Mr. T

If you are using non shielded cat 5e/6/6a cable than using a shielded connector is senseless, if you are expecting a high level of RF interference then using a shielded cable/connector and proper grounding, bonding and signal drain is imperative to a successful implementation. Good luck and best wishes!

We use these guys for small installations they are a rebranded HIKVision www.arcvisioncctv.com 1-OK 2-Yes very simple setup 3-You will almost surely not be able to store 24x7x365 from 4 cameras without spending a LOT on storage so unless you have a LOT to spend on storage fogettaboutit 4-The only time it would touch your internet is when it is being viewed off site otherwise no 5-If you really wanted to record four 2 MP cameras at 15 fps 24x7x265 it would cost you 52,349 GB of storage or 52.349 Terabytes, nobody records like that anymore but if you want to your going to need some serious hardware! 6-This NVR supports 2-4TB HDD http://www.arcvisioncctv.net/index.php?option=com_virtuemart&view=productdetails&virtuemart_product_id=208&virtuemart_category_id=22&Itemid=541 and some other features you want but it only works with its cameras. 7-You can adjust resolution on most IP cameras up to what they are capable of and down to super crap useless. 8-For your case I would say the above link or a HIKvision NVR. Good Luck and best wishes!

Assuming you are in the USA, GSS is where I purchase Dahua cameras http://www.gogss.com/ I am a CCTV installer not an end user though, not sure your situation but distribution doesn't typically sell to end users.\ Good luck and best wishes!

Well sir it sounds like you are biting off quite a large helping of pain in the arse with this but lets see if I can help a little. First let me say that typically analytics for 20-30 IP cams are going to be handled by there own server unless they are edge based analytics in which case they have no effect on the server. If they are handled by the server I would suggest looking into whoever manufactured them they will have specific requirements for their software. The second part of your question can vary quite a lot depending on what codec the camera will transmit its video to your server with, for example a camera that is streaming using an h.264 codec will be more cpu intensive because it has to be decoded by the computer whereas a camera that is using mjpeg will require less cpu, however the inverse is true of network utilization so be careful when considering which to use if bandwith is an issue. Third and also quite important to the first of your questions is whether or not you will utilize the server for client side software i.e. viewing and playback of the cameras. This step is usually quite cpu intensive and I personally wouldn't recommend for a 30 camera system. Basically look at distributing your system a bit and you will have a much more pleasant end result. Question 2 is going to vary based on your risk tolerance, in other words how valuable is this video? RAID configurations vary largely and can get quite expensive, however if you want to make sure you will never lose video go with a replicated RAID 6 or RAID 60, for video that if a HDD fails no big deal use a RAID 0 and happy days, its really up to you (customer) as to how much to spend and how ok they are with losing video. (In relation to this question be sure to spend the extra money and get HDD's that can handle w/r all the time and have the speeds to match how much video you are pushing to them at any given moment). Question 3 GPU's are used with some VMS client software, where camera recording is concerned it is not really considered. Exacq Vision client software will use GPU as well as Milestone, you have to check the specs of the VMS you are using to see if it will. Question 4 I have worked with Exacq, Milestone, and ONNSI, all are very feature rich and support varying levels of integration with different products (access control, analytics etc) you have to research starting from the analytics side to find which one suits your needs/price range the best. Good luck and best wishes!

Hey guys I am working with the HikVision DS-2DF7286-AEL using it to record a person coming down a zip line and then sell the video to tourists, works pretty well since its a 600' zip line and straight to boot, however I am using alarm triggers on the camera to trigger the pattern to activate and with that a little icon pops up on the picture to let me know that the alarm has been triggered, is there any way anyone here knows to get rid of that? Also has anyone used the NAS storage option with this camera and found that its average video clip is 250 mb for 30 seconds worth of video? Were you able to resolve this somehow?