theTastyCat

TOM...whoever you are, wherever you are, please know that YOU SAVED THE DAY TODAY. The issue was INSTANTLY fixed when I went from 265+ to 264. I can't tell you how great it was to see all six of my cams running in basically the one and only program that was resource-light enough to monitor all six cams live. Every day we have a million reasons online to lose faith in the human race - but there are people like you who give their time and effort to helping complete strangers. You make up for all the rest! Others had suggested either buying an NVR or getting a different program - just buying the commercial version of my software would be $120 - and even then, no guarantees it would work!! Again, I seriously cannot thank you enough. Wish I could buy you a cup of coffee at least! Thanks to you, all six cams are recording - gives some pretty good peace of mind. Hope you have a great night - you certainly made mine.

Good idea - will try it tomorrow! Thank you!

Hey all - I'm using Genius Vision as NVR software because it's free for the six channels I need and it's not a resource hog on the old PC I'm using as a PCNVR. It's worked great to this point with six 3MP Hik turrets; one died and I replaced it with an 8MP Hik turret. Picture is fantastic, by the way! Only issue is getting it to work with the software. It would not come up no matter what I did - thankfully someone told me that Hik has disabled ONVIF by default in the new firmware. I switched ONVIF back on for this cam and it literally crashed the program - "Genius Vision has encountered a problem and needs to close." So I close it, it auto-restarts, and says "no connection" - that one cam being ONVIF just basically destroys this software. Tonight I went to far as to reinstall iVMS and get it all configured (which wasn't simple), just to remember that it is a resource hog in comparison, at least on this old PC I'm using. And it is super-cumbersome to review footage. So I'm back to trying to get this last (and brand new!) cam working on this old system - any ideas why this new Hik turret, when set to ONVIF, is freaking out the software? Perhaps there's an additional setting I need to be using when I make it ONVIF? I haven't had any luck setting it up as just an IP cam - for whatever reason Hikvision isn't one of the 100 manufacturers listed. I am extremely grateful for any help you can give!

When I didn't hear back I ordered the 8MP; planning in running it in 5MP/30 for now to still have fluid FPS. Figure it would be silly to buy another 3MP when I can at least have 5MP clarity with the same framerate. By "reasonable", I'm thinking around $125; that's about the price point that my 3MP Hiks were 4 or 5 years ago when I bought them, and the 8MP I just ordered was around there as well. Eventually 4k/30fps Hik turrets will exists and will come down to around there; I'm looking forward! I do have the capability to view 4k, just not on the PCNVR. Also, the PCNVR and cams are not connected to the internet, so if I really want to see a certain clip in 4k, I'll put it on a flash drive and view in on my good PC.

Ok - the more I thought about it the less sense it made! Yes, it is an IP system. I do have a 4k monitor, but not connected to the PCNVR, but I'd certainly like the 4k so I can zoom in and still have pretty clear resolution. Surely I could still view the video on my non-4k monitor, albeit a lower resolution? So any idea if 4k/30 is on the horizon for a decent price? May just replace it with a 3mp while I wait - or is the 5mp/30 mode worth it on the current 8mp turrets? Thanks a lot!

Wow, hasn't realized that - assumed I could mix and match cameras. Really? Just going to a PC as an NVR - anything I can do to use different resolution cameras together?

Hey all - just had a Hik 3MP turret go bad because I hadn't properly sealed the connector against the weather; the little black spot inside the connection tells me some water got in and fried it. So I need to replace it with another turret, and I've had great luck with my other 5 Hikvision turrets that are now four+ years old and going strong. 4k is certainly tempting, but it seems like it's not worth dropping below 30fps to get. Any idea how far we are from reasonably-priced 4k/30fps? Should I just replace the camera with another 3MP for now? Or is it worth upgrading for the 8MP Hik turret's 5MP/30fps? Would it still do OK at night? Many thanks for the advice!!

Not a bad guess. Actually, I've been through this with their tech support people and they claimed it was something wrong with my brandy-new 2 TB HDD. Interestingly enough,I believe I had a similar issue with the Hivision vms software - maybe I'll reinstall it and see what happens.

Man, I would be delighted to make this work; I attached my config storage screen. Sorry - I tried to upload it to Photobucket but it's being ridiculous! I *did* check "enable quota management" on my dedicated HDD; that's the only thing I can think to do that I haven't already. So perhaps it will work! Doesn't seem to make any sense - it's got this huge HDD to fill, and it just overwrites this tiny part over and over. These settings sure look good to me...man, so frustrating! Thanks again for the help!

Gotcha - thank you! Too bad...I really did like how GV was laid out and it used very little of the CPU. I've tried getting help from their "tech support" several times, but all they could do for me was confirm that I had the right settings like the "config storage" window. I also reinstalled to no avail. Any other recommendations for good, free, non-resource-hog PCNVR software? Thanks again!

Hey all - I plead complete and thorough ignorance here. I've built myself a dedicated PCNVR with an extra 2 TB HDD just for the video files. I'm using GeniusVision as my software; the cams record on motion just fine, but I'm not even getting one day of footage. It refuses to use more than just the tiniest sliver of space on this 2 TB drive. I've researched this as much as I possibly can, and it keeps coming back to something about disk quotas. Do I need an NAS? Not even entirely sure what that is! Is that a way to manage the drive perhaps? GeniusVision does recognize my H drive as having 1862 usable GB, so I don't think that's the problem, and neither did their tech support. When I log in to the Hikvision cams under "storage management", there is *no* drive recognized under "HDD Device List." Maybe it will only recognize a drive once I've made it somehow legit with an NAS? Many, many thanks, guys! This project is almost done...but my last of expertise has caught up with me! Thanks in advance for your help.

Lo and behold - I was able to answer my own question! In Genius Vision: Go to Camera Setup for the individual cam then Video Setup then the Advanced tab then check Event.Template and select ET01. ET01 worked for me and my Hik 3332s, but different cams may need a different value. Then be sure to disable all software motion detection as well as Camera Setup/Video Setup/Record tab, uncheck VideoDetect. My CPU is hanging out around 40% now - much better!

Hey all - I'm setting up to use 6 or 8 Hikvision 3MP turret cams with an old PC I've made into an NVR. Hikvision's iVMS-4200 software, just with two cams running, was regularly running at 100% CPU usage. I've been playing with Genius Vision, and CPU usage for two cams is now 40-50%, which is great. However, methinks I might be able to get it down even further if I can just use the cams' built-in motion detection rather than having to do it through the software; I believe I have the cams configured correctly for motion, but how do I get Genius Vision to recognize this? I'd never figure this out in a million years - many thanks for any help! Another reason I'm looking to get CPU usage down (in addition to only having 1/4 of the cams running at the moment) is that I've got the NVR and POE switches on UPSes so that the system will continue to run for a bit in the event of a power outage, and every bit I can bring the CPU usage down translates into longer runtime. Many, many thanks, all!!

Please ignore me, I am an idiot. I somehow got my tethered internet's IP confused with the local IP. Ridiculous! Logged in just fine now. I'll be back when I break something else Many thanks, all.

Hey all - I apologize for what I'm sure is the very elementary nature of this post, but my little head has been about scratched out. I'm setting up my first IP cam, a Hikvision 3332 turret. I've got it connected to AC power and plugged directly into my PC/DVR (it's temporarily got internet tethered through my phone, but usually will not). I'm trying to access the camera through my browser. I downloaded SADP, and the camera appears and allows me to change things. When I run ipconfig, here's what I get: IP: 192.168.19.2 Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0 Default gateway: 192.168.19.1 So, using SADP, I set the camera as follows: IP: 192.168.19.3 Port: 8000 Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0 IPv4 gateway: 192.168.19.1 When I run cmd and put in "ping 192.168.19.3 -t", I pretty soon get "request timed out." I disabled AVG and turned off Windows Firewall, but still no ping and no browser access. Any pointers? I'm sure this is pretty elementary...so thank you for your patience with me! Many thanks, all!