EB 1304 questions

[Emil416 0]

I have been looking to purchase a DVR. The EB 1304 being one of those under consideration. But I have a few questions to any owners of this unit. From some of the reviews that I have read, a few people can't seem to get the USB port to work. is there a problem here with this unit? Also when using motion record do all 4 cameras record when only one is in alarm, or does the camera that has been triggered only do the recording? When using the motion triggering function, since there is no masking feature is it possible to set the sensitivity to be able to trigger on a person but ignore a small tree branch? A few people complained about this unit being real slow in transfering the video to the computer by way of the USB console. How long doesit take? Example suppose I have a 15 min clip that I want to put on a disk that I want to show to the cops. How is this done and how long would this take? Thanks guys.

[dopalgangr 1]

What type of device are you using for the USB backup? Thumb drive or hard drive? Either way make sure it is formatted in FAT32 NOT NTFS as the DVR will not recognize that (probably because it's Linux based). If your using a hard drive make sure that it doesn't need supplemental power to run it (especially a 5.25 disk), the port (although it runs mine fine) may not be able to power it.

 

Dont know about the motion.

 

As for the time it takes to back up, I move 100mb (got to be at least 15min of video) off of mine within 2 minutes, But I was using a USB 2.0 hard drive to back it too. Remember if you use a USB 1 or 1.1 device it will take hours instead of minutes, also some of those USB thumb drives have cheap memory in them thus have a slow write speed increasing the time it takes to send info to them.

 

Hope this helped!!

 

I extremely recommend using a Hard Drive over a thumb drive or flash disk when moving large amounts of data at a time.

Edited April 20, 2008 by Guest

[rory 0]

Made some suggestions to Avermedia regarding the Masking of motion detection, as that is eating up tons of space on this 160GB Drive here, only got 3 days basically with 4 outdoor cameras. They were all set to BEST and the total recording was set to 60fps.

 

I just changed that to 20fps total, 5fps each, which is slower, but if it will gain more time for now, its worth it. Also changed it from BEST to HIGH .. thats one notch down - left it on D1 though and LOW Motion Detection (works fine for outdoors it seems - anything higher was constant motion).

 

EDIT. Changing the recording FPS also effects the remote live video fps - hence as it is not sending as much data therefor on a slow connection over the Internet from a remote location, I can get more total received fps.

 

Remote Video:

If set to D1 record the max live remote video is 15fps each camera.

If set to CIF record the max live remote video is 30fps each camera.

 

NOTE - LAN (local network) and at the DVR - this does not seem to have any effect on the actual DVR Live Monitor out Video - Set to 20fps and D1 record, 1 single camera, Im watching real time motion and quality same as direct from the camera on my local monitor, while in the remote software it is 5fps (20 / 4 - even though only 1 camera is enabled). So essentially the record settings effect the remote (LAN/WAN) Live Video but not the DVRs Live Monitor out Video.

 

Also made some suggestions regarding Remote Video, but dont know if that will pan out or not, would be nice though. The recording settings seem to effect the remote video transmission also, I was getting 3fps before, now on HIGh instead of BEST im getting 6fps - might actually be able to download some video for remote playback now. Mentioned to Aver an idea to change that to make the remote video compression separate from the DVRs .. may not be doable for them at that price range. They passed the ideas onto their R&D though, as am also back and forth with them on the SDK.

 

Back a step to remote playback .. ahh yes it needs some serious work. In all fairness though, I think they are still new to the game in this regard, at least it seems with the EB1304, so it should get better - more people need to contact them with ideas, they seem to listen very well.

 

Remote Console and CMS's playback is not really that usable, I mean it is okay but it just shows Hours and not events (unless I am missing something). So you need to download the whole hour or time frame .. instead of just searching for an event. I can actually search for an event using the SDK .. so I may have something to work with there, then make a graphical display of some sort - but it crashes alot in IE .. that could be IE though.

 

Otherwise locally it is fine, quality of live video is just like the camera directly into a monitor (used a CCTV CRT as well as a VGA CRT myself, its just a matter of a small switch on the case which allows switching from one to the next, actually both seem to work at the same time, sometimes).

 

Recorded video quality locally is fine too, as expected. I have not yet tried the USB backup to see if that quality is any different from the Remote Download quality, which is ... well not good - Im hoping it is better and Im just loosing data from low internet speeds, but time will tell.

 

Optionally you could charge the client when they need to back up, then have a laptop with a USB capture card, and just use the monitor out and grab it that way - as with other stand alones.

 

Okay, enough procrastination, I have one right here in front of me for another client .. gonna go plug the baby in right now and test that USB backup with several USB devices!!

[rory 0]

Just plugged in a Sandisk SD-USB stick using a 2GB SD Card .. this setup writes very slow compared to a Hard drive connected via USB.

 

Okay so test backing up 117mb video:

Timeframe was 12.30am to 01:30am - Motion Record so 54 files of various lengths - defaulted at 10 sec motion record.

 

2GB SD Card in SD-USB SanDisk Stick - 10 minutes

 

Dont have external Power for my SimpleTech USB Drive so will need to test that another time - it is much much faster though.

 

I have a feeling it uses USB1.0 though, as it is much slower than copying to and from in Windows - took about 1 minute to copy the same 117MB back to the same USB setup - on my Windows PC. Though it could be a limitation of the RTOS as well.

[Emil416 0]

Thanks for the input. Even though Ihave been reading specs. and manuals of different units. Alot of questions are still left unanswered. Some of these questions can only be answered only be handson use by fine people like you. Evev though I am use to reading tech. manuals, I think the manuals of some of these units leave a lot to be desired.

[dopalgangr 1]

Back a step to remote playback .. ahh yes it needs some serious work. In all fairness though, I think they are still new to the game in this regard, at least it seems with the EB, so it should get better - more people need to contact them with ideas, they seem to listen very well.

 

Rory, how are you contacting them? Can you send me the contact info and I will send them my thoughts. I picked up one of these last week and although the quality is good on recording your right, the lack of motion masking is eating up my drive. I had two cameras on it over night at the least sensitive motion setting and it still recorded all night long?? They also need to increase the playback speed to 32x or 64x, the 16x limit takes forever, especially when the motion isn't working and you have to go through a whole night of video It has some pretty positive features outside of that though. I like how it automatically adds the codec and player software to the USB backup and other nuances.

 

Here's a link to some captured video I took with it to review some cameras (I will be posting that this week sometime) The settings were kept at the default and the resolution set at D1/Best for each camera (by the way the cams were at the defaults as well).

 

http://s285.photobucket.com/albums/ll42/Dopalgangr/Cameras/

 

Anyway let me know, maybe I can help with the SDK thing to.

[rory 0]

Contact them via this link:

http://support.aver.com/newticket.php

[rory 0]

will talk more with you about it later .. got alot of things going on today .. maybe we can do something with the SDk together ..

 

Thanks

Rory

[dopalgangr 1]

roger that..