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No problems in the past, but things change. What version Geo is this, also whats the CPU, memory, hard drive? And without the Spot Monitor enabled you're saying the frame rate is faster? Since it disabled Direct Draw Overlay when Spot Monitor setup is enabled, it should actually be faster in live view on the main DVR screen, not faster frames but the image is smaller and less processing going on, so less "sluggish". Optiplex as in Dell? I setup 3 of them before for a client and in THAT and only that case the onboard video was not good enough for Geo due to the onboard video's lack of support for direct draw overlay. in the case of the ones I had they came with separate video cards, not sure if those were factory from Dell as these were existing older PCs.

i only ever use integrated video now, no problems with it. What type of chipset is it? If its an Intel within the past couple years should be fine. Nvidia was fine last one I used also.

ok thanks, guess ill stick to the controlled environment for now then, it hasnt let me down yet, least with wide fovs.

That would be a generic windows driver, maybe try going in the BIOS and disabling onboard audio. See if that works. And what if you manually copy and paste a file like the size of the one you are trying to export, I mean from just in windows?

You dont need to enable anything for it to work. What do you mean by DSP controller? Its been a while for me. BTW if you enable the Spot Monitor Setup then you will loose Direct Draw Overlay on the live video, meaning it will be blocked in larger views.

Yep that would work. Best thing pelco came out with yet Yeah cant get welding filters in this country, nor the NDF. What if we just take the iris out temporarily One thing though, with many cctv cameras without an IR Cut filter it is almost impossible to focus them good outside in the sunlight.

How can you see the video with the sunlight? Down here on the monitors outside you cant see anything to get a proper focus.

Same line as I used just a different size, and they dont work with Geovision DVRs - or should I say they do work but with stuttering/skipping recordings. Hopefully they will work properly with the software you will be using though.

No, thats only if you are focusing it outside in the day and it doesnt have a Day Night lens, but according to the specs it does, dont know how true that is though you should see it written on the lens either Day Night or Infrared (IR). I generally focus in a controlled environment for wide FOVs, specifically my garage during the daytime, also lets me pop it outside to test the Iris level in bright sunlight, and inside I can turn the lights off for pitch dark IR, on for color, and dim them for low light. The latest ones ive done inside with the lights on and as they had an IR or Day Night lens, they stayed focused under IR and low light but I can test that the same time anyway, although at some level of very low light they will all start to get blurry and or pixelized. Otherwise best to focus it outside at the location under low light (not dark, eg even cloudy is fine) and using a CCTV CRT or a 13" TV, OR a focus meter. LCDs dont tend to give the clarity that the composite monitors do for these type of cameras. Also a 32" LCD will be a blown up image in this case, and too small of an LCD will be too small with too little pixels to get a good focus. It will probably be clearer on the stand alone as thats composite like the camera, the PC is digital. Evidence sharing is still normally much better quality with the PC based though. Here are some of my posts on focusing: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=22325&p=133305#p133305 viewtopic.php?f=6&t=21167&p=126097#p126097 viewtopic.php?f=5&t=23017&p=137397#p137397

Hi Lucy, as this is a public forum we would prefer any questions be asked and answered here instead of in a PM so that it may help others in their future decisions and technical assistance of a particular product - if it is sales related then they can keep it to a PM/email though, but this forum is not here for sales anyway. Also I believe he may be looking for help from those that have used the camera in a real world application. By all means please post images or videos of real world apps using this camera if you have any, they would be greatly welcomed. Thanks.

Can you provide a shot of the camera image? How are you focusing them? What monitor are you using to focus them, where are you focusing them, and in what kind of lighting are you focusing them? Does it look in focus at any time?

Sorry had to remove the store link per the rules, but here are the specs which are not bad: 550TVL, 2.8~11mm Vari-Focal ICR Lens, 36 LEDs, 1/3 inch Sony Super HAD CCD, True Day + Night IR Bullet Camera (MDP-T928XI-36) Viewable length @ 0 lux illumination: 35 meters Viewing radius: 36 - 134 degrees (adjustable, wide - tele) Image sensor: 1/3" interline transfer type color CCD (Sony) Effective pixels: 768H x 494V (380k pixels) Scanning system: 525 lines, 2:1 interlace Scanning frequency: 15.734KHz (H), 59.94Hz (V) Resolution: 550TVL Shutter speed: 1/60 sec S/N ratio: More than 48dB (AGC off) Sync system: Internal White balance: ATW/AWC Minimum illumination: 0 Lux (IR LED On) Lens: 2.8 ~ 11mm vari-focal DC auto iris F1.2 day and night Video output: VBS 1.0 Vp-p (75ohm load) Power supply: AC24V, DC12V Power consumption: DC12V Normal 250mA, Max 660mA - AC24V Normal 5.3VA Max 9.6VA Power connector style: Bare wire Operating temperature: -10c ~ +50c Operating humidity: Max 90% RH Dimensions: 70mm (diameter) x 134mm (L)

Generally yes, only because the PC software tend to have more options in that area. There are exceptions though. Really cheap cards and software for example may have less options for networking and may be even worse. As for the modems sure, PC or Standalone. Just going to cost more per month.

Not really, that helps a little and needs to be installed in the PC anyway, but does not do the job of say a good ceiling fan, and even with that the windows need to be open all the time. In fact in a PC DVR in a room without AC should have more than one fan anyway; incoming and outgoing. It may last through the Winter but when summer comes it could be all over. Basically you need good air flow in there, it will get hot, AC is recommended over all. If you do decide to go this route without AC at least use the largest case you can for better airflow, not a micro ATX case or a Cube case, and add multiple fans, and keep the Window open. You also want to pick the PC hardware right for lower temps, like just a micro ATX board with onboard video, just a single HDD, no DVD, no Video card, 1 strip of memory, and a slower Core 2 Duo like a 2.4 or 2.6 Ghz as you want that to run fast but not too fast otherwise it gets much hotter, can even leave speedstep enabled to lower the temps some more but depends on the software and cameras installed whether they can run that slow (eg 1200 mhz instead of 2400 mhz). And a nice big full ATX case or even a 4 U Rack case with room for alot of case fans incoming and outgoing. Typically yes but it can vary. For network streaming they are typically not as good. If thats your main concern and are willing to work on the cooling of the PC and realize there is always the slight chance it may have issues no matter what you do as long as there is no AC there, at least in the Summer, then the PC DVR will give you more options for streaming video, at least I can say Geovision will - havent used Avermedia or some others but many others do give those options as well.

Practical might not be an option, what kind of environment is this going in? If its too hot then a PC DVR will likely not last, even a stand alone may have issues but Ive found they do a much better job in extreme temps due to their hardware being much more basic, small tiny board with slow onboard processor and not much else. In extreme heat the hard drives normally go first. This isnt just a home or business PC, being a DVR it is writing all the time so its going to get hot in there. Since you are also in the Tropics, like me, if there is no AC or at least no fan then go for a basic stand alone IMO. Less features but it stands more chance of lasting in that case - less network streaming options and also less evidence sharing features then a decent PC DVR card.

Not with all DVRs, it varies alot now, especially with Stand Alone DVRs. In fact back in the day it was a single connection and that affected all the cameras, just connect and that was it, no choice on which cameras to stream it streamed all of them - alot of new DVRs out there like that also. Some let you setup the view prior to connecting as you mentioned with 4, 8, or 16 etc. and it only connects to those But whats becoming popular now though among the Chinese and Korean DVRs is login to the DVR, then play each camera individually, or setup which cameras you want to stream when you setup the connection prior to connecting. Just changing views normally does not pause the stream of the other cameras, it just hides them from the user, thats what gives you the fast display when changing views otherwise there can be a delay as that channel reconnects/replays - differs greatly among DVRs.

Yes but you need 2 separate modems.

You want a DVR with separate encoding between the recording and the network video, it is rare in Stand Alones so you might want to build a PC DVR - even where they claim dual stream in most cases the 2nd stream is next to useless. I know for a fact Geo would work, you can set the quality and the codec, their H.264 codec is really low quality, so at 300K Upload for example Im getting real time on a 4 channel DVR card, a 16 channel card at the same location is much slower though. Ive also used DSL down here ONCE for remote video but not using their H.264 compression, 4 cameras came in really slow but good quality, with H.264 the image is much smaller so would be faster. You mention your upload speed is much less? The DSL here was max 128K upload but is normally in the 80-90 range. Its pushing it when you go 8 cameras or more but if you keep the streaming image size down using H.264 and lower quality then it should or might work fine. I just stay away from DSL here. Better quality would be a camera without IR for indoors or adding the IR or motion light separate to a better quality camera, but if you must use IR and are on a budget then any Color IR 1/3" camera should work, just check the lens option as well and dont point it at door or window, for that you might want to either point it inside instead, or get a more expensive WDR camera that can handle the backlight. Not all cameras are made alike also, even when they have similar specifications.

Try changing the video encoding down to CIF only, that way it will be less processing going on. If that gets rid of the problem then you know its the CPU and or memory and basically need a newer computer. I had the same problem with an old PC DVR recently, all the DVR company had was the new software, but it was maxing out the CPU and although there were no blue screens .. it would freeze up and shut down alot, especially if I tried to get in on Ultra VNC. Ofcourse in that case they also had very little memory (256) so that was also part of the problem although the page file would take over anyway. We had already replaced the HDD and the PSU as those had been bad, and added a couple new fans and cleaned it out and removed unnecessary hardware, everything short of a New computer. Turning everything down to CIF and medium quality made it at least work for now. Another thing I did was put it on continuous record as the motion record also seemed to raise the CPU usage alot, and audio was disabled in the DVR software, they had a mic. Heat was also an issue in the room where it was due to lack of any fan or AC but that didnt cause it to get hot enough to shut down, surprisingly.

The Spot monitor output on that card is a composite RCA output, so you would connect that to the AV Input on the LCD, eg, RCA input. In Spot monitor setup you can tell it which mutliview you want, and which cameras to go where, OR leave Spot Monitor disabled and it just mirrors the DVR's multiview minus the GUI. Optionally you could use an HDMI, VGA or other output from the PC to that input on the LCD, but that just clones the entire DVR screen including the GUI.

I think he means their routers or if they dont have one he puts one in place.

Hi, upload to tinypic then post the links here. If they dont post for some reason, leave off the HTTP:// and I will edit the post and put that in.

Maybe bad memory, its at that point that its doing alot in memory as well, the software may be writing to memory huge chunks of data to convert to video .. I think, depends on the software .. check the task manager when you are doing this if you can, and see how high the memory usage goes, also check the CPU usage. If this is an older CPU with new software it might not be fast enough and max out and then its all over. Memory is easy to check, if its 2 strips then remove one and if needs more memory it can always use the page file on the hard drive, try each strip of memory separately.

Take off the floppy, and the DVD unless you really use it - could use USB for evidence sharing instead. Disable them in the BIOS also. Can you cut these 4 hard drives down to just 1, or 2? 1TB or even 2TB is not expensive these days. Power supply could just be failing, perhaps change it? Motherboard or PCI Port/Bus could be bad also. Try another PCI slot? Was this computer ever on any kind of Voltage Regulator or Line Conditioner? If not expect failures unless you have perfect electric. Is anything getting too hot, like one of the hard drives? Its a hardware issue generally, so you need to swap out hardware until you find the culprit, or at least disable it in Windows or better yet the BIOS. Anything errors come up in the System log? Otherwise 430 should be fine with current hardware but you have alot of other hardware on that with all those drives, fans, video card, etc and its also old and can draw more current.

Ok thanks, good info