Uncompressed Recording

[jmars 0]

I currently have 4 CNB 535 TVL IR Vandal cameras around my house and all go into a Nuvico NVDV3-4000, which was purchased years ago.

 

The recording quality of the Nuvico quite frankly sucks, alot of pixelation, and at night I can barely see anything.

 

I've even tried an Exelon H.264 8ch recording at the highest settings, and the quality was still sub par.

 

Does anyone have a good recommendation of a 4ch or 8ch DVR (can be PC based) with full D1/30fps recording on all ports, most of them you have to decrease the resolution, or fps for them to do any type of recording on all the channels.

 

I was even thinking of changing all the Cameras to the CNB Mona Lisas, since the night shots from the current CNBs arent that great.

 

I have a feeling I might need to just get a few RG59 to Ethernet adapters and go IP for the quality I'm looking for.

 

Any suggestions are welcome, thanks guys!

 

EDIT: If I get the following: http://www.avigilon.com/products/datasheets/ENC-4PORT.pdf and use a NVR to do the recording, will this have better image quality?

[Soundy 1]

I currently have 4 CNB 535 TVL IR Vandal cameras around my house and all go into a Nuvico NVDV3-4000, which was purchased years ago.

 

The recording quality of the Nuvico quite frankly sucks, alot of pixelation, and at night I can barely see anything.

 

From what specs I could find on that unit (http://www.worldeyecam.com/pdf/dv3.pdf) it appears that although it DISPLAYS at D1, it only records at CIF... so there's half your problem right there (as in, half the resolution).

 

Not being able to see anything at night is the fault of the cameras, not the DVR.

 

I have a feeling I might need to just get a few RG59 to Ethernet adapters and go IP for the quality I'm looking for.

That's one option, although you'll want to make sure to go for good day/night cameras if you want the low-light response to be any good. Much as I hate Arecont cameras in general, I've used a couple of their day/night models and found they work quite well at night.

 

EDIT: If I get the following: http://www.avigilon.com/products/datasheets/ENC-4PORT.pdf and use a NVR to do the recording, will this have better image quality?

 

It would be better than your current DVR, simply by virtue of supporting D1 encoding. It won't necessarily give any better results than a proper D1 DVR.

[jmars 0]

The Nuvico DVR does support D1 but at very low fps: 120pps @ 360 X 240 60pps @ 720 X 240 30pps @ 720 X 480

 

Which proper D1 DVR would you recommend that supports 120pps @ 720 X 480 for channels?

[scorpion 0]

I support Soundy's post and agree 100%!

 

Switch out the cameras!

[rory 0]

What type of monitor are you using?

PC based normally give better quality and more features for recorded video ...

But the monitor used on a standalone also makes a difference, as well as the DVRs capability to convert the video from composite to vga (if using that) though that can differ from one to the next these days, also depends on the embedded OS used. The best live video i have seen on any stand alone and even better then Geovision for example, was an OEM using the same brand that Intellicam sells, with HDMI on a supported 32" LCD it was amazing, literally like a movie. The unit I tested only had CIF recording though so that pulled the plug for me on that one. They have others though, with D1 recording, just more expensive. Bottom line is they didnt have the evidence sharing features of say Geovision so I didnt go any further with it.

 

Units like the Nuvico, Avtech, GE, Avermedia, etc, are more work horses then anything, stick them in an hot utility closet and walk away .. they can in most cases survive a full summer in the tropics locked up with barely any air, at least the ones I have used (hard drive dies first!). Basic features though.

 

If you are looking for more real time recording in high quality, then check out hardware compression cards. Unfortunately H264 will compress the crap out of the video though so for recording try to get one with options. However nowadays with the faster CPUs and memory you can use the software compression cards that claim 480 in CIF and still using say Smart Motion Detection, it can seem close enough to real time in higher res, depending on how busy all the cameras are. Also in many cases there isnt a huge diff between 640x480 and 720x480 except there being a huge diff in file size .. so I tend to stay at 640x480 anyway .. but most PC based DVRs these days will handle 720x480 (D1). Hard drives are cheaper these days but they still cost us alot down here.

[thekuai 0]

if you have a decent pc get an el cheapo-ebay-o 8 or even 16 ch dvr card that claims full 30fps on all channels. So although for an 8 ch that supports 240FPS at cif you will only need 4 of the channels which will give you 120 FPS at 640x480 (double cif) on just half the channels. I'm in the same situation but I have a decent AMD phenom 2 955 based system and a 8ch 240 FPS @ cif ebay card for about $80. I only use 4 of the channels so in the end I have 120 FPS on the 4 cameras @ 640x480