Todd

I'm running 8.3.2 right now. Soon to instal 8.3.4. The driver date in the device manager was sept 2009. I can't speak for the GV800's but at least with the November 1480's and this software, the system did a firmware upgrade when it installed. My understanding is this is not reversable.

LOL. Can't give up the old stuff yet. I know you love XP, but the Geo's seem to run fine for me on 7 and I Wouldn't trade Windows 7 for XP at this point. I'm used to it and have no issues with it. Maybe i'll rant later on down the line.....just never know..... but i'm really happy with it. Especially in gaming rigs.

Did you uninstall all the drivers, programs, folders etc when you went to 8.3* and above? You may want to just do a complete format and reinstall just to be safe. I've got Win7 on 1/2 dozen 1480 systems and all is working well. Also, you might want to reinstall and stress test the computer before Geovision is loaded. Running Memtest is good. LinX and prime 95 wouldn't hurt either. I've seen more than one bad motherboard in a row and/or memory.

All good advice.

I've built a bunch of the geovision systems starting with the GV1000 and now the 1480A cards. Never had an issue with hard drives until now. Now it seems video playback is choppy unless I use the top of the line drives like the WD Black series. Suggestions on drives? or number of cameras per drive? etc. I want to add another 2TB to my system and some othes and are looking for recomendations. Thanks.

I used I5-650 processors and 4 gigs of ddr3 1600 ram. The seagates just didn't work out. I even had one of the managers from Microcenter up here and we swapped everything several times. Those 5900's were the death of me. After getting the WD blacks all seems to be good with all 4 systems. they have 64mb cache and I had 9 cameras on them with no issue. Same with the new Seagates. I'll probably stick with those two drives until something better or better/cheaper comes around.

The reason I was looking for analog IP type cameras is cost AND the hard drive space. I think I paid close to $400 for an IP camera. 4 cameras would be $1600. I can add a second 1480 for $900 and analogs for $175 or less a piece. That would be the same price and then I can add 12 more less expensive analogs if needed. Hard drive requirements would then be less as well. I don't really need megapixel clarity in retail. It's wonderful, but for the $$ i'm probably better off with more quanity and good quality vs less quantity and awesome quality. On the flip side though....It's pretty easy to install an IP camera and hide/move it on employees when you have network cables run all over the store. Tough to do that with analog. That extra coax cable get's picked out quickly.

Here's the transcript. ================================== [Todd] With a geovision GV1480a card. Can you have 16 analog cameras plus 8 ip cameras or just 16 total cameras with up to 8 being IP cameras? [Abdi] Welcome to GeoVision online live support, my name is Abdi. How can I assist you today? [Abdi] hi tod [Todd] Hi, can you see the original question? [Abdi] if you have gv1480 with 16 analog cameras, you can add another 8 gv ip cameras to the system [Todd] That would give us a total of 24 cameras... correct? [Abdi] but if you are going to use third party ip camreas, thenyou will need to have a licence for that [Abdi] that is correct [Todd] That's great. I will post them in the cctv forum. I have a geo ip camera and i'm glad to hear I can exceed 16. How will they fit that on the screen since they only show a 16 camera veiw? [Abdi] when you add the ipcameras, it will change the screen devision to fit more then 16 [Todd] Ahh. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it! [Abdi] you are welcome Todd, Is there anything else that I can help you with today? [Todd] No that will be all for the moment. I will say good bye. [Abdi] Thank you for using USAVision Systems Inc. / GeoVision Group online support. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you need any further assistance.

I'm trying out the seagate XT drives and so far so good. I'm pretty happy so far.

Ok, Live chat came through. Adbi said we could add 8 ip cameras over and above the 16 analog giving a total of 24 cameras. He said that a bigger screen division would show up when that happened. I'm having a transcript sent to me so I can post it. So it sounds like it works. Are there any Ip cameras that don't tape with so much detail. I like the detail but can't afford the hard drive space where I would like to put them. Suggestions?

I emailed them 4 days ago. Same question. I emailed product support. No reply yet. I wonder if Andy from Geovision could find out the answer and reply for us. It would help

You can get a 1.5TB drive at microcenter for $59 right now. It's 5900 rpm. I returned 5 of them. They don't work too well. They had boatloads of issues with them in the store. I wasn't alone. WD Blacks work well and I'm trying the new seagate XT drive and that seems to work well.

I think the real question is can you have 16 analog cameras and 8 ip cameras for a total of 24.

I was just about to post back to this because now I'm not so sure. I read the manual and it's still not clear to me. When you put in an IP camera you still have to assign it a "slot" For example I just reinstalled one and I put it in Camera 16 slot. It didn't give me an option to use slot 17-24. So that makes me think it's 16 total. But i'm not convinced either way. Here's a page right out of the manual. ===Hybrid Solution Description 1. Specifications of the Hybrid solution. The Hybrid solution provides you 8 free IP channels for GeoVision IP video devices, with the limit of 32 channels in total. For example: Number of analog channels + 8 free GV IP channels + Number of channels in USB dongle (NVR(GV), NVR or Combo Dongle) <= 32 channels. 2. Connection of GeoVision IP devices to GV-System. To receive the video streaming of 8 channels or less from GeoVision IP video devices, there is no need to use an extra USB dongle. If more than 8 GV IP channels are required, you need a NVR (GV) Dongle. • The dongle options include: 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24 IP channels. In this case, the total number of channels for your Hybrid system is: Number of analog channels + 8 free GV IP channels + Number of channels in your NVR (GV) Dongle <= 32 channels. 3. Connection of third-party IP devices to GV-System. To implement the Hybrid solution with third-party IP video devices, you need a NVR Dongle. • The dongle options include: 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, 32 IP channel(s). In this case, the total number of channels for your Hybrid system is: Number of analog channels (+ 8 free GV IP channels) + Number of channels in your NVR Dongle <= 32 channels. 4. Connection of both GV and third-party IP devices to GV-System. To implement the Hybrid solution with a mix of GeoVision and third-party IP video devices, you need a Combo Dongle. • The dongle options are the combined options of NVR (GV) Dongle and NVR Dongle. Inform your sales representative the exact number of third-party IP channels and additional GV IP channels you need, so the Combo Dongle can be delivered upon your requirements. For example, you need 8 third-party IP channels plus 8 additional GV IP channels, so the number of channels in the requested Combo Dongle is 16. The total number of channels for your Hybrid system will be: Number of analog channels + 8 free GV IP channels + Number of channels in your Combo Dongle (e.g. 16) <= 32 channels.=============================================== That would make it sound like you could have 24 cameras if 8 were IP's. Let's hope geovision responds to the email.....or wait, send me 5 more cameras and that would give me 17. Then I can tell you from experience, lol.

Rory, if it's a 1480 you still max at 16 cameras even if 4 are Ip's. And the other gentlemen is correct. You can have up to 8 ip cameras before a dongle is needed but 16 is still the max. I've got a Geovision megapixel camera on my system. It really sucks the hard drive space. On a 1 TB drive (about 933 gig usable I think). The Ip camera has 300 gigs and the other 8 analog cameras fight it out for the remaining 600 gigs. I like the clarity and you can zoom digitally forever....but it needs it's own drive IMO.

The bad drives were seagate 1.5TB drives, 5900 rpm. Microcenter had a boatload of issues with them. The drives that have been working are WD Blacks. I didn't have any problems formatting them with windows 7. However, I did format them during the install and not after the fact. If you do it after the fact you have to go into disk management and get them recognized before they will work. Not sure if you did that. If you did....then that's pretty odd. What I'm seeing is the 64mb cache drives are the way to go. I'm not sure that those drives were "bad" but they certainly wouldn't write video fast enough so we kept getting the skips.

What software version are you running? 8.3.2 will run it but some flaws, 8.3.3 is the first official version with windows 7.

Had this happen with 4 systems. It was bad hard drives. Changed to Western digital Blacks and all seems to work fine now.

P55's are running just fine now. Turns out we had 4 bad hard drives. What are the odds of getting 4 bad ones? I'm sure all the systems were fine except the hard drives.

I'm putting together 4 systems. I tried the h55, then p55 chipsets and I3-530 processors. I was getting a video stutter and pauses on view log. Live viewing looks great. Switched hard drives, ram, even put another card in that I know works in my own system. Still stutters. Finally figured it must be the h-p55 chipsets. Went and got a p41 chipset. I'm using this. Tried with onboard graphics and a g210 vid card. Still getting the stutter. At this point i'm clueless. It must be something im doing. The E7500 chip is running about 50-60% load with 8 cameras on motion detect. I'm using ddr3 memory in this set up. (that's what the board takes) I'm open to suggestions. The next attempt will be windows xp instead of 7. But i'm already running 7 with a q6600 and all is good on my system. The software is 8.3.3. Everything is brand new.

After changing hardware, software.....you name it. I tried a WD black hard drive out of my system and that solved all the issues. I had tried 4 brand new seagate drives and every one of them was not functioning correctly. What are the odds?

I would avoid the P55 chipset right now. We are having many trouble with that. Viewlog does not work correctly.

I did try that with the H55 boards but not the P55 yet. That will be the very next thing I do. I had Geo support tied up all afternoon. They are scratching their heads as well. I hope to hear from them tomarrow for some ideas.

Now i've tried the P55 with a graphics card and still no joy I'm back to thinking hard drives again. There has to be a reason. This just doesn't make any sense.

There might be a flaw here. The chipset works fine except in viewlog. Lots of video freezes or stutters in the view log. Otherwise it has worked well. Still working on the issue but will report back.