CNLivesOn

Hi, glad to have found this forum - any assistance would be much appreciated. I have an H.264 DVR (no name brand) which I'm struggling to set up. It was working OK (not great but OK) but now it's not picking up everything I need it to and there are some settings I don't understand (the instruction manual is, shall we say, less than helpful) so I have a list of questions I'd like to ask if you don't mind (It's a wired system, I'm using motion detection after hours and viewing the files on the DVR or dowloading relevant files that I want to keep to a stick, no internt connection or anything like that): Under Main Menu - Record - Record Conf there is something called 'Redundancy' it is not checked. What is that and should I check it? In the same place 'Prerecord' is set to 5 seconds. I assume this means I would get the 5 seconds before the motion detection kicked in - am I correct? Because I don't, it only seems to start recording a second or two after the motion is detected which is a problem. Under Main Menu - Alarm - Motion Detect I have Enabled the motion detection, set the sensitivity and the region and set the period of activity. There is an otpion called 'Interval' which is set to 1 second. What is that interval and what should it be set on? Neither Video Blind or Video Loss are enabled - what are they and should they be enabled? I'd like the best picture quality I can get (it's not great at the moment) Under Main Menu - System - Encode I have a variety of resolution options. It was set to CIF (352 x 288). I changed it to D1 (704x576) thinking the resolution would be higher - is that the right thing to do do you think? The third option is HD1 (704x288). The bit rate type is VBR (other option is CBR), the Frame Rate (FPS) is 25 (highest) and the Bit Rate (kb/s) is 2560 and can't be changed. The 1 Frame Interval is set to 2 - what is this and should I increase it / decrease it? I also changed the GUI Display resolution to 1920 x 1080 and then the system said it needed to be rebooted after which it said 'Not Optimum Mode, Recommended Mode 1600 x 900 60Hz - ANALOG' - is this becuase I changed the GUI resolution or is it connected to the changes I made under 'Encode' and what does it mean? Is it a problem? Finally under Main Menu - Advanced - Device Info there is something called 'Maximum Playback Large' which is set to 4 - what is this and should I change it? It also says 'Default playback large' which is not selected - can you tell me what that is? Sorry for the long list of questions, any help would be so much appreciated I'm totally alone with this and not a technical person at all. Thanks! CN

Thank you so much. What a pleasure to be talking to people who know about this stuff. Much much appreciated.