QX2006.EXE USERS TIP, Undocumented Features Disclosed

[FranciscoNET 0]

If you are like me, that dont got $x,xxx to be giving away to a company or person for a DVR card and would like to push your $25.00~$80.00 dvr card beyond its limits, and are using a QX2006 compatible card, then the following shall benefit you:

 

There's many (undocumented) discoveries that I have made regarding the QX2006.exe DVR program, I will state them here in case if there are more users using the QX2006 software for their card(s), they can improve the recording quality with my tips:

 

Based on my attempts to improve the existing QX2006.exe software in any way that I could in the attempts to get the results that I was trying to obtain, I made the following observation. In the main working directory of QX2006 there is a folder called "SysConfig", inside that folder, there is an important file called "ProFile.ext", this is the configuration file for this program, since I wasn't happy with the quality of the image I was getting I needed to some how improve the bitrate. When I opened the ProFile.ext file I concentrated on the following block:

[8 Chn Options]

Quality_0=4

Quality_1=5

Quality_2=6

BitRate_0=600

BitRate_1=400

BitRate_2=256

FrameRate_0=10

FrameRate_1=12

FrameRate_2=14

Width_0=352

Height_0=288

Width_1=352

Height_1=288

Width_2=352

Height_2=288

NQuality_0=5

NQuality_1=6

NQuality_2=7

 

Note that this block begins with "[8 Chn Options]" because I have a 8CH card, those that have more or less must go to their corresponding blocks such as 4CH, 16CH, 24, 32, etc...

 

We are going to first concentrate on the following lines:

BitRate_0=600

BitRate_1=400

BitRate_2=256

 

This represents the three "quality" choices the software gives you on the GUI. "BitRate_0" is mapped to "Excellent", while "BitRate_1" is mappend to "Good" and finally "BitRate_2" is mapped to "Standard"

 

I changed BitRate_0's value from 600 to 2000

I changed BitRate_1's value from 400 to 1000 and

I changed BitRate_2's value from 256 to 500

Since I am using Choice BitRate_0 (which is the Excellent Quality Setting under the GUI) I am now recording at a bitrate of 2000

 

 

Then I went to the following section:

Quality_0=4

Quality_1=5

Quality_2=6

and I changed the value for Quality_0 from 4 to 1

This means that I will now be recording at a Key Frame Interval of 1 (the lower the number is, the better it is)

 

Then I changed the frame per second rate to 9 if I would like to be able to "search" videos at a 16x speeds because my DVR is a Pentium 4 3GHz (Non Multicore) If you have a dual core Pentium processor you may play around with thie frames per second field with a higher value to see how it goes with you, but in my case, putting 10 in there caused my program to search recorded videos at 8x max speeds even though I clicked 16x because I maxxed out my CPU potentials due to the higher bitrate)

 

FrameRate_0=9

FrameRate_1=9

FrameRate_2=9

The above is the configuration section for the Frames Per Second, showing that I changed it to 9 fps.

 

Below is the resulting new changes for my configuration file:

[8 Chn Options]

Quality_0=1

Quality_1=5

Quality_2=6

BitRate_0=2000

BitRate_1=1000

BitRate_2=500

FrameRate_0=9

FrameRate_1=9

FrameRate_2=9

Width_0=352

Height_0=288

Width_1=352

Height_1=288

Width_2=352

Height_2=288

NQuality_0=5

NQuality_1=6

NQuality_2=7

 

Then I saved the file and started the QX2006.exe application again. I then noted that the recordings, even 3.3x greater in its file size, was so clear that I was able to almost identify everyone that walked by my cameras, even though the software is recording at 352x288 resolution, but it is now doing it with a very good bit rate with ZERO garbage like background effects like it was happening before. Now I am very happy with what I am getting here.

The bitrate quality plays a MAJOR role in the quality you will be getting in the recordings, it is not just resolution dependent.

 

ONE THING that you cannot do is up the resolution to anything higher than 352x288 in the configuration file because if you do so, you will get a Blue Screen of Death when you try to run QX2006.exe so for this reason, make a backup copy of the file ProFile.ext first in case if you do a mistake. If you did this, and you had QX2006.exe automatically starting each time that PC turns on, you will need to reboot Windows 2000/XP in save more and reverse that change.

 

In my observation, in some cases, it is better to record at 352x288 at a really good bitrate, than to record at 640x480 at a very poor bit rate.

 

So, to be cost effective, I will stay (for now) with my Phillips 9Bit based $80.00 QX2006 card since I am getting an excellent picture now.