AUDIO! Anyone got GOOD REMOTE audio? Past more than live

[DRACONiDigital 0]

You can connect to it remotely, download and playback the video and audio at the same time, it just doesnt stream the audio and video live, you have to download it then playback. One location I just did this with, it records in time lapse mode video, and audio is smooth. Email me if you want the clip.

 

 

Rory

 

So you're saying this kind of works like Geovision's "download & play" feature, except the audio actually works?

 

That would seem to fit the bill, but I would have to evaluate audio quality.

[bryan1656 0]

Sorry to keep splitting my posts.. but I keep "havening" interuptions.

 

Dracon,

 

You've mentioned some high-end mics and that you are using pre-amps... but I'm not hearing anything about gain, sampling rates, frequency response, compression, or a host of other audio specific issues.

 

For audio, you're going to have to get a good handle on sound, just like for video, you have to get a good handle on light.

 

Here are some links -

http://www.indiana.edu/~emusic/digital_audio.html

http://www.teamcombooks.com/mp3handbook/11.htm

http://www.sparta.lu.se/~bjorn/whitney/compress.htm

http://www.umdnj.edu/idsweb/idst3400/audio.htm

http://www.vermontfolklifecenter.org/res_audioequip.htm

http://www.transom.org/tools/basics/200207.analogbasics.html

 

I hope this helps.

[bryan1656 0]

Dracon... I suspect that you may mean to say "passed audio".

[DRACONiDigital 0]

Dracon... I suspect that you may mean to say "passed audio".

 

No, past audio is what I was saying. Stuff that's already been recorded. Not live?

[DRACONiDigital 0]

Sorry to keep splitting my posts.. but I keep "havening" interuptions.

 

Bryan, keep the posts coming, anything I can get helps.

 

The audio equipment I have right now is analog. RCA-output.

 

When I take this RCA-output and plug it into a Panasonic VCR, the resulting recording is great.

 

When I take this RCA-output and plug it into a Geovision card, the resulting recording sucks bad.

 

I also did some testing with Linux (although the testing could have easily been done on Windows), and I did some testing with bitrates and whatnot.

 

What I found is that recording in 8-bit mono sucked bad. At nearly any rate. When I recorded in 16-bit mono, things got much clearer. I don't remember exactly at what bitrate and whatnot I finally came up with, but it worked. On Linux,I think I used 'streamer' (a component of XawTV), and used "mono16".

 

So, what I'm getting at here is that I'm not tied to any hardware as of yet. I've tried several systems, and none of them work for me. What I've found is that things seem to be stuck at 8-bit, with no way of changing them to something better. MULTI-CHANNEL AUDIO INPUT. The software that takes the audio input right from the sound card does seem to have some ability to change recording options, but I need multi-channel audio. I don't care if I have to put four sound cards in a machine in order to do this, I'll do it!

 

Anyway, hope this clears things up a bit.

 

Again, thanks for the input, keep it coming!

[qman 0]

jesus people, how clearer do you want him to make it?

 

recorded audio=past audio

 

ahhgg

[DRACONiDigital 0]

jesus people, how clearer do you want him to make it?

 

recorded audio=past audio

 

ahhgg

 

I think after the input I've gotten here is that to date the market demand for this thing must be damned nothing!

 

I guess there is another way I can put it.

 

I want a DVR system whose audio quality and options equal that of their video options.

I want to record quality audio (just like todays DVRs do great video).

I want to listen to that audio remotely across a network AND the Internet (just like many of todays DVRs do, some great, some not so great).

 

But I want the audio/video to be seamless.

 

Geovision keeps their audio and video separated by a massive fence. They are two completely different systems. They must be doing some crazy legwork to play back their video and audio at the same time, and keep them synchronized. They record their video in .avi files, but it's not standard, they only record the frames of interest. If I watch one of their recorded video files (not exported or anything, as it sits on the hard drive) in Windows Media Player, it plays back extremely fast, because it's playing at like 30FPS, but the frames only have motion.

 

Then, on the audio side, they have their files recorded in .WAV files. Great. Except they seem to be doing "motion audio". It only records when there is sound. Neat, but that means that the audio timestamp never really matches the video timestamp.

 

I've been so desparate with this thing that I've tried to take these .AVI and .WAV files and stitch something together after-the-fact, but to no avail, due to different timestamps. Plus, even if I did get that to work, the quality is horrible. OUCH.

 

Anyway, some more info on my situation.

[kaysadeya 0]

It's illegal, so don't know.

 

Can you expand on this?

 

Where, exactly, is it illegal for you?

 

This is very interesting for me, and maybe for others out there. Maybe we can come up with a good list of places where it's legal and not.

 

Thanks!

 

Sorry, I just saw your reply...

 

From what I understand, in most US states (if not all), it's illegal to do audio surveillance without posting a sign at the ingress points to the area being monitored. In my case that would be my front and back yard, which wouldn’t be practical. Personally, I wouldn’t be interested in recording conversations as detecting the nature and location of a particular sound. But it’s not practical in my case.

[rory 0]

Im uploading the video/audio clip, Ill email you when its done. Its 59MB.

 

Rory

[rory 0]

It's illegal, so don't know.

 

Can you expand on this?

 

Where, exactly, is it illegal for you?

 

This is very interesting for me, and maybe for others out there. Maybe we can come up with a good list of places where it's legal and not.

 

Thanks!

 

Sorry, I just saw your reply...

 

From what I understand, in most US states (if not all), it's illegal to do audio surveillance without posting a sign at the ingress points to the area being monitored. In my case that would be my front and back yard, which wouldn’t be practical. Personally, I wouldn’t be interested in recording conversations as detecting the nature and location of a particular sound. But it’s not practical in my case.

 

The police here have arrested a few people that attempted fraud in the gas stations, from the audio as well as the video. Basically the suspects claimed they dropped $100 on the floor, and came back to look for it. Not nice to gogo prison here, for a $100 crime!!!

[DRACONiDigital 0]

From what I understand, in most US states (if not all), it's illegal to do audio surveillance without posting a sign at the ingress points to the area being monitored. In my case that would be my front and back yard, which wouldn’t be practical. Personally, I wouldn’t be interested in recording conversations as detecting the nature and location of a particular sound. But it’s not practical in my case.

 

We do have signs posted at these locations. These are not sites that are very public. In fact, some sites have maglock access control doors that require keycodes or keyfobs.

 

We're not just doing this in open-air public places. We're doing this at places at which we're really being forced to do this more and more.

[kaysadeya 0]

Then you're probably ok. But as bryan1656 said, you might want to ping an attorney to be sure your back is covered. In many cases, audio is as important as video. Video without audio is only half of the story.

[DRACONiDigital 0]

Then you're probably ok. But as bryan1656 said, you might want to ping an attorney to be sure your back is covered. In many cases, audio is as important as video. Video without audio is only half of the story.

 

We did consult with an attorney, that's how we learned about the signs and Ohio's laws. We decided to do this after finding that (at the time, over two years ago) that Geovision was one of the few DVR board manufacturers that offered audio. We wanted to know why.

 

And here I am, over two years later, still roughly in the same situation . Although thanks to you guys, I do have a few leads now.

[bryan1656 0]

my bad on the "past audio thing".

 

It sounds like you've got good signal until the Geovision card downconverts it.

 

I found this -

http://dvr.sourceforge.net/html/main.html

 

Really interesting topic here... keep us posted, please.

[DRACONiDigital 0]

Really interesting topic here... keep us posted, please.

 

Actually, I've already started my own project to do this, similar to that DVR project. I've got a four channel BTTV-compatible card.

 

The problem is motion detection.

 

I've got a method that I can use to do post-recording motion detection, but the system bogs down after one camera (a 2.8Ghz P4 HT 512MB RAM) at 640x480. Arg!

 

I am currently doing testing right now. This machine has two sound cards in it, and I may be able to add a third. Be interesting to see what I can add before I break it

 

Don't suppose anyone knows any MPEG-based compression boards that are compatible with Linux? I don't mean Linux on a chip, I mean freely available drivers, or at least a command-line recording program? MPEG2, MPEG4, whatever. Just curious

[Thomas 0]

Motion detection is going to be hard, but wait till you try the text insertion for time/date stamps.

[cctv_down_under 0]

1/ geo has two audio codecs to choose from, one is better than the other.

 

2/ Best audio Video combo i have seen s VCS, they combine the MPEG2 Video and the Audio together, hence no lipsync lag and can do stereo, it was pretty darn impressive but would need some bocooo bandwidth if you wanted many cameras!

[rory 0]

Skype ..

[cctv_down_under 0]

somehow I dont think skype does MPEG2 at 768x576.....but I could be wrong

[rory 0]

Somehow I dont think audio is video

 

Seriously though, no, the audio would be totally seperate from the video.

 

Actually, Skype has APIs so you can integrate it into your own apps or hardware. I have tried it already and its great, for streaming video from a DVR would be remarkable, now for recording, thats another thing, but ill check it out over the next few days when I get more time to play with the API.

 

Whether the technology would be worth using in a DVR app is unknown at this time, but its great technology none the less ..

 

Rory

[AVCONSULTING 0]

This company has been doing extensive work on multi channel audio/video recording. You might want to give them a call and see what they might have to fill your customer's requirements. Listed below is a link to their site.

 

http://www.silicor.com/

[DRACONiDigital 0]

Skype ..

 

While I've not actually used this, I've read various articles and have listened to what others have said about this.

 

From my understanding, this is really a project to replace the telephone. While I very much think the Internet is going to eat the telephone network alive (as well as cable in terms of content), I don't know if the quality is really up there enough for surveillance. At least, for what my clients requirements are for this particular project.

 

Maybe live streaming this could help some, but in terms of switching between multiple inputs for RECORDED audio, syncronized with video, I don't think it'll work...

 

... currently

[rory 0]

Yeah the Skype quality is amazing ... check it out.

 

Rory

[DRACONiDigital 0]

It's interesting the poll came up, even with only a few votes, that nearly half of you have at least one client that needs high-quality stuff. I was starting to think my clients were alone in the universe