Wallboy

Thanks for this. Do you or anyone else have a link to the manual for the SwannView Plus+ PDF Manual. I'm unable to locate it on Swann's website.

Hi, I'm going to be installing a surveillance system for our local business and after a little bit of research I think I will be going for an IP Based system, most likely Camera/NVR bundled system and have a few questions, mostly regarding remote viewing capabilities. The Budget will be around $1000 initially and to have an option to add more cameras if needed. We were thinking of starting with a 4 camera system with a 8 channel NVR as 8 cameras is more than we probably would ever need. Was mostly reading about the Lorex/Swann/Q-See systems. After looking at some of the more popular mentioned systems mentioned here on the forum and reading some of the manuals for each system. I have a few questions regarding the remote viewing capabilities. We would like to be able to view the system remotely from both our mobiles and PC. It seems most systems have Apps or come with them for remote viewing, but some systems have limited remote viewing capability from say a PC. Some seem to only have software that support MAC or certain browsers (Internet Explorer eww). The article I read about remote viewing an IP camera on networkcameracritic's website seems to be saying that it doesn't matter and that any browser can access a camera remotely from entering the IP of the camera into the browser. So I'm guessing the only point of software for remote viewing is a nice interface between all the cameras, but is unnecessary for single camera viewing? Also which stream is it viewing? The main stream or the substream? The way I understand it is that mainstream is the stream you'll always be seeing on the local network of the NVR, and the substream is for remote mobile/PC viewing. However if I was on a PC on the local network and accessed the camera via it's IP address in an browser, would I only be able to see the substream? Is the mainstream only viewable from the HDMI/VGA ports on the NVR itself? We plan only to use these ports for initial setup, then would like to use LAN to access the mainstream of all the cameras from a local PC on the network. Another thing we would like is full control over resolution/framerate/bitrate of the substream. It seems most software that comes with these systems only support up to CIF resolution. Not sure why they would do this if the internet connection upload is very good on the IP Camera network. Would be nice to see a good quality image from home on a PC and not some low res stream. Do most of you guys use third party software to get passed these limitations? If anyone with a Lorex/Swann/Q-See system could chime in about some of my questions, it would be appreciated, Thanks.

Just found these: Grandstream GXV3672_FHD. Similar priced to the Hikvision/Dahua and support 2 streams, both can run up to HD resolution. Anyone have any experience with these cameras?

Hmm not sure why the Hikvision manual says it does. Not surprising though as they are similarly priced.

The Dahua seems to only support 2 streams according to both Q-See and Dahua's manual. The mainstream and the D1 max res limited substream. The Hikvision cameras manual says it supports up to a third stream. I was wondering what settings you can configure this third stream for. Is it possible to have both a 1080p and 720p stream coming from these Swann/Hik cameras?

Ok after a bit more researching again, I noticed that the Q-See cameras are really Dahua cameras and the Swann/Lorex are Hikvision cameras. Out of curiosity, I looked at the manuals for the Dahua/HikVision respectively and found something interesting. In the manual for the Dahua camera it says the camera supports two streams: the mainstream, and the substream, where the substream max resolution is D1. No different then what Q-See states. However for the Hikvision camera, in the manual it says "Select the Stream Type of the camera to main stream (normal), sub-stream or third stream. The main stream is usually for recording and live viewing with good bandwidth , and the sub-stream and third stream can be used for live viewing when the bandwidth is limited." The mention of a third stream caught my eye, as the Swann version of the camera mentions only the mainstream and substream. But I happened to notice many people have been flashing their Swann/Lorex NVR firmware to Hikvision to take advantage of a slightly higher megapixel image. By doing this, would it also unlock that third stream? And can that third stream be higher quality than D1? Can anyone with a Swann/Lorex 1080p IP cameras with Hikvision firmware see what kind of limits the substream and this "third" stream has? Could the Dahua have a worse processor than the Hikvision that it can't encode two high quality streams? I looked at some of the more higher end cameras that get talked about here: Axis/Acti/Vivotek, etc and most of those cameras have 2+ streams with full customization of resolution and bitrate for each. But these are out of our price range unfortunately. If the Hikvision cameras have better processors in them that they can handle 3 streams I'll probably go that route and get either Swann or Lorex and flash the firmware. Though it does seem most prefer Q-See out of these 3 brands. I know I'm probably asking for more out of these cameras then what they cost, I'm a bit OCD about best bang for the buck. Thanks again guys.

Alright so back to square one I guess lol. You mention changing the resolution on the camera would change it on both channels. The way I thought it worked, is the camera runs at it's native resolution no matter what, so the signal that goes into the NVR would be 1080p uncompressed (for a 1080p camera of course), then it's up to the NVR h264 encoder to determine what resolution/bitrate/etc that stream will output to on a particular channel. Just as you can take a video file on a PC and use an h264 encoder to encode the stream multiple times however you see fit. I guess it doesn't work this way with NVRs? I didn't know the cameras themselves had to have 2 "sources" to be able to do this. There would be no way to "split" the PoE cable coming from the camera so I could connect it into two ports on the NVR, making the NVR think it really is two separate cameras? Or would I be better off buying the cameras and a NVR separately that would suit my needs? Any recommendations for around $1000? Edit: After reading the manuals for the cameras themselves, they are actually doing the encoding and not the NVR. So this wouldn't work at all. I really would need cameras with multiple stream capabilities. Kinda wonder why NVR's are so expensive then if all they are really doing is moving the encoded stream from the cameras to a HDD...

Again, we're not concerned so much about smartphone remote viewing, but remote viewing from a PC. I understand you can view the mainstream from remote, but want to keep the mainstream high bitrate for good quality and local viewing. Viewing that same mainstream from a remote PC would probably exceed our current networks upload speed, especially if viewing more than one camera at once. So the only other option than would be to view the low resolution substream from a remote PC. According to MindTwist, I can duplicate each camera on it's own channel, I can set the full resolution and bitrate mainstream for local viewing and set the duplicated channel to my own custom resolution mainstream that will be more suitable for remote viewing from a PC instead of being forced to 240p/480p from the substream. The quote I pulled from the Q-See QC NVR manual wasn't talking about duplicating a window, it was talking about after you initially hook up the system and are finding your cameras via IP search: "Clicking on IP Search will refresh this list. Simply click on the desired camera from the list and it will become the camera for that channel. Please note that it is possible to load a camera which is already in use by another channel. In which case, you will have two identical channels." Does this not mean that when I'm finding my cameras on the NVR, I could potentially add the same camera multiple times until all channels are filled and each of those channels would have it's own mainstream encoding settings? Yeah I have and it wouldn't be the end of the world if we are forced to only see D1 from a remote PC, but still would like at least 720p remote viewing. If you have any extra channels on your Q-See NVR, can you check in the software where you can manually add an IP of a camera, if you can add the same camera twice and have it on it's own channel so you can set a custom mainstream quality settings for it? Thanks.

Interesting. I didn't know you could change the quality of the mainstream PER camera. Thought it was global settting for all cameras. Edit: After re-reading the manual, doh! Sure enough you can do this. I was so fixed on reading the substream sections in the manual lol. We did plan on buying an 8 channel NVR with 4 cameras initially, but I'm not exactly sure what you mean about "that way you can have each camera two times" Does this mean I hook plug each camera into TWO of the PoE ports on the NVR? How do I go from one cable from camera into two ports on the NVR? Splitter? PoE Switch? "and you can have 4 stream on each camera, with 2 of them being able to go to the max settings." So by 4 streams each camera, you mean the two mainstream AND substream per camera that would be available. But then you say only 2 of them can go to max settings. Don't you mean all 4? The way I would have it setup would be each camera occupying two NVR PoE ports. One being mainstream full quality for local viewing. The other being another mainstream with the quality of my choice for PC remote viewing. And that leaves 2 extra substreams per camera that could be setup for strictly mobile. Do I understand this correctly? Edit: In the Q-See QC series manual, it says "Please note that it is possible to load a camera which is already in use by another channel. In which case, you will have two identical channels." I guess this means I don't need any extra switches or cables and can duplicate a channel right within the software?

I understand D1 is more than enough for smartphones, we are more interested in remote viewing from a PC off a monitor that is at least able to see a 720p substream of the full 1080p mainstream. Viewing the mainstream remotely is a bit too much upload bandwidth on the current network, but definately enough for 720p@~2 megabit that we would like to have the substream set to.

Because from what I understand the mainstream quality is meant for local viewing only (5-8 megabit PER camera). So it is a lot of bandwidth for multiple camera remote viewing at the moment. Why is there no option inbetween these two extremes of low res/bitrate and high bitrate remote viewing. The only option I see is to really lower the bitrate of the mainstream to the point where the quality is acceptable from remote viewing off a PC.

So the highest substream quality is only 480p (D1) then? This limit is something I don't get. Why does it not let you pick the full res of the camera or at least 1.3M. It doesn't seem like it would be a technical limitation of the encoder in NVRs, as they already can encode multiple 1080p channels. It seems these software programmers assume that the only device using a substream are mobile devices. We plan on getting 1080p cameras, and just want the substream quality to be at least 720p for remote viewing, not SD resolution. Is there any third party software that works with these bundled camera/NVR systems that doesn't constrain you to SD quality substreams?

Right, but why such a large gap between the mainstream and substream quality? The substream should be able to be set as high as you would like up to the mainstream settings if wanted. I understand how QCIF/CIF resolution for smartphones is all you would ever need. But at home on a remote PC, it would be nice to have at least a 720p @ ~2 megabit view for each camera. As of right now, the internet connection upload speed on the NVR wouldn't be able to handle the mainstream bandwidth. Soon however, fiber is going to be available at the business location which then we would have no problem viewing mainstream from remote. In the Q-See QC Series NVR manual, on page 26, it says: "If you are experiencing any performance issues in your remote or mobile viewing, adjust the settings in the Extra Stream portion of the Camera Setting window. Most QC-series DVRs will only allow the use of the smaller QCIF (Quarter CIF) resolution format for this second stream." This is what had me concerned and why I made this thread. Can you confirm that you can select higher than QCIF/CIF resolution in the camera settings for the extra stream? The PSS software you mention, does it also have substream quality settings? Seems like it wouldn't as the NVR and software doing the substream encoding would have the final say on quality. Unless PSS is overriding something.