cctv_down_under

if you do it manualy you can overwrite the existind data or what would be better would be to set third party softwrae to back up when you choose.. backing up a full 200GB takes some time, so you may want to see if third party software will allow you to incrementally back up

an email... what good is that.. it is not truley watermarked and it is not the full event and it is not instantanious.. Actually it wasnt me.. its juts you slag off at PC based products all the time... and you slag off about Aisan products.. when your so LOVED kalatel... is both made in Asia and a PC???? My DVR must be Australian made then huh... coz it is assembled here.. guess that means that Toyata is an australian Brand now ass they manufacture them here too... You knew exactly what i meant.. your paying a lot for name brand that is THE SAME as a cheaper alternative... yes Asians do not make things look as nice but thats where making your own comes in..The Kalatel is a RIP OFF at its price and everyone knows it... sure it is a fine machine but way overpriced and Made in Asia! Easy to install...yes...Simpler to use... No.. More stable.. barely...More secure...Yes...Longer recording..Incorrect.. Cheaper...Incorrect. 1/The Kalatel storesafe that i tried was an Ugly grey colour,,,,also it had a white Cd rom... it looked very ugly indeed compared to the nice racks we build 2/The system does not Frame buffer so you only get the frames you set it at.. so you only record at slowest possible settings pre configured.. yes there is alarm settings but Geo does it on the fly! 3/ It only has two levels of password 4/ The remote softwrae is way beyond sucky 5/ it wont broadcast live events on motion.. only emails 6/ It can only do 16 I/O relays 7/ You cant play back the AVI files on a standard computer 8/Only has a 2x digital zoom 9/ There is no control room software.... 10/ No PDA support 11/ One compression type 12/ 1 Channel of audio only 13/ No audio is recorded unless motion events actually occur 14/ It crashes from time to time 15/ There is no multicasting support 16/ No Point of Sale Support 17/ No motion Tracking 18/ No traffic counting 19/ No object counting 20/ No listening to live audio 21/ No sending Live audio 22/ No thumbnail View 23/ No mpeg4 24/ No Dynamic DNS support 25/ No CPU throttling 26/ No camera pop up? 27/ No 8 x zoom 28/ Limited PTZ support 29/ No despatch server The thing costs far too much for what it does not do... mind you it is not bad

Rory I would be prepared as mentioned before to prove that it is a myth about stabilty issues with PCI cards...and you know it..... I can prove it by showing the Uptime of my Demo box...as for 60FPS being enough.. I agree it is satisfactory but faster is better, most Standalones do not do frame buffering therefore, the spread of frams is direct and that makes for 10FPS per channel... at this peed I could steal someithng quickly or run through a building and only have a few decent shots... if 60 Fps was enough then why do I sell more 100FPS systems and why has Geo started to phase out the slower cards.. it is only recognised as enough because that is all that standalones will do.... I personally think 50 FPS is only JUST enough for 16 cameras, remembering that you almost half that frame rate when recording the largest images... besides.. what is the cost onthe Kalatel 50FPS machine??? Good point... but lets just run a scenario... you get brocken into and someone steals your DVr or smashes it.... thats not real good if you want o cacth them.. geo can transmit the video on motion to anohter location.. hell you can even listen in...then you have the video stored elsewhere...does the kalatel do that? are you aware that an eprom is more succeptable to problems than a HDD, spikes etc can render it useless and you can always re do a HDD of a PC! That is garbage about reliable name brand.. you can buy Polo Ralph Lauren Jeans or Levi's both are awesome quality.. one is a higher name brand.. that does not make it better and it contradicts the components... Your kalatel is not made in the US only assembled there, you have compnents made in Korea and Taiwan in that machine so essentialy it is an Asian DVr, I bet moneyt hat the whole mainbord comes from Asia. I like the G.E gear I had the Kalatel guy here today, he picked up his unit.. it is nice but it is also very overpriced.. which is a big issue when you get to the higher end units and is always an issue when dealing with big companies... The point is G.E sell direct now.. the reason is that they do not sell these high end machines enough and the PCI cards are better and people are waking up to it, this is why they had to can their distributors in order to sell to more people... look I dont hat standalones, but at this point for me they are not as functional as the Geo... not even close and the cost 3 times as much.. so why would you use one... only for extreeme cases where a PC is not suitable... look at the posts for DVR cards and look at the posts for Standalones...which has the most?

i ahve a few second hand copies if you want one!

It may well be that the card does do it... you need to turn on the function under the system configure... it is above or below the de-interlace renderer.. It may be possible that the guy who sold it to you uses a different driver? Or it may just be that I am a loud mouthed know it all...

I agree and disagree with you Rory,,,, 60FPS is SLOW.. I know its faster than timelapse but who does that naymore.. On average a standalone that is AFFORDABLE is only 25Fps to get to 50Fps it is way too expensive for a standalone machine... Funny that people that are so into standlones always say it is fast enough... with Geovision you can choose between 16, 25, 50, 75, 100, 200, 400 Fps... The Gv600 (25Fps is about to be discontinued and I sell more Gv800 (100Fps) than any other card.. so go figure.. I would say that 50 Fps is adequate but way too expensive for a machine that can not be upgraded easily and is limited in features.. Mind you the Kalatel is the second best standalone I have seen, it really is quite impressive.. the main reason is its PC based architecture which allows for development....what happens when the video chip dies or the CPU in a standlone... you have to pull the whole machine out... with a PC it is as simple as changing the component.

Better not too... he might want to return it for warranty!

I must admit i wondered how you knew so much PAT... just joking.. it is an awesome read.. but a bit heavy for the everyday user..still Valdo is a great guy and he knows more about the technology than any man I have ever met!

Not just that...they probably have personalised plates..best bet is to loan one of their systems and get them a HDD of plates to work with.. i had a lok at their demos, their is no co-alation.. it loks like just swapping images.. be carefull.

You will probably find that geo has turned it off because it knows your video card does not support direct draw overlay rendering.....or you have the wrong driver, check the manual on the video card, you proabably have a card thsat does not support it... you can enable the fullscreen.. (direct draw) in the system configure menu then you can choose it from the front screen...but only if your card supports it.. sorru but I have never tried that brand of Geforce 4..it should have it if it is a PRO version.

I think it is only necessary if you use a video card that does nto have it as part of its default software....What video card did you use...be carefull not oo turn on video overlay for fullscreen or rendering if your video card does not support it.

http://www.cctvlabs.com/Books/book.html This is my Bible. The other books I would suggest are the "Network +" C.O.M.P.T.I.A Course And the INET+ by the same mob. If you are really keen you could complete a MCSE Course but that is overkill for what you need to kow, the best bet is to get gear that alows for the highest bandwidth, and make sure all Repeaters, Hubs, Nics, routers etc are all rated for the same speeds. Seriously, that book is absolutely awesome!

I think a lot of them will go to rom storage soon, it is getting rather large in size now and takes up such little space

Gee ...poor Geo

Send me an email picture of the board and I might be able to find something for you.

What compression is it?

Geovision already has this feature!.... You may find it does not work in your neck of the woods, because your plates are different to the ones they designed the program for.

If you are getting two pictures of 4 frozen it is probably a Video Card issue? You can not use onboard Video with Geovision and to use AGP you must disable the onbaord graphics chip or to be sure, use a mainboard that does not have one....Do not use SIS or VIA? If you take a screen shot and send it to me then I will take a look. It could be that you actually have a crook card though. The database repair tool, does not repair corrupted AVI files, it just makes the index TRY to ignore them, therefore you probably still have corrupted files. The AVI repair tool does fix this problem.....also you may want to note that if you upgraded your software you should have cleared the logs...especially on version 6. To check for corruption... go to the video folder where your files are kept...open each camera folder and check the dates... if the folders you see in the camera folder run in order (they are in date order) and there arent really old ones or ones that are out of sequence then you are probably ok. If they aren't in order then they are probably containing corrupted data... if you open this folder with the old date and there are only a few files.. then they probably wont play in windows media player if they are corrupted...remember though if you delete them, then run the Repair Data Base Tool to repair the index.... Because it takes so long to check each one, there is an alternative....Open the video folder...click the camera folder...then at the top of the tool bar, change your view to thumbnail view...if the files are ok inside each date folder then you will see the folder change to show a small picture inside the folder as a preview, if they do not change then you probably have corrupted files. Yes they are often caused in normal operation... and this goes FOR ALL DVR devices that are not behind a UPS device that communicates with the PC for shutdown....and before you say you have one,...does yours have Buck and Boost... you see power will drop or sag and if your UPS is not INLINE or does not have Buck or Boost then you can easily corrupt an AVI. The reason Builders of machines charge more is because of this Knowledge and they need to provide support.... Also what are the cams that play up... disconnect those two and switch two working ones to those ports....but make sure to remove them form a single power supply if used on their own... you see DVR is 1.1V Peak to Peak where standard monitors only need 1V peak to peak.....and cheaper cams sometimes do not cut the grade...or cameras on long runs...It may be signal problem...But my guess it is one faulty chip or badly loaded softwrae without direct x 9 ..which number ports are playing up? I hope this helped,

Running DVr screens minimised is actually an awesome Idea, it would stop a lot of screen burn in... I do not believe in screen savers as they can cause problems.

Thank you... I had yet to finish it at that stage.. it was written while a bit tipsy, so thank you very much.. i have some other good gear that I should post up on here!

Firstly, Using system restore will cause corrupted files, that cause your question marks, the Index gets stuffed if you keep changing the dates all the time. Secondly, you need to format that partition that you are writing to ...and not a quick format option... you have corruption and it will cause you problems untill you get rid of it. Thirdly, after you format the partition you need to re map it and run the database repair Utility.. otherwise you still have corruptions, their are Geo options without the hassles, you could buy a built machine form someone. Lastly, the system will reboot if you do not turn off the cameras that arent connected, this must be done in two places and the ports must be limited... this is not a flaw... this is because it is looking for the cameras that you are telling it are connected.....I dont think there is much wrong with your system other than corrupted AVI files.

The Ptz will need to be housed, ....the heat will attract the elements, for your porch camera, I would use a wedge mounted housing with a built in heater, you can get them with windscreen wipers as well.

No...they ar3 half in the ceiing and half out, it is far less intusive.. or go for the Ganz spotlight camera... expensive but looks just like a silver spotlight.

Have you treid recessed dome housings?

It is very simple... you have four choices.. 1/ Add a removable drive bay of the same size and manually ..once a month or whenever the drive gets full... run the Geo Backup program and back it up to this drive and remove it form the machine. 2/ Add a rmovable drive bay of the same size, use the windows back up program or a third party program, browse to the folders you wish to back up (the events) and tell the softwrae when you want them to be automatically backed up. 3/ Add two more HDD's of the same size and a Raid controller (if not already built into a machine), set your raid level for striping raid and then you have the data spread over three drives, this is great because if one of the drives dies then you can get its info back from the other two.. in other words if drive 1 dies, you can plug another one into the raid array and it will rmemeber what was on the drive that died and will repaitr itself... this can be expensive with SCSI but is well worth it... you can do it with IDE as well. Eventualy a drive will die.. so this is the safest way. 4/ Buy an external Raid array back up box, it connects via ethernet cable and has its own I.P. address... you can then back up on schedule or automatically and you can hotswop as many drives as you like, this would be the most expensive!