Wanting To Move Up A Notch in Quality

[FarmerCharlie 0]

I am currently using an Avermedia NV3000 card with four cameras for monitoring wildlife. The computer is a Dell E520 Pentium D Processor 820 with 2.8 GHz Dual Core with Windows XP. It works OK, and I really like being able to set it to record to disk based on pretty sophisticated motion detection. But now I would like to move up a step in quality--maybe to something like VHS quality. This image shows a screen shot of what I am getting now.

http://www5.vetmed.auburn.edu/~branch/images/birds/20100503-06_44_16_DoubleOccupancy_a.jpg

Camera 1: Sony TRV900 (probably overkill for this application)

Cameras 2 and 4: Clover OC950 IR cameras.

Camera 3: ACC-E04N-HVD IR camera from Active-Vision

Usually I get about 3 frames per second at 320x240.

 

What sorts of systems are available for doing pretty much what I am doing now, but with somewhat higher video quality? Do I need to go to a stand-alone recorder? If so, what are some suggestions?

 

One more complication: I want to stream some of the cameras live. Right now I am having to do this by feeding the video signals to Diamond USB capture cards and capturing with WME. It would be nice if I could encode the streaming video right from the DVR. The two feeds are at

mms://cvm-vid.vetmed.auburn.edu/martins (using a Clover OC950 inside a purple martin gourd) and

mms://cvm-vid.vetmed.auburn.edu/woodducks (usually shows exterior of martin gourd during the day with the Sony TRV900 and the interior of a wood duck box at night using a Clover OC950)

[Soundy 1]

From what I could find on that card, you should be able to do 30fps on all cameras at up to 720x480 resolution - for analog cameras, that's about as good as it gets, with ANY hardware. Worst case, you might be limited to 15fps at full resolution, or something (I'm not personally familiar with those systems), but it certainly should be capable of far more than you're doing with it.

 

If the Aver software has a web-client component, you could probably just use that directly as your live feed...

[FarmerCharlie 0]

From what I could find on that card[/url], you should be able to do 30fps on all cameras at up to 720x480 resolution/

That was what I expected too before I bought it, but I have not been able to get higher resolution or frame rates. The best I can get is 7 FPS at 352x240 or 3FPS at 720x480. I guess that could be partly because of the computer; I don't know how much CPU time the card uses for the compression, but the CPU usage is usually less than 70% with both the DVR card and the two instances of WME running.

 

In general, do the stand-alone DVR boxes tend to perform better than the cards?

[tomcctv 190]

From what I could find on that card[/url], you should be able to do 30fps on all cameras at up to 720x480 resolution/

That was what I expected too before I bought it, but I have not been able to get higher resolution or frame rates. The best I can get is 7 FPS at 352x240 or 3FPS at 720x480. I guess that could be partly because of the computer; I don't know how much CPU time the card uses for the compression, but the CPU usage is usually less than 70% with both the DVR card and the two instances of WME running.

 

In general, do the stand-alone DVR boxes tend to perform better than the cards?

 

 

Hi farmercharlie. the nv3000 is a very basic and slow card. it depends on how many cameras you need if you wish to move up a notch. after looking at your footage i can see why you need real time. a friend of mine has just installed the same thing in scotland for people to watch remote at the birds. he has 15fps. you might want to update your viewing software to see if you get a better frame rate as that car can do better than the frames you have. if you need the software just pm me.

[bpzle 0]

What software version are you running of Avermedia? You should be able to get 7fps at 720x240 on each channel. 3fps at 720x480.

 

Also, I'm a little confused at why your streaming through external adapters.... Aver has this functionality built into the software. You can stream to a web browser client via ActiveX in Internet Explorer OR through a free remote client called CM3000. This would definitely save on CPU usage.

[FarmerCharlie 0]

What software version are you running of Avermedia? You should be able to get 7fps at 720x240 on each channel. 3fps at 720x480.

Version 7.3067, dated October 2008. I think I went back to this version because I had some sort of problem when I downloaded a newer version

Also, I'm a little confused at why your streaming through external adapters.... Aver has this functionality built into the software. You can stream to a web browser client via ActiveX in Internet Explorer OR through a free remote client called CM3000. This would definitely save on CPU usage.

I am able to broadcast the whole NV3000 4-channel signal to the WEB, but I could not get it to make the four separate channels accessible to Windows Media Encoder. I think that these boards switch between the different channels in series. What I think I need is a board that encodes them in parallel.

[bpzle 0]

That's a fairly old version... I would be interested to see how well the latest works (7.7 I believe).

 

For just 4 cameras... the NV3000 is a pretty good card. As I mentioned, you're not currently using it's full potential. Any upgrade in the card would really only be needed if you needed more FPS.

[FarmerCharlie 0]

As I mentioned, you're not currently using it's full potential. Any upgrade in the card would really only be needed if you needed more FPS.

I'm not dissatisfied with the card. I used to use do surveillance for a biological research project using time-lapse video recorders. That cost several thousand for just one camera--not to mention all the time I spent designing a circuit to automatically switch the tape to real time when it detected a heart arrhythmia over radio telemetry. I was amazed at what this inexpensive card can do for about $100. I am thinking about upgrading to get better frame rate and resolution.

 

The other project (broadcasting the four separate streams from the same four cameras) came up after I already had the NV3000. That project requires individual access by the encoders to the four separate video signals. It would be nice to combine both projects into one card if anyone knows how to do that. Right now I'm using four USB capture cards for the WEB Camera project, but I'm looking for a four-channel frame grabber, such as an ADLINK RTV-24 or some of the Osprey cards.