Magic of Philly

No H.264 support? Thats not good, depending on the current compression algorithm your DVR is using, it might not be hard drive space efficient, specially if its using Motion JPEG (MJPEG) among others that came before the invention of H.264 compression algorithm. So, upgrading your DVR will right of the bat give you H.264 capabilities which translates to being able to have a much broader margins of recorded days before the DVR starts deleting older footage in favor of newer footage when the hard drive rans out. And plus you will get the benefit of being able to use 1080P/3MP cameras if you go with a HiKVision TVI DVR, and wont have to replace your existing wiring, you can keep on using your existing coax setup. Mainstream. Substream is exclusively used for remove live viewing, so you can pick a way much more lower bitrate as Substream as Substream is never used to record onto the hard drive, but a lower bit-rate for substream will help you see live streams even when you have low cellphone signal, like under a low bar 3G connection with a speed of about 512 kbps (that's why on my DVR install, I set substream to resolution: 960x480 at a bit-rate of 256 kbps since I take under consideration all these factors so that customers can be able to watch live streams anywhere they are, too much of a high sub-stream bandwidth and then live viewing all of a sudden becomes mobile phone unfriendly as it will only work reliably when either with a full 4G LTE bar or when connected over a WiFi. * All remove viewing is doing is downloading recorded videos already saved on your DVR's hard drive and playing it back (streaming) to your CMS or your smartphone app, for this purpose neither "mainstream" or "substream" are being used, they are irrelevant as you cannot change the "quality" of the streamed videos once they are recorded and saved onto the DVR's hard drive(eg. you cannot adjust the quality of last week's videos, but you can adjust the quality through the Mainstream settings for videos that are to be recorded next minute and to the future), you can only change the quality for the videos to be recorded in the future so that in the future you can have a lighter bandwidth requirements when wanting to remote playback previously recorded footage (also known as bandwidth optimization - the recording of footage at a specific bit-rate that wont exceed your site's upload internet connection speed as to not cause "buffering" when playing them back remotely) Yes, whatever bitrate, FPS and Quality settings you have set on your "Mainstream" profile its used to record at that quality and save videos to your DVR. In turn when you are remotely located and open up the PC CMS software or the mobile app, it will be streaming videos that was already recorded and saved onto the DVR's hard drive utilizing your Mainstream bit-rate, quality and FPS settings. You cannot adjust the bit-rate, Quality and FPS to videos already recorded and store in the DVR's hard drive, but you can change these settings for videos that are to be recorded and stored onto the DVR's hard drive in the future (as soon as you press the Apply button and the new settings takes place then all further recordings are done using the new bit-rate, quality and FPS settings). 1. When adjusting your mainstream settings, the settings the DVR will base itself when recording and storing footage to its hard drive, you must take careful consideration your site's maximum available upload bandwidth because if you select a bitrate too high then when you want to playback a recording to see an "evidence" or an "incident" you will find yourself with lots of buffering/stuttering issues as the Site's upload internet connection speed cannot keep up with the demand. 2. You must also take under consideration your remote's location maximum DOWNLOAD bandwidth speed, this is almost a non-issue these days in year 2017 where most ISP are giving a very generous (25 mbps+) download speed so your house's download speed will almost be a non-issue and you wont have to worry about that, but your site's 5 mbps UPLOAD maximum speed yes, you do have to worry about that, its too little and its too easy to overboard that. 3. With all that said, you have to adjust your settings provided that your bit-rate is not too high in such a manner where your maximum 5 mbps upload speed wont be enough to stream your previously recorded videos without buffering/stopping here and there, and you also have to take care not to adjust the bit-rate way to low where the quality of the videos will be impaired and difficult the process of facially positively identifying a suspect, so dont set the bitrate too low for your desired frame rate, however if you lower your frame rate (FPS) way too low, then you can get away with a very little bit-rate. The rule of thumb is that the higher the FPS you desire, the higher the bit-rate has to be in order to ensure a good video quality where you have a good chance to have a positive facial identification. Many people and installers have a varying definition on what they consider "real-time", but I was told by my large CCTV supplier where I have been buying CCTV equipment since over 30 years ago that in the CCTV world, "Real-time" is considered to be 15 fps. That is the definition that I have accepted and currently do accept, for me 15 fps is considered to be "real-time" as far as CCTV is concerned. of course, 30 FPS is the real "real-time" for many non-CCTV applications like consumer video taping, etc and now the newer "real-time" has morphed into 60 FPS, specially for those blockbuster bluerays in 1080P/4K quality. But as far as CCTV is concerned, its 15 FPS for "Real Time" You can choose 7 FPS if you like, and a bit-rate of 512 kbps per frame (7 FPS * 512 KBPS = 3,584) Since you said your DVR is much older it is highly unlikely you are recording in High Definition and that your DVR is not one of those Analog High Definition ones such as HD-TVI, AHD, or CVI and your DVR most likely its a D1 only DVR, taking that under account you can further divide your bitrate by 4 since my calculation was for recording in 1080P Full HD, D1 is 1/4 of HD so you can do 512 KB / 4 = 128 KBPS, so my recommended bit-rate requirement for recording in D1 resolution would be 128 KBPS * 7 FPS = 896 KBPS way much better and under such bit-rate you shouldn't have any problems remote playing back under your site's limited 5 mbps upload internet connection. For mainstream, you can set it at 7 FPS and if the RESOLUTION is D1 (704x480) then you can set 128 KBPS per FPS, so 7 FPS * 128 KBPS = 896 KBPS per camera. If you DVR can only record in CIF resolutions (320x240) maximum, then you can further divide the bitrate by 4 since CIF is 1/4 of D1 so 128 KBPS D1 / 4 = 32 KBPS for CIF quality per frame rate, so 7 FPS * 32 KBPS = 224 kbps For Substream, if your DVR allows you to set D1 quality, then set 7 FPS per camera and 256 KBPS per camera, if your DVR does not allow D1 for substream and its capped at CIF (many older DVR's only permits CIF for substream) then you can set 7 FPS, at a bit-rate of 128 KBPS. To close, I would like to say, that if your DVR is a D1 only DVR or much worse a CIF only DVR that its time to upgrade to at least Analog High Definition TVI, you will get a much clearer picture on your recordings and the likelyhood of being able to positively identify a suspect at 1080P is much greater than at 704x480 and alot much greater than at 320x240. If you would like to keep on using your existing old DVR, then you can do so, but as soon as something critical fails, instead of replacing the failed component, such as the hard drive, just get a TVI DVR, you will even be able to continue to use your existing cameras and gradually upgrade cameras one by one to 1080P/3M ones. Your security is further improved the better and sharper your videos can look.

The problem location has an internet connection whose DOWNSTREAM (download) speed is 60 mbps and UPSTREAM (Upload) speed is 5 mbps. Problem here is that when you are connecting remotely, say from your house, the DVR at that location is using the UPSTREAM speed to send the data to the Content Management Software (CMS), and in this case 5 mbps is too little, specially if the recording were done on a very high bitrate. Plus, some ISP doesn't deliver exactly what is promised so you might not be getting the full 5 mbps upload speed, but probably something like 3.5 to 4.x mbps which can further complicate the problem when attempting to view remote playbacks for high definition footage recorded at a bitrate higher than what your upload speed can accommodate. Remote Playback is never sent through "substream", substream is something that is only used for LIVE remote viewing so that users with a much slower, say mobile 3G connection can be able to fluently and easily be able to watch the cameras in live, but at a much lower resolution and bitrate, a non issue specially if you are watching multiple cameras in your smartphone's screen, say 4, to 8 cameras at once. Remote Playback basically streams the recordings off your DVR's hard drive at the exact quality they were recorded, so if you set your DVR to record at a very high bit-rate, then you will need a much faster upload speed to keep up with the demand. Live viewing is fine because when you are viewing multiple LIVE cameras you are technically using "Substream" and sub Stream is almost always streamed at a lower resolution and lower bitrate, much lower that your 5 mbps upload speed is a non issue at all (possible substream resolution of 960x480 at a bitrate of 512 kbps, and some DVR's can even have a crappier max substream resolution of CIF which is 320x240 at a much lower bitrate or something in the middle of 704x480 D1, so that's why with remove LIVE viewing through substream, it will almost be alright with almost any consumer level internet speed package, including on a 1.544 mbps D. / 768 U. kbps DSL plan Solution here: Either lower frame rate along with bitrate proportionally to compensate and get the same image quality for a lower frame rate or upgrade the upload internet speed of the site to a faster speed, say 10 mbps or greater. If the recordings on your DVR is set to a bit-rate of 4,96 kbps (4 mbps) then I would recommend an internet connection upload speed for the site at least 8 mbps or greater to compensate for the fact the ISP might not deliver you the full upload speed you pay for and want to have enough head room to ensure that 4 mbps can be uploaded whenever you decide to remote playback a recording - remotely. Here's what I would do for a 1080P quality: Main Stream: Set Frame Rate to 6 FPS and set bitrate to 3,072 kbps (3 mbps) or you can set frame rate to 4 FPS and a bitrate of 2048 kbps (2 mbps) add or substract 512 kbps for each frame you decide to add or elimiate to the equation to ensure the same exact picture quality. If your DVR is a HiKVision DVR, try enabling, if your firmware supports it, H.264+ which retain the same exact image quality for half the bit-rate required. To learn more about HiKVision's H.264+ codec you can read: https://www.securitymagazine.com/ext/resources/whitepapers/Hikvision-H264-Encoding-Technology.pdf If you DVR supports encoding at H.264+ you can decrease the bit-rate down from 3072 to 1536 kbps provided you set FPS to 6 FPS and the resulting video quality will be exactly the same if you were recording at 3072 kbps under regular H.264 (without the + at the end). So, with H.264+ you can set 4 FPS at a bit-rate of 1024 kbps (1 mbps) and add or remove 256 kbps per each frame rate you decide to add or remove to the equation, and with that change alone, to use H.264+ you may not even need to upgrade your site's upload internet speed. WARNING: ======= Beware of your site's potential "parasitic" applications hugging your limited upload bandwidth, such as leaving a computer on all the time while leaving a bit torrent client running with a bunch of files shared to the whole worlds. An employee of yours might have installed bit torrent and downloaded a few torrents, say the latest movie/tv show or even warez and those downloads, unless they are stopped/removed from the torrent client, are set to be shared (seeded), under such a configuration your upload speed will be used for anyone downloading such files directly off a computer at your site. So if you have multiple computers at your site you might want to monitor what bandwidths are being used to see if there is something you can optimize there.

1. I didn't took a look at either the date or the poster's post count, all I did was read the post and answer it to the best I could. 2. And if OP post was a spam post, at least you could say I counteracted the spam by posting an excellent multi-codec freeware open source alternative to the paid for/shareware the OP might have been advertising on his link.

I understand plenty in regards how IP cameras work. Changing passwords on an IP camera is not difficult for me, all it takes is logging into the camera's HTTP(S) configuration page and performing the password change, but the issue here is that when you are going to do a 32 or even a 128 IP camera installation, having to change the password of each IP cameras one by one becomes a tedious and laborious task. With an TVI DVR, you only have to change the password of the DVR and only once, thats it. Plenty of time saved. Who cares about not being able to save stuff directly to the camera via a (Micro) SD card. I prefer things completely centralized and if you justify saving stuff directly off an IP camera for redundant purposes in case if the hard drive of an NVR were to fail, you can create a much better redundant approach such as configuring another or a few computers with a VMS installed and configured to save footage on these computers and then strategically place these computers that will keep a clone of everything saved on the NVR/DVR in a combination of onsite and offsite. Says who? There is always the risk of the power adapter of the DVR going bad or other issues and the DVR shuts down, This very same risk ALSO HOLDS TRUE FOR IP CAMERAS SETUPS, The power adapter that feeds into the PoE'd Network Switch can also go bad and if that happens all of your IP cameras goes offline, even if the NVR stays up and operational. I have installed almost 1,000 HiKVision TVI DVR's within the span of a few years and I have YET to see ONE of these DVR's fail, any failures always happens either on the DVR's power adapter, or the DVR's hard drive, things that are remediable without having to sell the customer a new DVR/change the DVR. Once again, all of your IP cameras gets their power from the PoE'd network switch and that PoE Network Switch gets its power from a power adapter, if that power adapter fails, all of your IP cameras goes offline, no question about that, there is no refuting that. Sure, you may say that not all of the IP cameras might lose power if there are a cluster of IP cameras on the far reaches of 500 feet that relies on a secondary PoE network switch that gets its power from another power adapter located on spot where that secondary network switch was installed, but if the long network cable is connected from that secondary network switch directly to the uplink of your primary PoE network switch and the power adapter failed on the primary network switch, it doesn't matter if the secondary network switch that is located 328 feet away to power those 500 feet away cluster of cameras remains operational, the network path between those IP cameras on the far reaches and your NVR/main router breaks the moment your primary/master PoE network switch lost its power source, unless you plugged in the secondary ethernet cable that goes to that far away switch directly to your customer's router instead of your PoE switch but most likely the customer would have occupied all of the ethernet ports of their router so you would have plugged in the cable to that gigabit PoE switch, the one where on my hypothetical example was the one who lost its power source. The same can also be said for other network switches you had to install, say 750 feet away, 1,000 feet away or so, any one of those can loose its power source locally affecting any cameras connected to those far away PoE network switch and all the other network switches of yours whose data unlink depends on the affected switch. So YES! There are cases where one power adapter failure that powered a PoE Network Switch can take out all of your IP cameras. Also, if you do a 8 IP camera installation and all the network cables are homerun to be back of the NVR's PoE network switch, the power adapter of the NVR can also fail, in such a case this will take out all of the IP cameras plus the NVR, if you had inserted SD cards to each one of those IP cameras as your redundancy measures those will also fail as all of the IP cameras would no longer be powered, so nothing would be recording in such an event. And what's the problem with this? I have seen IP cameras where all of the ethernet cables are homerunned to the back of the NVR, NVR's come in two modes, one with a PoE network switch already included on the back of the NVR and another where you are expected to bring your own PoE network switch, in either of the case you are required to homerun ethernet cables to either the back of the NVR or to the back of the Poe Network switch, you still have to homerun cables. With TVI you have to homerun coax to the back of the DVR and the Camera's location, I find that to be a great reliability feature. The less intermediaries you have to use between the Camera, Cable and the DVR, the more stable the connection is, the chances of future failure is reduced to a very low probability, if you use quality BNC heads you virtually dont have to worry about any point to point failures for literally ever. You are dealing with less equipment and less electronics. Here let me give your your worst case IP camera installation project: Scope of the project: NVR to be installed in the company's CCTV room located in the middle of the large premises. a few IP cameras to be installed over 1,000 feet to the north in relation to the location of the NVR A few IP cameras to be installed over 1,000 feet to the south in relation to the location of the NVR The same for west and east directions. In all four corners of the CCTV room you are required to run 1,000 feet of ethernet cable and because flimsy ethernet doesnt go farther than 328 feet without requiring network switches in between to give you another set of 328 feet to travel, you will need to daisy chain 4 network switches in each direction in order to reach the target areas where the owner wants you to install the cameras, so you will need 16 network switches, that 16 different power adapters that can go bad in anytime, chances are you are going to use the manufacturer's power adapters that came with each of your network switches, and manufacturers sometimes like to cheap out on the power adapters and you end up with a 500 mA 12 V DC power adapter for each network switch. Now fast forward 1 year after completion of the project, half of the power adapters of those 16 network switches fails, most if not all of the IP cameras are down depending on which network switch were to be affected by this. Customer is now calling you angrily complaining that in just one year most if not all of the cameras went offline. IF this was a TVI installation, all what you have to do is perform a long 1,000 feet run of a cable between the DVR and the TVI cameras, there is no further power requirements other than a SINGLE Power distribution box for which amperage I can control by buying the correct one for the load I want to run, I wont have to worry about spending extra money buying a higher amperage power adapter because the one that came with a network switch I deemed it to be too low for me to think it was going to keep on working reliably in the long run. And the other power adapter would be the DVR's power adapter. Just two power sources (DVR's power adapter + CCTV Power Distribution Box(es)) and the whole operation is powered for many years to come reliably, possibly I would have to return back to the site one every 2 to 5+ years to replace failed hard drives, but I wont have to return back to deal with some cameras having gone "offline". With an IP camera for a job of this magnitude, you have the issue that you cannot power all of the IP cameras centrally like you can with TVI cameras up to 1,000, well 1,500 feet now. The last network switch where all the cameras will be connected will be the PoE network switch and that requires a power adapter that is able to deliver many amperes in order to be able to drive all of the cameras behind that PoE switch, and because of the high amperage requirement you can't just run the power cable 1,000 feet to power it centrally, you will have to run a much bigger gauge copper cable and that would cost alot of money, specially since you are dealing with DC that on itself will require the AWG of the cable to be much lower. Sure you can run AC instead of DC and then use AC/DC converters or just a bridge rectifier with capacitor's if you prefer to build the AC/DC converter yourself. But the fact you had to run a low AWG copper cable at a length of 1,000 feet away to centrally power the PoE network switch located 1,000 feet away and chances are you would want to run multiple 1,000 cables to also centrally power all the other intermediaries (non PoE) network switches that wont require that much amperage will rapidly increase your investment, investment for which you might expect proper compensation from your customer unless you eat up the costs and agree to turn a much lesser profit. What a such a headache thinking about the possible expenditures in order to fulfill such a project using IP cameras instead of just TVI. So you see? TVI has its own set of benefits you must appreciate, you can perform a single cable run of up to 1,500 feet and dont have to deal with intermediaries. With HiKVision you are not locked into anything, Well I haven't checked and tested other software for mobile platforms, all what I know that when mobile is concerned, the IVMS-4500 app is one of the greatest thing there is, its super stable, its easy for customers to understand, specially those customers that only thinks Facebook is the internet and barely knows what "email" is. As far as PC is concerned, there is many options, you are not locked into IVMS-4200, you are use any VMS software you like and you can manually add all of your TVI cameras one by one as if they were "IP cameras" by using a special RTSP URL with your username and password included on the URL, then all of the cameras will show up on your VMS and you can take advantage of all the features your particular VMS has to offer you. So no, you are NOT locked into any particular one software. Partially that is true, because TVI IS cheaper than IP cameras for the same quality. I am not installing TVI exclusively because its cheaper and I just happen to make more money, I am installing TVI because I DEEM it more reliable, its my personal option, its what 35 years on the industry has taught me and my own observation and seeing others complain that their IP cameras keeps on going offline and that they have to constantly keep on restarting the IP cameras in order for them to appear again on the monitor. Now I dont know how cheap or how of a Chinese generic brand of such an IP camera is, but all what I know is that a great quality name brand HiKVision TVI camera can be had for $68 dollars at my supply house, a camera I know that is not going to fail me or make me look bad, a camera that is capable of capturing very clear and crisp enough videos to be able to read a license place of a vehicle a mere 40 feet away parked on a side walk where the camera is facing. To buy a similar camera from a name brand that is reliable enough to possibly not give the user uptime based issues I would have to spend about 2 to 6 times as much as what I currently spend on my motorized zoom TVI cameras. Um no way. Correction, it doesn't take me hours to post this, it takes me minutes, I type at 140 WPM, as part of me having signed up on this forum to help those asking for help, I am doing this as part of a challenge to further increase the amount of WPM I can type. I am trying to bump that number up to at least 160 WPM. So, in a sense my participation here is an attempt to further increase my rate I can type while I help others at the same time. Now, I dont know how fast you type, but if it would have taken you hours to type a reply like this one then I feel sorry for you, you will need to work on improving your keyboarding skills, there are many free websites out there that can further help in boost your WPM speed. I would not have any problems installing VMS and IP cameras, but I dont feel that the IP camera technology has met my expectations yet, I feel that its not stable enough, and that those ones (IP cameras) that are deemed Reliable Enough by the community are over priced and the equivalent TVI can be had for the fraction of the price. And sure, I am open to revisit IP cameras in the future, but it wont be now, not yet. When you enter a business store front, do you see them inform you that there are other alternatives? No, they sell you, or mention you only the things they currently stock. With all that said, when a customer comes to me asking for security via a CCTV installation project, I don't have to inform them about choices currently not available within my own business. --and no, I am skilled enough to install IP cameras if I want to, like I said before I have a CompTIA Network+ certification, I know all about networking, I have built networks, so I have a very strong networking foundation, installing IP cameras shouldn't be a problem for me since the very same ethernet cables that I have been crimping since way back before the concept of IP cameras existed, but I refuse to do so at the moment. I believe in CENTRALIZATION not in Decentralization, I believe in having just ONE server in the premises, not 32+ different servers being each one of those IP cameras in addition to the NVR that is also a server on its own. No, just ONE server is enough, the TVI DVR and all the other cameras doesn't need to have such functions. Its my own personal through out opinion to decide how I want to run my own business just like its your own personal through out opinion to device how you want to run your own business. I have perfectly valid points and there is nothing in the world that is going to convince me until my expectations in regards to IP cameras are met.

1. What did you restart, the cameras and/or the router/switch hub? 2. If after restarting the cameras the images comes back up, provided that we have RULED OUT any potential router/network switches failures, then you should do the following experiment: 2.1 Lower down the frame rate of each cameras, dont set them to real time, lower them to, like 6 fps, that way not to much stress is applied onto each cameras. See if they last more than the typical 2 days straight up operating. 2.2 alternatively, try enabling the camera's built in auto reboot to occur one at 2 AM every night, that way you will always be on a 1 day restart configuration and your cameras will be operating up to 1 days perpetually. - theoretically no more failures after 2.x days of up-time since the cameras will be restarting itself every night, there will always be a max of 1 days of straight up, up-time. Thats it, provided that such a feature exists on your camera's HTTPS configuration page. Lets assume your router or network switch is the failure point: 1. Experiment by connecting the cameras to another router or switch hub. 2. Set static IP addresses for each cameras, dont use DHCP. If your router behind the IP cameras's gateway is 192.168.1.1 and the router's DHCP's pool is set to 192.168.1.100 ~ 192.168.1.150 like most linksys/CISCO routers, then set the NVR's IP address to 192.168.1.99 and then IP camera #1 to 192.168.1.98 and IP camera #2 192.168.1.97 and so on going backwards, or if you prefer to go foward instead, then start at, say 192.168.1.50 and then proceed forward. You will be setting static IP addresses outside the router's DHCP addressable pool (by the way the DHCP pool is configurable too in case if you want to adjust the pool higher or lower for your own IP addresses "aesthetic" purposes). 2.1 Having set static IP addresses to each IP cameras and including the NVR itself and these static IP addresses assigned by yourself being outside your router's DHCP pool, you should now wait a few days and see if your particular problem reproduces. If the problem reproduces try enabling the cameras to auto reboot once every night at 2 AM or anytime you like, if the problem went away, your IP cameras have trouble keeping multi days up-times.

Terrible idea, and here's why: You setup your DVR's beep indicator each time your outside camera's motion are triggered, for simplicity sake lets say you only have a front yard and all the other three corners of your house are sealed off. You setup motion recording for that front camera and instruct your DVR to perform a BEEP noise each time the motion is detected. Then you perform some electronics modifications to the PWM pulsed beep coming out from that small piezoelectric speaker on your DVR's logic board to trigger a loud dog barking sound effect amplified by your PA speakers, you are going to have the following: 1. When it rains you are going to have a loud dog barking hear-able from the outside and this sound effect is going to occur randomly as motion detection gets un-trigered only to a few seconds later to get trigger, specially if its only lightly raining where its noticeable enough to trigger the motion here and then (when its pouring on the other token you are just going to have one long continuous event with the initial bark until it stops raining). 2. Is there too many plants outside and moving leaves from trees? Unless you took really good care at discriminating any portions where there might be leaves moving specially when its windy, you are going to get the leaves to trigger the motion detection of your DVR once every time the wind blows hard enough, that easily get translated to thousands of motion detection events per day, or in other words thousands of loud barking noises blastered off your PA speakers, lets assume that each bark trigger event is a double bark sounding noise, for example: "baw baw", what real dog will bark twice each and consecutive times, obviously the fact that the bark are going to sound so monotonous and robotic sounding exactly the same each and every time (whether its just one, two, three barks, or more) its going to give it away that the "dog" is not real, plus potentially labeling you the "weirdo" of your neighborhood for having such a sound effect sounding thousands of times through a day. Well with all that said, if you still want to carry on the project of converting the beep that comes out of the DVR into a bark, here's what you will need (note, I have never done this but its totally doable): 1. You will need a reed switch that can be activated by the low enough pulsed voltage signal going to the DVR's piezo electric speakers. 1.1. Such a reed switch will have an interrupter on the output/other side that will act as an "ON" switch when the reed switch is activated and when the reed switch is deactivated (when the beep signal goes away) it will change the ON switch into the OFF default position. 2. You will need the "device" that causes the Dog's Barking effect, the more configurable the device is, the better it is, for example you want a dog barking sound effects device to trigger different styles of barks and different quantities of barks once activated, preferably in "Shuffle" mode in such a way that is will playback a different random bark sound once power is applied to the sound effect device. (Power is applied when the Reed Switch is set to ON position/is activated). 2.1 If you cannot get a dog barking sound effect device that randomly plays different styles of barks per different sessions, then you will have to make do with the model that plays the exact same sound each and every time which increases the chances of people knowing its a fake dog, or you will need to improvise with an actual MP3 players with a variation of Dog's sound effects manually imported to the MP3 player by your self. Or you can go the old school way and use a cassette "walkman", fill up the cassette with 90 minutes of a variation of dog barking sound and then you leave the walkman in play mode pressed, powered is delivered to the walkman when the Reed Switch is activated to "ON" position, the cassette begins to play and sends the audio for amplification and stops playing when the reed switch goes back to the OFF position. 2.2 If you use an MP3 player, you will need a model that automatically playsback an .mp3 when power its applied, or else you will have to modify the MP3 player to wire up the reed switch to the MP3's play button, when the reed switch activates, the MP3 plays a file randomly. So thats what you need. Now, you will open up your DVR, take out its motherboard, solder up two thin speaker wires on the two terminals that feed the piezo electric speakers, then install the motherboard back into the DVR's case and connect the resulting ends of the two wires to a reed switch sensitive enough to get activated by just the pulsed electric buzzer going to the piezoelectric speaker. Once you do this, now you have a method to turn on anything you like each time a motion event gets triggered and that reed switch gets activated to the ON position. things you can turn on thanks to this reed switch is some special lights/lamp of low wattage (read: LED), flashers, loud alarms, and of course your dog sound effect equipment. In order to pull off this project, you need a good level of creativity and ingenuity, if you have that then good luck you can undertake such project with virtually zero risks of damaging the DVR's motherboard and with a high success rate of actually being successful. If you need to activate a much bigger load, then the smaller reed switch will need to be connected to activate a much bigger reed switch with a bigger load capacity it can handle and then connect that bigger load to that much higher rated reed switch. **you might have to create/elaborate some special circuitry depending on what you want to do. If no reed switch is activate-able from the low enough voltage signal going to the piezoelectric speaker on the DVR's motherboard, then you will need to create a small circuit to create/amplify the signal big enough for the reed switch to pick it up and activate, such a circuit will need its own power source (12v power adapter, etc)

I did a cursory google search and found the perfect, or one of the perfect free open source software you can use to convert .dts to .mp3 or any other audio file formats. You can take a look at that software here: http://taudioconverter.sourceforge.net/ Its called TAudio. I even liked what I read on that page that I downloaded a copy for my own use as well, so here is what you do: 1. You add the file or directory containing the files you wish to convert 2. on the bottom left where it says Settings Type, you change it from Presets to Codec from its pull down menu and then pick a codec you wish to convert to, in this case .mp3 or .aac 3. Next to Codec pull down menu where you elected .mp3 there is a tab next to it on the right section called Codec Options, I recommend to change from Variable bitrate to Constant Bitrate CBR and set bitrate to 128 kbps (cd quality) or greater if you like, the greater bitrate you pick, the most disk space you consume per .mp3 file, then click Close. 4. From the top left of the program's menus, click Start to start the conversion project. The default save folder is: C:\Users\\Documents\TAC\ This is evidenced by seeing it listed on the Output field on the almost lower left section of the program's screen. To access the default folder, you go to Documents (My Documents) folder, then go to the TAC folder, there should be your converted audios. * I have not tested the .dts to .mp3 conversion since I dont have any .dts files with me, but .dts conversion is listed on the developer's website, so I dont see why it shouldn't work. By the way, the google search that led me to this software was: dts to mp3 converter open source

It is widely accepted and tested time after time again that analog will always be more stable than ip cameras solutions, while its true that IP cameras are getting stabler as the time pass by, it can never beat the stability, reliability and delay free that analog systems can offer. Both IP and TVI are great technologies, but I prefer to do TVI installations on most of my jobs, here are the reasons: 1. 35 years on the field Analog proving I can count on it, I will not adopt another technology that may or may not bring me problems, I am not a gambler. I am going to stick with what has been working for me for the past 35 years and I am glad that Analog is being improved upon and that improvements are constant and that we may see a future TVI 8 MP camera, who knows? 2. The different between what people see on the monitor and what happens in the moment is near 0 ms response time, the same cannot be said for IP cameras where it is known up to 300+ ms delay to occur, for picky customers who might get irritated due to this delay there is not a cure for this for IP cameras setup, sure you might be able to decrease the buffer at the peril of introducing stream based instabilities. 3. The single longest coax run is 1,000 feet for TVI version 2.0 and 2,500 feet for TVI version 3.0 or 1,500 feet at full quality at 3 Mega Pixels, the same cannot be said for Ethernet which caps out at a mere 328 feet and then you have to use network switches that must be powered on the spot to further expand and gain another 328 ft, adding a critical potential future point of failure to those cameras connected to that distant network switch (maybe another contractor could incidentally or accidentally disconnect/unplug the power to that network switch? Maybe the electrical line you used to tap the power for that network switch could be decommissioned in the future and the CEO had no idea the CCTV system depended on power sources other than the one that goes to the CCTV server room and then you will be labeled a "bad CCTV installer". With a TVI system, you can stretch that coax to up to 1,500 Ft and provided that you use a low amperage camera for example a miniature TVI 3.0 MP 0.001 Lux consuming 40 milli amperes) can be entirely powered where the DVR is located. You cant deny that being able to go to the far reaches with one single cable run is very attractive and super reliable since you didn't had to include any intermediaries between the run. I did my CompTIA Network + Certification along with being a computer engineer, I have created and wired networks more than what you can possibly dream of, however I am still not sold on the idea of IP Cameras. You see? I am a perfectionist, I will always go with the most stable and reliable solution. While IP cameras has been increasing in stability as the years pass by, it will never EVER be more reliable and stable than analog systems such as TVI and others and when I am doing a CCTV installation I feel that what I am doing cannot, CANNOT FAIL! I feel like if the life of others depend on my work, that's how serious I take my job and for that reason I have been reluctant to move away from analog, Full HD analog. That, you are right! I thank God that the mode of technology that I have been using for the past 35+ years, even though recently has been upgraded to support HD and beyond, is cheaper than IP cameras solutions. This means that I don't have to settle to earning a $500 profit for a 16 camera installation like a competition I have seen that have thrown himself to wasting lots of money on 16 IP cameras and an NVR, a few PoE Switches, etc in agreement that the most he is going to pocket as pure profit is $500(!!) because because the competition (well actually a computer customer of mines that installs CCTV on a different state than mines) on his area is so fierce that he literally had to sell himself away just to take the job and send some change to his bank account. Are you kidding me? The same job could have been done with an HD-TVI 3.0 DVR and 16 TVI cameras, a 20 Amps Power Distribution Box, a few box of coax and he would have pocketed over $1,500 of pure profit for this pocket. Admittedly that guy had no idea that TVI existed, he personally told me this when I told him why didn't he consider TVI, I showed him my TVI DVR and he couldn't believe that such a great quality was possible via conventional coax cables. By the way, I know this guy because he is one of my customer that I service his computer from time to time (its possible to have a mutually B2B relationship while being competitors on a different field at the same time - but he services CCTV in a different state so not much of a competition directly with me). -- So this guy was installing mostly IP cameras because he as been told its the best in the market (well depends on who you ask and what variable you look at), he was spending his @$$ off on IP gear and IP cameras to service consumer base where such an endeavor would not be profitable. Come on? You are not going to tell me with a straight face that you will go full blown IP on a customer that doesn't want to pay you what you deserve? Even you, a person that heavily promotes IP cameras will go TVI when your pockets are threatened, now dont lie to me, its a business decision to make decisions that doesn't affect the bottom line. What.. exactly.. are.. customer.. losing.. out? 1. Multiple point of failures? 2. Having to change user names and password individually per each camera? 3. Clusters of cameras going offline because that PoE network switch you installed 328 feet away to connect a cluster of cameras averaged approx 500 feet away lost its power source because the electrical line you used to tap power to that distant PoE switch was decommissioned? 4. The 1 to 3 second delay between what happens in real time and what shows on the monitor? (by the way There are picky customers that will take issue on that and will give you a hard time because of it) Okay, enough of pointing out IP based pitfalls, customers are not loosing out anything with HiKVision HD TVI 3.0 DVR and its accompanying cameras, they can get the very same benefits IP cameras customers get. Here is an example: Did you know that you can install any, yes ANY VMS software, yes even your favorite VMS software and connect to any or all of the cameras behind the TVI DVR in the same manner you would for IP cameras? All what you need to know is the RTSP URL for the camera, lets say you want to connect to mainstream camera #1, the RTSP URL which includes user authentication data would look like this: rtsp://usename:password@DVR's.IP.Address:Port/ISAPI/Streaming/channels/101 (102 would be for its substream) Lets say you want to add Cameras 2 to your VMS, well the URL would be: rtsp://usename:password@DVR's.IP.Address:Port/ISAPI/Streaming/channels/201 (202 would be for its substream) and so on and so on on this format. Heck, if you want to add an NVR you can even do that, all what you have to do is add one by one each cameras following this same format, all feeds would be fetched form the HiKVision TVI DVR and would show up on the NVR or your VMS software as if they were actual IP cameras and for all intent and purposes they would be treated just as if they were IP cameras, you can take advantage of every single features and functionality your VMS software has to offer. Do you want to have a backup recording at your premise? Well you can use a cheap refurbished Intel Core i5 computer you purchased at Micro Center, etc install a VMS, connect all cameras and instruct it to record at all time, or Motion record, or however you like, then you take that computer and hide it away. Do you want to have an OFFSITE backup recording, say at your house? Well, just configure another computer with an VMS software, connect all cameras, set it to record all the time, or motion detection, or however you like and then take the computer with you and hide it somewhere in your house after making sure its working. In short you can do everything you can do with an IP camera installation with a TVI installation. So... What exactly are customer missing out?

Hmmm interesting, I didn't knew about this, I guess I should not be expecting to be buying the very latest model further evidenced the DVR being HD TVI Version 2.0 when HiKVision has since long time ago released the HD TVI Version 3.0 so I take it that my supply house must be inundated with new TVI 2.0 waiting to be sold out, hence their reluctance to stock up the TVI 3.0 ones which would be the most recent ones, and I keep asking them about the TVI 3.0 DVR and they keep on saying not yet. Regarding Hik-Connect, is that service free? The fact that they are using Amazon AWS means that they are enduring a costs there. They should have kept their DDNS solution in house, that way they could have avoided the Amazon AWS bills. As an Amazon AWS EC2 user myself I know how high AWS can end up costing.

Your quoted price is good but not for an IP camera job, but for an HD-TVI instead. You see? 20 quality reliable IP cameras are going to cost you plus the 32 CH NVR big time, good Poe switch hubs, etc. Here is my proposal idea: buy 20 HD TVI 1080P 0.01 Lux 2.8mm to 12mm motorized zoom varifocal brand: KT&C or HiKVision. Each of these cameras can be had for $68 each at a good supply house, a 32 CH HD-TVI DVR for 350 and each 4TB WD Purple hard drive for $120 you will need 4 of these hard drive for a total of 16 TB, Sure you can skimp on the hard drive but then you will have to skimp on the bitrate to ensure satisfactory number of days of recordings, I would rather just install the four 4TB hard drives and then pick a reasonable bitrate. You will need a 40 A 32 CH CCTV Power Distribution box or get two 20 Amps 16 CH power dist. Box if you can't find the 32ch 40A one. The 32 one shall cost $90 and the 16 one $45 A 500' RG59 Siamese cables runs at $50. There are 1,000 ft rolls too. HD TVI can go up to 1,000 Ft. In one cable run much better than Ethernet's 328 ft max and then having to deal with intermediate switches. You will need BNC heads plus male DC plugs for the cameras and one Ethernet cable for the DVR. Here would be your total investment: $68 Cameras x 20 = $1360 32 CH HD TVI DVR = $350 4TB HDD x 4 = 480 500'RG59 Siamese x 8 = $400 Power Dist Box x 1 = $90 BNC Heads x 40 = $40 DC Plug, male x 20 = $10 Ethernet cable x 1 = $5 Total Investment $2735 and the customer will be left with a setup he will really like. You will charge $7500 therefore your profits would be: $4765 I have doubled your profits. If the customer doesn't want to pay you what an IP camera setup is worth then give them a TVI setup the customer wins in getting name brand quality full HD cameras and a name brand DVR and you win more profit. *I would ever in my wildest dreams agree to install 20 cameras to earn a profit of only $2000, I would rather stay asleep. **You shot yourself on your foot when you told your customer the job is $7500 when you knew your IP equipment would cost you $5500, You should have quoted your customer $11,000 which is double your investment, why? You are not only charging for installation, you are reselling the equipment to your customers, if you invested say $200 on a camera, you would want to resell that camera to $300 and on top of that charge for installation plus materials. I have seen that mistake being made by lots of installer, pretty much giving away the cameras and materials at exactly their costs and only charging for installation, that's loss profit, you know that you had to drive to your supply house to buy everything, you had to spend your time plus gas money, all that is compensable activities, so plan to make at least a 1.5x profit on the costs of your merchandise AND charge for installation. When you go to home depot to but a book shelf that requires assembly and then you contract them to come over to install/build the book shelf for you, you don't see them all of a sudden selling you their book shelf for exactly what they paid their supplier just because they are going to charge you an installation fee to build it.

You are talking about hik IP cameras, should I be worried that future hik HD-TVI DVR that I purchase might not come with HiDDNS/SimpleDDNS support? If HiKVision decides to eliminate HiDDNS/SimpleDDNS off their DVR's they better at least include easterndns in them as the other alternative currently present on the DVR which I believe is either dynddns or no-ip are not acceptable, they are not free, and the free version requires the customer to re-validate once monthly by clicking a link they get over email, ummm no! I see them forgetting to do that and then calling me complaining that they can't see the cameras on their phones.

HiDDNS is no longer supported? hmmmm? I dont exactly know what you mean, I mean 3 days ago I did my latest project, a beauty salon that wanted 4 cameras, she had an older obsolete early 2000's CIF only DVR and the whole place was wired with coax, so it was cost effective for her for me to install a TVI system since she didn't have to pay me to re-wire with ethernet cable the whole place, I gave her four 1080P TVI cameras and a HiKVision TVI DVR of 4 channels, I configured everything there, on the networking > DDNS page I created a domain name for her, it said it registered successfully, I then downloaded the IVMS 4500 application on the apple store (iPhone), went to Device > New Device > Register mode was changed to HiDDNS and I simply entered the name I created for here on the DVR, followed the custom port I elected that I opened up on her router, her chosen user name and password, then clicked on Live View and immediately I had the 4 cameras showing up on the smartphone under her Tmobile mobile connection. So, I was able to create her HiDDNS domain just fine, it worked and I got no errors or warnings. I also remember like over 8 months ago reading about HiDDNS to stop working for certain areas but not to affect the domain registrations done on the DVR's, and clearly its not affecting users creating their domain name off their purchased HiKVision DVR's. Now, in the other hand, I hope the HiDDNS service doesn't get shut down in the future, because then it would be a tragedy, sure I could move to using EZVIZ, sure I have never used EZVIZ cloud before, but there is always a first time and I hope its as free as HiDDNS DDNS service while I wont get my hopes up as being a cloud storage service most likely the user would have to pay for XX amount of GB's to store up the videos on the cloud, or maybe EZVIZ has a feature that can be setup to act just like HiDDNS without the cloud storage options for free... IF, lets say HiDDNS/SimpleDDNS were to stop working in the future, I would have a big project ahead of me for probably the whole entire months just on changing over all of my customers to a different DDNS service since I have hundreds of customers, almost approaching 1,000 on the same exact setup, using HiDDNS or SimpleDDNS.

I have found iVMS 4500 to be easy for my customers to learn, its pretty much straight forward, category oriented apps, where you have Life view, Remote Playback, and Picture & Video this are the only three choices from the left pull down menu where I focus my attention when I train my customer and most all gets it, after 3 to 5 tries it becomes second nature for them. In the other point DMSS from Dahua is a comvoluted mess and hard for some customers to get. All of my installs now are HiKVision or any of their rebrands.

If the DVR or NVR is not made by HiKVision or one of their rebrands then I would recommend easterndns.com you create your account and then you get presented with the Windows client to inform your easterdns domain of your new IP address when it changes. This requires leaving a PC on all the times and the client set to auto start when windows starts, it starts completely minimized to system tray, public IP address changes your domain at easterndns knows of the change and passes on the information on all of your software that is configured with the domain, such as mobile apps, etc... IF the TVI DVR or NVR is made by HiKVision or one of their rebrands such as KT&C, DVRDVS, etc then its pointless to use easterndns or any other ddns service as there is a great one included on the DVR, called HiDDNS or SimpleDDNS for the rebrands where you only create a user name and thats it, you enter that user name on the mobile app and you are connected, very simple. Note: Many Dahua based DVR's and NVR's supports updating straight to EasternDNS from the DVR itself, bypassing the need to install the updater software on a Microsoft Windows PC, Linux PC or a Raspberry Pi.

You could use http://easterndns.com go ahead and create an account there, its free, after the account creation you will be prompted to download the Windows update client, install that to any computer in your network and input your user name and password you created on the account creation page, the easterndns updater will be in charge of updating the IP address for that ddns free service. in your mobile laptop you can in turn use the domain name instead of the ip address and it should work. Example: Lets say you requested the domain name of "johndoe", your domain will be: johndoe.easterndns.com So, if your mobile app configuration looked like this: Server: 48.88.76.155:8888 you can now change it to: Server: johndoe.easterndns.com:8888 When your IP address changes, the updater installed on your PC will inform easterdns of your new IP address and you should be able to connect right away. There is even a Linux updater version available on their website so if you want to configure a raspberry raspberry Pi for this purpose you can and that would be a great updater to have running, very minimalist. Why am I recommending Easterndns? Because its the one I have used in the past and it has never failed me, that was until I discovered HiKVision DVR's and NVR's it comes with their own in house DDNS service called HiDDNS and for rebrand like KT&C called SimpleDDNS on these DVR's all what you do is enter a name as the domain, then on the mobile client you enter that name, port number, username and password and you are connected, very easy. I haven't used no-ip so I can't tell you pretty much why it isn't working under no-ip, probably the dvr is not updating it correctly? Have you tried downloading their updater client and running it on a PC to update the IP for that DDNS? If it works, probably the DVR isn't sending the update command to the no-ip ddns service, or there is some credential based info set incorrectly on the dvr's no-ip ddns section. So, just for experimental purposes you should try easterndns with the windows client send the update command and then see if using the domain created from easterndns works just fine with your mobile app, if it works then there is an issue with no-ip that you will need to resolve either from your DVR's configuration and/or from the web administrative console at your no-ip account.

Just took a look at that product, its an 802.11b based product. Why are you contemplating bottle necking tour NVR to a maximum wireless data throughput of 11 mbps? You did noticed the "b" after 802.11 right? That't what it means. I would just install DD-WRT to a supported 802.11n based router or purchase a wireless router with DD-WRT already installed, then change wireless mode to "client bridge", and join the DD-WRT wireless router to your primary router, now you will have 4 network ports behind the DD-WRT wireless router to connect stuff, there you just connect your NVR and the NVR will get the IP address from your primary router's DHCP server and not from your DD-WRT server effectively creating a bridged wireless switched. Troubleshooting: You should modify the default gateway ip address of the DD-WRT wireless router which defaults to 192.168.1.1 if 192.168.1.1 happens to also be the gateway ip of your primary router in order to avoid running into potential problems. what I would do is change the DD-WRT's router IP address to 192.168.3.1, then disable its DHCP server, reboot the router, re-login by going to 192.168.3.1 on the web browser and then create the wireless client bridge connection to the primary router and test to make sure its working by plugging a PC or a laptop using an ethernet cable behind the DD-WRT router, if everything is working 100% you should get an IP lease from your primary router (192.168.1.xxx) and should be able to surf the web i the same manner if you were directly connected straight to your primary router. Now you can take the DD-WRT router and hide it along with your NVR, plug in a cable from LAN port 1, 2, 3, or 4 to the back of the NVR and the NVR should be connected just fine. WARNING: If you go to far, the wireless performance, well the bridge may not be strong enough and it might break, or in other words loose its wireless link in the same manner as your laptop might lose from time to time its wireless link when you go to the far reaches of your house/patio, so for this reason if you can help it why not just run a long ethernet cable and hide it on the attic where you possibly would want to hide the NVR, an Ethernet cable is easy to run behind walls and up to the attic, try that instead.

You are joking right? The op is using a server processor from 2006!!!! 11 years old and wondering why he is having issues...the passmake score on that system with DUAL processors is less than half of a modern i3 processor not to mention that milestone supports hardware acceleration with intel hd/quicksync. Modern vms software does not huge machines...they are just as reliable if not more reliable than standalone boxes and have a TON more features. Depending on the vms you use and setup, the cost is roughly the same with far superior performance... Your statement also evidences that you dont understand how standalone nvr's work..they dont do any motion detection or processing and only display substreams on the matrix (or have a limit to the full res on matrix)..I can point you to hundreds of threads with nvr issues...you have likely never used a quality pc based vms. Spoken like a true amateur. Nope, I am a terrible joker, trust me you do not want to hear me crack up a joke I didn't know were were talking about a XEON version that old, all what I heard was Intel XEON something and something, I didn't bother myself to google what XEON we were talking about, I assumed it was probably something not that old For the VMS having to determine when to save the stream to the hard drive and when not to, such as in the case of Motion Detection rules, there has to be some kind of processing done by the VMS, to determine when to do something and when not to, when to do this and when not to do that....and the more features and bells and whistle a VMS has, the more processing it has to do because it has more variable that it has to account and monitor at any given time, coupled with the fact that coders (programmers) these days are so lazy that they dont code to efficiency anymore, unlike last generation's coders that they didn't mind coding using Assembly Language, the machine's native language, no compiler needed, they took their time to properly optimize their piece of code in such a way to keep minimum system requirements to a minimum, where the same exact program made using, say C++ and the compiled required a CPU processing power over 8 times higher than the one made with Assemply language to perform the same task. With all that said, it is possible today to actually develop a PC based VMS software that gives you all kinds of bells and whistles that you can possibly imagine entirely using Assembly Language and optimized carefully in such a way that its processor friendly, that an obsolete single core Pentium 4 LGA 478 (remember that socket and processor type of year 2002?) can properly run such VMS wasting no more than a 25% processing cycle at any given time. But once again, computer programmers of today are not programming to efficiency anymore, in fact if your piece of code requires a compiler your work will never be efficient, to make it truly efficient the VMS needs to be programmed straight using Assembler bypassing the need of a compiler and then further optimized. For for this sole reason your highly inefficiently programmed PC based VMS whose stated system requirements to exponentially be greater the number of IP cameras you device to add to the PC because the underlying software developer never took enough time to properly optimize his/her piece of code for CPU friendliness will never been more efficient than a purpose built stand alone NVR. Are you sure about that? I really doubt that any VMS software is going to be more reliable than a purpose built ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) or in other words a NVR, a dedicated NVR will always be more reliable than running a computer with Microsoft Windows 7 with any VMS software and even further more reliable than running a computer with Windows 10 with any VMS software and here is the reason why: In windows 7 you have more control on how windows updates are to be installed, in windows 10 Microsoft took that control away from you and all updates are forced down your throat whether you want them or not and to make matter worse, I have observed a Microsoft Installer for updates getting hanged in a perpetual 100% CPU cycle until you perform certain "fix" documented on microsoft.com support website, you just cant afford to see that kind of incident on a production machine you just built for your customer for a 16, 32+ IP cameras job you just did occur say 60 days later, I have seen updates hang the CPU 100% cycles perpetually on many machines, including those with Intel Core i7 processors and those in between (i3, and i5), its a problem that has been plaguing Windows 10 and Microsoft technically hasn't fixed the condition. So why am I telling you all this? To give you one example of many why a PC based VMS will never beat the stability and reliability that a stand alone NVR will give you and this is coming from a guy that used to be pro PC back in the days, I have over 35 years in the CCTV installation industry, I come from way back in the days where we used to do time lapse VCR installations with those 360 tvl cameras, then we entered the digital CIF era, there I started building PC's for this purpose and completely rebranded our PC's and we enjoyed telling our customers that we are the builders of our own DVR's, well PC based DVR's first running Windows 95, then Windows 98 briefly until we discovered Windows 2000, then we leaped to Windows XP were we stood there for the longest including bypassing Windows Vista until Windows 7 was released and then we discovered these high definition over coax technologies being developed, we didn't pay much attention to CVI and others and continued doing D1 jobs until we saw TVI, we did our own research and saw that HiKVision's TVI qualifies our business, they develop softwares and VMS which is easy to understand for our customers, installing iVMS 4500 on their smartphone is so easy and configuring it is so straight forward that most of my customers dont have an issue doing it themselves when they get a new smartphone, I can't really say the same for the convoluted mess of Dahua's DMSS which always required me to drive to my customer to install it and configure it for them, but with the introduction of the new age of High Definition over Coax came the fact that we had to retire our old business plan of building and rebranding our own PC's in favor of purchasing the already built and rebranded HiKVision TVI DVR's because there were no TVI PCI Express cards our there in the market, apparently there was and there is no demand to create such PC DVR cards for 1080P TVI cameras, we could no longer tell our customers we are the builders of our own DVR's that we install, but that was compensated quickly by the fact that we no longer had to spend sleepless nights building, installing the operating system, configuring everything, something that took about 2 hours to complete total, now its just a matter of buying the DVR or NVR, driving straight to the customer, installing it there and configuring it on the spot and that's it, now I have much time available to myself and I am giving my customer something that is purpose built to do one job and to do it right, something that comes with an operating system that is only capable of running the software the manufacturer coded to run and operate the standalone DVR and NVR's. So in short, you are wrong, PC based VMS will never be more reliable and stable than Dedicated NVR's or even dedicated DVR's specially if the ones we are talking about were built by HiKVision since that's the only brand we deal with at the moment. Oh, by the way: Everyone knows that a VMS software cannot turn this machine: into this machine: https://preview.ibb.co/j2x4YF/Computer_Control_Room.jpg but if you can find any software that is capable to "huge" a machine let me know, I am highly interested I always wanted to run a data center on my own house . Okay, in a more serious note, you meant to say "HUG" not "HUGE" that "e" at the end completely changes the meaning of the word.

232 GB Hard Drive, Three Cameras, Potentially recording at CIF and configured as Motion detection, only 10 days of recording? Something was not right with that setup. Either the Bitrate was wayyyyyy to high and the motion was being triggered constantly or the DVR was recording constantly alongside with motion. For 232 GB I will tell you that at 500 kbps bitrate with a properly calibrated motion detection, and only motion detection for only three cameras should have yielded months, MONTHS of recordings before the hard drive got full and started deleting the oldest videos in favor of the newest ones. All in all, yes, its time to replace that system, if you want to take advantage of the existing coaxial cables already ran on the place you can get a HD TVI version 3.0 DVR which will record TVI cameras up to 3 to 4 MP for TVI version 3 even though TVI version 2.0 (1080P) is still widely available on the market, so you will have to do some hunting to get the TVI version 3 which was released either mid last year to beginning of this year. If you go with TVI you will need the following: Get a CCTV Power Distribution box, if for 4 cameras you can get away with one rated at 5 amps, the box is fused at 1 amps per DC terminal connections, no more having to deal with power adapters for each cameras, etc... You already got coax ran already terminated with BNC heads so no need to waste time doing any crimping or even purchasing a crimper and BNC heads (unless the existing ones are not properly terminated and are really bad). The only "JOB" would be taking down the existing cameras and installing the new TVI 3 Mega Pixels cameras up, the CCTV Power Distribution Box and setting up the DVR, thats it. If you want to go the IP camera route, you will, obviously have to rewire the whole place again with Cat 5e cable, properly terminate (crimp) the ethernet heads, purchase a cable tester, it will be alot more work. Its your choice.

Wow what a hassle, I have yet to see a PC based VMS properly made, there is always an issue except if the user is willing to use the very latest CPU out there with lots of RAM, a very costly endeavor. That's why all of my IP camera installations are done using stand alone NVR's HiKVision based, not only it costs very low, but it gives very superior quality, no worries about a 100% CPU usage and laggyness and I can guarantee you that the CPU inside the HiKVision stand alone NVR which could be had for about $265 (minus hard drive) is much slower than the CPU in Your Dell PowerEdge by a factor of magnitudes, but HiKVision did a much better job at efficiently coding the underlying software for their NVR than what the coder did for your PC based Windows NVR software.

Experimental update: I changed my converter to encode audio using MP3 at 128 kbps and while using MP3 as the audio codec I found that video recording would play without audio on both software, on IVMS4200 and KT&C's OMNI CMS but if I change my converter to use AAC codec at 128 kbps then only IVMS4200 plays the videos with audio just fine but KT&C's OMNI CMS playbacks the video without audio. If I change my converter to use G711 PCM codec then video playsback with audio on both software. Conclusion: MP3 Codec: IVMS 4200: Not Supported KT&C's OMNI CMS: Not Supported AAC Codec: IVMS 4200: Supported fully regardless of bitrate based on my current observation KT&C's OMNI CMS: Not Supported (this is a shocker for me, as KT&C derives their software from HiKVision as they are a rebrand for HiKVision merely retouching and customizing the graphical user interface, it looks like KT&C did more than simply "rebranding", they got rid of AAC audio codec support off their CMS software and I am interested why they did this? Is this a software bug? A mistake they did? I mean, having a CMS software that can play audio only if recorded in G711 is a huge turn off, what about if I decide to install an IP camera, a real IP camera with a built in microphone and were to choose to record the audio in AAC mode under the camera's configuration page? under OMNI CMS I wouldn't be able to hear the audio unless the audio was recorded using G711. I thank HiKVision for at least including AAC support on their master CMS software (IVMS 4200) and I guess that is the software I shall be using from now on.

Hello everyone. I have decided to give myself a little project for my own house and my own personal benefit. Here is my objective, Use my KT&C ezHD 16 CH HD-TVI DVR that supports 2 full HD IP cameras that I installed myself in my house as my home's surveillance CCTV system to take advance of one of those two IP ameras capabilities that I am not usin at the moment to hook up my cable box and record onto the DVR whatever channel I seem to be tuned at the moment as a very cheap solution to not having to subscribe to my cable tv provider's DVR service so that when I come back from work I get to watch my missed shows on the channel I left the cable box tuned into before I left my house. In order to achieve the above stated objective I purchased an HDMI to IP converter that also supports the ONVIF standard. I purchased it on Ebay, the vendor is located in China, estimated delivery time was 2 to 3+ weeks and I was surprised how fast it came to my house, it literally came within 3 days after having placed the order. I hooked up the device, default IP was 192.168.1.168 and I added the IP address and port user name and password as an IP camera on my HD-TVI DVR using the ONVIF option, then I plugged in an HDMI cable to the back of my cable box then had an image on my monitor 'Camera Online" showed on settings. End Result: I am able to see and record beautiful clear crisp images coming from my Cable Box in full HD at 30 fps I dont have any complains when it comes to the video quality, my only complain is that I have not been able to get the audio to sound in high quality, It appears that I can only record in G711 Alaw PCM at 64 kbps, I have tried everything to no avail. I can either record audio at G711 PCM or no audio at all. When adding an IP camera to the DVR I get two options: 1. IPCAM 2. ONVIF Perhaps KT&C forgot to add the higher quality .aac codec as an option for audio recording to these KT&C TVI DVR's? Because I checked the ONVIF officlal website, the responsible for the creation of this standard and they said that ONVIF support two audio formats: 1. G711 Mulaw/alaw PCM 2. AAC which is a coded created by Apple and a direct competitor to .mp3 where it is said that it takes half the disk space than .mp3 for the same image quality (I take it that a 64 kbps aac sounds just the same or supposed to sound just the same as an 128 kbps .mp3) Current firmware my DVR is running: version 3.1.8 and according to the website all the firmware upgrades after that version doesn't touch audio, just a few minor bug fixes so I really doubt that upgrading my firmware is going to give me .aac audio recording capabilities. Here is a website that emulates the options of my HDMI to IP converter box: http://www.oupree.com/h.264-hdmi-ui/OutputP1MainE.html and according to the manufacturer this converter box supports the following features: - ONVIF - RTSP - FLV encoding - TS - HLS Out of all those options, the one that rings me as a possible solution where it might let me record with higher quality audio is RTSP, since HikVision, and KT&C DVR's are HiKVision rebrands uses RTSP for their IP cameras, so maybe there is something that I can do by modifying my IP converter's RTSP url to match that of HiKVision format, my converter box encodes in H.264 which matches that of HiKVision's cameras so I dont think I might have any problems there. Also, is there any NVR's out there that is able to record from an RTSP video stream and that supports a higher quality audio (be it aac or mp3)? I am prepared to purchase a 4 CH HiKVision based NVR if I can't find a resolution to the low quality audio issue on my existing HD TVI DVR. Side note: There is on the market an HDMI to HD-TVI converter that does the same as my HDMI to IP converter but the TVI method would require adding an RCA audio cable to the back of my DVR in channel 1, that other solution presents the following challenge: 1. On my DVR's options, analog audio recording is only available in monaural 711 Mulaw PCM, there is no other options in terms of other codecs like aac, etc. So I was under the impression that going the IP route was going to let me record with an audio quality much higher.

The 1080P camera you got is probably a HD-TVI, HD-AHD, or an HD-CVI camera or one of those that output to any of these format commonly known as an all in one camera but requires going thru a menu or a switch to switch between TVI/AHD/CVI/Regular 700tvl CVBS. The video capture card you got only appears to have a component port, the YPbPr which requires the Green, Blue and Red cable will not connect directly to your camera, but there is a way of doing it: If the camera is an HD-TVI camera you have lots of support when it comes to buying a converter. I would go to eBay and search for TVI to Component if nothing is found at least I can tell you that I was able to find the TVI to HDMI converter, and if that is the one you end up purchasing then you will need to purchase the HDMI to Component converter and THEN you shall be able to connect your TVI camera to your 1080P video capture card. The above assumes the camera is a TVI if your camera is something else such as CVI, AHD or even the least likely SDI you will need to do your search for the converter using these terms in place of TVI. So please Google up the model number of your camera to determine what HD technology (TVI/CVI/AHD/SDI) it uses first before searching for the corresponding converter for it. Reason: A TVI camera requires a TVI DVR, a CVI camera requires a CVI DVR, a AHD camera requires a AHD DVR and an SDI camera requires an SDI DVR. Your YPbPr (Component) 1080P video capture card supports none of these, hence the reason why you need the to Component converter or to HDMI converter and then an HDMI to Component converter. Estimated costs (assuming TVI here): TVI to HDMI converter: $150 from China plus a $25 shipping HDMI to Component: $19.95 with free shipping if within the USA. Unless you can find the TVI to Component right of the bat bypassing the need of the secondary step converter, and if you do, probably it's going to cost you the same as the first one. Note prices might be a lot cheaper now to check anyways. Since your YPbPr video capture card was not made with CCTV in mind probably it has no way of recycling old videos in favor of new ones once your hard drive gets full, so you will have to do the recycling manually yourself by deleting the few days older videos and emptying the recycler bin once after a few days and daily keep an eye that the software is running and set to recording and it may or may not have motion detection capabilities which means you will be recording in constant mode all the time. Be sure to set encoding tech right such as use H. 264 instead of Motion JPEG or MJPEG in short in order to save disk space per days of recording and set bitrate wisely such as 2 Mbps for example and if you can lower the frame rate to 6 to 7 fps would be great if not it's not the end of the world.

To recover the evidence, why don't you connect a stand alone DVD recorder or even a VCR using AUX/Line1/RCA video ports, in the back of the DVR there should be a BNC port labeled VIDEO OUT you will need a BNC to RCA adapter and then a regular RCA cable. Be sure to play each footage in full screen as you are recording on either DVD or VHS. Note: if this is a CIF DVR or the recordings are done in CIF then using the VCR method won't degrade the video quality as CIF is VCR's resolution, be sure to always use SP or Standard Play recording mode for best picture quality. If the recordings are in D1 quality obviously you would want to use the standalone DVD recorder in SP mode since DVD is D1 quality you will be preserving D1. Again playback the videos in full screen while you are recording. If for some reasons that DVR doesn't have a VIDEO OUT port, but only a VGA port, then you will need a VGA to RCA scan line converter before you are able to output to either DVD or VCR. Alternatively you can bypass both the need of a DVD and VCR recorders and go completely digital (well in a sense DVD is digital), and use a computer with a VIDEO capture card with capture video resolutions correctly set, 640x480 or 704x480 the latter is DVD/D1 quality and if your video capture software only has 640x480 which is VGA quality it's would be acceptable too. Let me warn you going the video capture route requires some what technical abilities, you will have to carefully read your video capture's manual and possibly perform a few YouTube how to searches before you can master the ropes. If you are unable to learn how to use a VIDEO capture card then use a standalone DVD recorder, buy a spindle of 50 to 100 DVD-R discs and record straight to DVD as you playback from DVR in full screen. Good luck with your evidence extraction.

> 25 fps You dont need 25 fps, 6 fps is more than enough for most surveillance needs. In fact on my own TVI setup I have it setup to record at 6 FPS at a bitrate of 3,000 kbps per camera at full 1080P HD. Here is the math: Broadcast quality bitrate for 1080P that you possibly get sent to your TV's cable box is approx 15,000kbps to 24000kbps (15mbps ~ 24mbps) at 60 frames per second (fps), so my 6 fps at 3mbps produces the same image quality as 12fps at 6mbps, or 24fps at 12mbps or 48fps at 24mbps, or at 60 fps at 30 MBPS (30,000 kbps). Effectively, each frame measures 500 Kilo bit effectively giving good details per frame, so setting up the recorder to record at 6 fps at a bitrate of 3 mbps is more than enough, I cannot think of any details you will miss by capturing at a rate of 6 pictures (frame) per every second, and if you are paranoid you can even top that up to even 8 FPS and add 1,024 kbps of extra bitrate for a total of 4mbps, you will get the same quality as 6 fps at 3 mbps but with two extra pictures (frames) per second. Hard drive: Get 4 TB Western Digital Purple Cameras: get one that is varifocal 2.88mm ~ 12mm if you are trying to capture a whole entire room, like the living room, a 2.88 lens setup will help you capture as much of the room as possible. a 3.6 mm lense is basically a 90 degree wide angle measured diagonally (going by my pre-wide screen math but because today's cameras are 16:9 wide screen there is some extra slack of extra side ways coverage, but nothing much from top to button, that will only help by getting or unzooming to 2.88mm lense) Cables: Get a box of 500' RJ 59 coaxial cables. BNC Heads: Get Twist on BNC heads as seen here: http://www.microcenter.com/product/432513/Winbook_BNC_Male_Twist-on_RG-59_Coaxial_Cable_Connector_with_Spring_for_CCTV_Security_Systems_10-PACK for easiest installation Criper: Get Inland WinBook Security 9" Hex Series Ratcheting Crimp Tool http://www.microcenter.com/product/448475/WinBook_Security_9_Hex_Series_Ratcheting_Crimp_Tool That crimper will help with the crimping the BNC inner layer to the ground wiring of the BNC head. Wire cutter: Get the Automatic Wire Cutter: https://www.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1366&bih=635&q=automatic+wire+cutter&oq=automatic+wire+cutter&gs_l=img.3..0l2j0i24k1.441.3682.0.3808.22.20.0.0.0.0.298.2491.0j15j1.16.0....0...1.1.64.img..6.16.2481.0..0i30k1.m-oeD2prkJs#imgrc=eGfaoDQEUgzFzM: Searh Ebay and other source for it, I got mines from Radio Shack years ago, this very same exact one I am showing you from Google Images, Since Radio shack is or is going out of business and they have been closing down their stores progressively you might have to look for it elsewhere. Male CCTV DC Plugs: http://www.dhresource.com/0x0s/f2-albu-g1-M00-D5-DD-rBVaGVQjjZaATc-4AAOoInc1stk108.jpg/20pcs-dc-power-connector-cable-12v-monitor.jpg Again, search Ebay/amazon for the best prices, or look for your nearest CCTV supply house where they may not only carry this, but the HiKVision or one of their rebrands (KT&C/DVRDVS,etc) HD TVI DVR, the Camera, the CCTV Power Distribution box, the RG59 Siamese coaxial cable both black and white versions and much more. Well, thats about it. Now begin the installation: Open up the DVR and install that 4TB hard drive you just purchased, if you purchased a DVR with the hard drive already pre-installed for you then you dont need to perform this step. Power up the hard drive, set an admin password (for HiKVision TVI/NVR it will beep a series of 5 tones every few seconds until you have set the admin password and formatted the hard drive). Wire up the place with either the Black or White Siamese RG59 Coax cable if the job is internal you might want to staple gun the white cables instead of black, it will look much better on the wall, or use an attic/drop ceiling tiles to hide the coax if you have access to one. Then install the BNC heads on both terminals of each cable, and the male CCTV DC plug on the side where the camera will go, you dont need the female DC connector on the other end of the cable where it will meet the CCTV power distribution box unless you would like to make replacing the CCTV power distribution box easier in the even it fails in the future, the choice if yours, personally I hard drive straight to the terminal, the Red cable goes to the Positive (+) and the black cable goes to the negative (-) and be sure to observe the same polarity when you hard wire the male DC plug on the other end of the cable where it meets the actual cameras, again the red cable of the DC plug goes on the red cable of the Siamese cable and the black on black... Okay, now plug in all cameras, by this point you have all BNC plugged in to all cameras and DC plug plugged into cameras, and you have all power hard wired to the CCTV power distribution box, and you have all BNC's plugged into the back of the HD TVI DVR. Now, plug in the CCTV power dist. box to the wall outlet and turn it on, turn on the DVR and your LCD monitor/HDTV of your choice, configure everything and make sure all 4 cameras shows up on screen, if great then good! if not then check wiring, make sure that you did the BNC heads correctly, and that the ground of the coax is not short circuiting the copper of the tip of the coax, use a multi meter set to continuity and prove the outer metal side of the BNC head and the inner without touching the sides to see if the meter beeps/indicates a short, if true then redo the BNC head and make sure it is not shorting. Next, test power, change the multi meter to DC mode, and prove all DC plugs to make sure they are getting 12 volts DC in the correct polarity (the Red prove to center of the DC jack and the black one on the side of the DC plug), if you get "12 Volts DC" then power is good, if you get " - 12 Volts DC then you have a reverse polarity, go to your CCTV power distribution box and swap the wiring on the affected terminal, maybe you connected the black wire on (+) and the red wire on (-), if so then take out that cable and screw it in correctly, red for )+) and black for (-). So, now you have all 4 cameras showing up on the monitor, proceed to the next step: Go to Record > Parameters and make sure that resolution is set to Full HD at 1080P, and that you are recording at 6 fps at a bitrate of 3 mbps (3,072 kbps) and save it, then close the config for all the other cameras (2, 3 and 4) effectively copying this config for all the other cameras. You might want to record in motion detection, which records only where there is moment on the premises and stops recording when there is no people around, to do that on the menu go to "cameras" or "images" and then click on Motion, set the whole screen or click on select all, then set sensitivity to the most sensitive (to the far right on the slider), then save the page and copy the config for all the other cameras. Next setup remote to see the cameras remotely on your smart phone, and or laptop/computer. To do that, go to configuration and setup a user, you are able to use the built in default admin account to log on to the cameras with the password you setup the DVR when you first powered it on, or you can create a new dedicated user for the remote viewing purposes. Create a new user and then set permissions, set the user as "operator" instead of "guest". Go to networking, set a custom port, for example: 35000 for server 36000 for HTTP, etc, and enable UPNP, if your router supports UPNP then you dont need to open up a port on your router for the DVR to communicate with the external world, then setup HiDDNS (If a HiKVision branded DVR) or SimpleDDNS (If KT&C, and others branded DVR), simply enter a name with a bunch of numbers, for eample: yourname2017 and register it, it will register it successfully. By this point make sure a network cable is plugged into the back of the DVR and that you have restarted the DVR after having plugged that network cable to it. Why restart? Because I have observed mainly in the early times (a year ago or so) that the DVR thinks there is no network cable plugged into after having freshly plugged in a network cable until I restart the DVR and then its alright. If you setup a static private IP address to the DVR as opposed to leaving it to the default of DHCP you might have to still open up a port on your router, some routers have an issue where UPNP doesn't correctly work for uses who uses static IP addresses as reported by some users online. I haven't actually reproduced the problem but I am letting you know in case if UPNP is failing after you having setup a static IP address to your DVR. I would leave it as DHCP and just let UPNP take care of everything if you are not comfortable with the possibility of having to logon to your routers gateway and having to open up a port on your router. Next, install the IVMS-4500 app on your smart phone, add the new device by using the HiDDNS add option, enter that name you entered when you registered the HiDDNS or SimpleDDNS in my example of: yourname2017 followed by your user name and password you created under users on your DVR earlier, then click on Live View, if everything done alright you should start seeing all 4 cameras right away on your smart phone, if so then congrats, you are done. sit back and take a break.

I have the solution to your problem. This issue I saw it when I first began doing CCTV installations, back in the days of the D1/700 TVL world I was using cameras that was all metal enclosure and the camera's circuitry was grounded to the camera's metal frame. When i finished hooking up all the cameras and then I plugged in the cameras to the back of the DVR there was some very bad ground loops, no matter what I did it did not went away, then I did a few test with my volt meter configured for continuity (it beeps when you short both the probes together), I went up to one of the cameras, disconnected the BNC and Power connectors and place one probe of my multi meter to the metal frame of the building where the camera was placed at and the other probe to the outer metal BNC head and lo and behold the meter beeped. So I have just found out the source of the ground loop problem and began thinking of a way to isolate the cameras from the building' outer metal, went to home depot and purchase a few non-conducive electrical boxes, installed those boxes, did another continuity test and didn't beep this time, hooked up the cameras and everything was ok, no lines, videos looked perfectly fine. Took me an extra day of work on the project to come to resolution. Another solution if you cant find a non-conducive box because most boxes are conducive is to use the plexy glass trick, keep the original metal electrical box you installed, but instead of using the cover plate that came with the electrical box where you drilled four holes where the cameras are mounted, you cut a plexy glass (better if the plexy glass is coated with black) to the same dimensions of the electrical box cover, then with metal drill bit you drill the holes where the mounting screws will go to for fixing to the box purposes and the drill additional holes (3 or 4) to mount the cameras in the center, cover all exposed metals from the BNC head with black tape fully, you dont want the bare metal of the BNC head to touch the inner metal of the electrical box otherwise the ground loop will return, then use 1" screws so that it will not go too deep in to not risk touching the inner layer of the electrical box otherwise the ground loop will return, plug in the DC to DC port of Camera again cover with black tape any exposed DC wiring you might have left, you dont want those touching any metal portions of the electrical box, install the cameras, repeat for all other cameras, now you have a perfectly isolated from that uncommon ground all cameras and you shall not get any ground loops anymore. Additional info: If you install the LCD monitor in a far away room or other location or even in an outlet connected to a different phase than the one where the DVR and Cameras are connected, you might get the ground loop syndrome again and those lines might return, resolution of this, connect the monitor to the same circuit where the DVR and all the cameras belong to. Ideally, you want to use CCTV Power Distribution Box (5 Amps for a 4 Camera install, 10 Amps for a 8 cameras install, 20 Amps for a 16 Cameras install, etc assuming each camera wont consume more than 1 Amps tops, and each terminal would be fused at 1 Amps and each terminal on the 20 Amps version is fused at 1.6 amps).