Migrating from Analog to IP Cameras

[jhonovich 0]

I was talking to an integrator recently who was telling me how much time his company is spending researching and testing products for their migration to IP cameras.

 

I put together a short essay on some key points involved: http://ipvideomarket.info/review/show/178

 

Summary:

* Determine if your DVR supports IP cameras

* Determine what IP camera manufacturers your DVR support

* If needed, assess options for NVRs or IP Video Management Software

* Determine if IP cameras can eliminate long distance analog cabling

* Determine if higher resolution cameras can help you

* Assess the increased bandwidth impact on your networks

* Determine if you can afford increased storage for megapixel cameras

 

I thought this would be an interesting topic to discuss on the forum. Agree? Disagree? Add something?

[Thomas 0]

I was talking to an integrator recently who was telling me how much time his company is spending researching and testing products for their migration to IP cameras.

 

I put together a short essay on some key points involved: http://ipvideomarket.info/review/show/178

 

Summary:

* Determine if your DVR supports IP cameras

* Determine what IP camera manufacturers your DVR support

* If needed, assess options for NVRs or IP Video Management Software

* Determine if IP cameras can eliminate long distance analog cabling

* Determine if higher resolution cameras can help you

* Assess the increased bandwidth impact on your networks

* Determine if you can afford increased storage for megapixel cameras

 

I thought this would be an interesting topic to discuss on the forum. Agree? Disagree? Add something?

 

You don't touch on the learning required. Either bringing in outside expertise, or spending some serious time getting techs trained up on Networking standards. Expecting on site IT staffs to handle that end is asking for pain. Because when something goes wrong, and with new technologies you're going to screw up something, you'll get blamed.

 

Or you run into the IT staff that is unreasonable, or has CSI expectations.

[jhonovich 0]

Hi Thomas,

 

That's a good point. I have modified the article to address this.

 

Best,

 

John

[survtech 0]

John,

 

You bring up some excellent points in the article. We are in the process of evaluating IP camera integration within the next 2 years in our casino. We don't expect it to be a major pain to install the necessary infrastructure into new buildings but we also have to consider how to implement it into existing buildings where the present infrastructure is analog, with a combination of coax and twisted-pair using mostly passive-passive on CAT-5.

 

In addition, no consideration was given to ethernet distance limitations and all punch-downs are on 66 blocks. There is also no space in our IT Department's IDF closets for our equipment and we will not likely share network backbones with them due to network security and control concerns.

 

Our present NVR system is highly centralized; with encoders in the same room as the NVR's. Our existing NVR system has severe limits on which IP cameras it can utilize and it is limited to 15fps for many IP and all megapixel cameras. We have regulatory requirements of 20fps for many applications.

 

We are considering other, more open, NVR systems as a partial workaround, but that will require replacing 128 8-channel proprietray encoders and we still would have to locate much of that equipment in our "DVR Room".

 

Other concerns are latency for PTZ control. It makes some sense to replace our analog matrix with a virtual one but many just have latency that makes PTZ control problematic. That is one reason why casinos are hesitant to go fully digital. Another reason is that many IP cameras have serious shortcomings for gaming applications.

[jhonovich 0]

Our existing NVR system has severe limits on which IP cameras it can utilize and it is limited to 15fps for many IP and all megapixel cameras. We have regulatory requirements of 20fps for many applications.

 

We are considering other, more open, NVR systems as a partial workaround, but that will require replacing 128 8-channel proprietray encoders and we still would have to locate much of that equipment in our "DVR Room".

 

 

Hi Survtech,

 

That's a great description of the subtleties and challenges involved in migrating to IP cameras.

 

One question on the proprietary encoders. Was the manufacturer of the encoders open about them being proprietary? One trend I am noticing is that vendors claiming they are more open than they actually are.

 

Thanks,

 

John