to clarify as following. There are 2 kinds of chipsets in the most of DVRs. One is the video decoder chipset that demodulates the modulated signal from camera. In this case, HD-SDI -receiver or decoder is sitting at the front end of PCB board. Do not get confused that most DVR box carries input ports at its back side panel. The other is CoDec chipset which serves as main CPU of DVR box. Some may call SoC or Back End Main processor. Compression/ Storing the compressed bit stream file to HDD/ Reading back the bitstream for decompressing and play-back to monitors, all kinds of things needed for DVR features. HD-SDI receiver chipset is a sort expansive. For 8 channel HD-SDI inputs, they must have 8 -single channel chipset or 2 sets of 4 Ch (quad) receiver chip set. It seems that the receiver HD-SDI chipset is capable of decoding both 1080P and 720P, running at each different clock rate.So you are lucky. Just several years ago, only 720p was affordable and 1080P was very expansive. It could be more clear if you say " raw video data" in stead of raw bitstream, even though HD-SDI encoded (modulated) format is in Bit Serial form. The "bitstream" is more associated with Compressed Bitstream, say H.264, MPEG. The HD SDI receiver chipset re-formats the incoming bit serial-raw video data into a common video data format, BT1120. Most of CoDec chipset,sitting, at the back end, can accept BT1120 formatted video data as a standard video data. In the market, there are single channel HD-SDI decoder chipset and a four channel HD-SDI chipset, so called Four in One(quad) chipset. Yes, DVR software sits on the CoDec chipset which embeds a high performance CPU. As the final answer, decoding speed is to depend on the encoded frame rate, in most applications.

Good to know, Let me explain a bit more on the chipsets on the PCB. 1. The SDI decoder (receiver) must be using BT1120 format to feed video data (either of 720P or 1080P) into a CoDec(compression/De-comp), at back end. 2. The DVR software is set to be able to configure to accept 1080P. -- auto configuring video size of input camera. -- probably, the SDK from the CoDec chipset maker maintains one set of SDK to cover all size of video input, all kinds of DVR sets. 3. The CoDec is always set to run such a high clock rate for processing the 1080P (bigger than 720P). This may shorten the life time of DVR or causing over heating issue. Who cares!! 4. 1080p needs the processing power, at least, twice than that of 720P. 5. But the Codec itself is limited in number of total frames per second to be processed for compression and decompression & display, at the same time. So you must have to define encoding frame rate and decoding frame rate on your own within this budget. 6. Did you test 16 Ch X 960H, if the DVR carries 16Ch input ports? Must be working?? My guess is yes, in terms of its processing power of the CoDec. Then you may try on 16 Ch X1080P at a quarter FPS or less. I guess The CoDec chip can most likely accept 8 inputs, max, in case for HD sized video. But they may not have put the enough number of the SDI receiver chip sets, at the front, to get in 8 Ch or 16 Ch HD SDI cameras for cost saving. Please let me know.

For me, answer is no. The chipsets on the PCB board might not be programmed to accept the bigger sized video, most likely. But 1080P DVR can take 720P camera, most likely.

nightrider, please allow me to add my 2 cents. 1. HD SDI is the method to send digital video data in digital number- bit serial wise. So called SerDes. Gennum supplies most of receiver chipsets. Originally, they were for studios of TV station. They won't down the price as good as Chinese CCTV manufacturers want to. Gennum does not show much interest in CCTV market. Techpoint and Intersil have introduced 4 Channel HD SDI receiver chipsets. But the performance seems not as good as Gennum's, on our limited testings in our lab. The good thing about HD-SDI is that the signal can go up to 100 meter over conventional cable. That means you do not need to install a new cable. 2. AHD, HD-CVI, HD-TVI. They are all slightly different, so non compatible each other. But they seem to be cheaper than HD-SDI. You are all correct they are all based on analog QAM, so no room for error correction digitally. You may regard them as an expanded form of NTSC or PAL, the conventional analog TV signal. They claim that it goes over 500 meter. But it seems they must be using solid copper cable or Gold. In our lab, it barely goes through 50 meter on a commercial cheap cable, distorting colors. So you may need to upgrade the currently installed cable. And you have to limit your choices to the pairs of camera and its DVR. Of course, HD-SDI, AHD, HD-CVI(Daihua), HD-TVI(Hikvision) have advantage over IP, in realtime preview.

I am not in a position to answer. You better contact Hikvision or its SDK provider for proper APIs.

For PTZ control, your DVR board must provide GPIO pins to connect to your camera. As to protocol, you can use RS485.

You may try for EasyCap or Ezcap USB-DVR for one channel application. It is less than U$10 including delivery that I keep wondering how possible. The quality is worth of its pricing, you can bet.

It is the device driver from Somagic, in China. We had a very hard time to get any tech support from her when we build our own USB DVR card. The easycap was made for video editing application, not for cctv. Buy a PC capture card or USB DVR above U$20.

No camera supports VGA (RGBHV) out. The most economic one could be a PC Card as you have all other things.

If the chip is SAA7130, my guess could be right in that only 1 or 2 frames per channel and per second when using all 4 channels. The device drivers are depending on the chip and its board configuration. I think you should ask the board suppliers. No idea that iSpy can handle more than 1 channel. If you have to deal as a project, we can provide you the board and device driver. You may have to carry out the project, on your own, asking us of minimal questions when you link with those application soft wares and do something for your own one. Our board and application GUI software packages are for 4 Channel X 960H X 30 FPS and you do not need such soft wares for DVR applications, in general.

The card would work only with their own software. Ours, the same. No card suppliers are not kind enough to provide the document or APIs for the standard interface required for any public software. Buy the one and try it. If you do not like the quality, please let me know.

The PCI_E card that you link is not our card. But it would work with their own CD ROM software.