New to Forum-Need advice on DVR

[fishView10 0]

Hello all. I am a Fish Biologist in No. California and I am designing a video system to record fish passage thru 5 fish passage chutes in a fish counting weir. I need help deciding on the proper dvr to record high quality footage from 5 underwater cameras as well as 4-5 security cameras. I want to record 24-7, 7 days a week for a few the first year after install. I need to be able to take the footage from the dvr on an external hard drive on a daily basis back to my office a few miles away to review the footage on a computer. What compression system would be best, mpeg4 or H.264? What is a good brand of dvr to purchase? I want a quality unit and can spend the $ for a good dvr. Would I need viewer software for the review computer? Thanks for the help.

[Soundy 1]

Hello all. I am a Fish Biologist in No. California and I am designing a video system to record fish passage thru 5 fish passage chutes in a fish counting weir. I need help deciding on the proper dvr to record high quality footage from 5 underwater cameras as well as 4-5 security cameras. I want to record 24-7, 7 days a week for a few the first year after install.

Hmm, I'm not sure I follow this part... you want to do 24/7 just for the first year and then cut back, or you want to store a year's worth of 24/7? The former is easy... the latter will require a TON of disk space.

 

I need to be able to take the footage from the dvr on an external hard drive on a daily basis back to my office a few miles away to review the footage on a computer.

Okay, this gets trickier... most DVRs store video in a proprietary format, and most that I've dealt with do it with tons of little short oddly-named files, which means you wouldn't be able to just take the recording drives with you for viewing (well, you could, but it would be a PITA to go through).

 

What you'd probably be looking at, is plugging in an external drive, and exporting the day's video, yes? Of course, if you're doing that EVERY DAY, you could potentially save on on-site storage - you could just buy a ton of external drives, and keep those for your long-term archive, and have the DVR just retain a week or two (assuming you want that full year of retention).

 

Or have the mass storage (large RAID array) at your office, so you bring the external drive back, and then back it up to the office array. This is probably desirable anyway; if you're spending the money to "do it right" then you should probably spend a bit extra to make sure your data is safe

 

What compression system would be best, mpeg4 or H.264?

H.264 will compress better and give you smaller files. However...

 

What is a good brand of dvr to purchase? I want a quality unit and can spend the $ for a good dvr.

Well, one question would be, are you planning or considering using megapixel cameras for any of this, or is analog sufficient? If you're wanting partial megapixel, you'll need to consider a hybrid DVR. Would the surveillance cameras be existing ones that you're adding into the system?

 

I could do all this with a Vigil system - which is where the "however" comes in: their latest systems all record in H.264, but they also have a proprietary codec called Aztech (variation on MJPEG) that can compress MJPEG video as much, or in some cases more, than H.264.

 

I'd probably set it up with a local RAID array for storage, since 24/7 recording at full quality is going to eat up lots of space (we use QNAPs, they work well). I'd have to look into it, but it should be possible to configure it so the "fish cams" have priority to the space over the surveillance cameras (so if things fill up, the surveillance cameras start to recycle footage first, so you don't lose space for the fish cams).

 

Would I need viewer software for the review computer? Thanks for the help.

In almost all cases, yes. Most systems (including Vigil) will, or can, export a player with their video. Some can even create a self-running export - video and player embedded in one file.

[fishView10 0]

Thanks Soundy for the reply.

 

I plan on full time recording for the first year and then cutting back. I was concerned about taking the footage back to the office for review because I tested a dvr in the past and found it difficult because it cut the footage into 30 minute sections. I was hoping to find another way to do this without the frustration.

 

The underwater cams are analog and I don't plan on using IP cameras for security.

 

I like the RAID idea. It seems crazy to have many external drives piling up around the office.

 

THanks Again

[Soundy 1]

Thanks Soundy for the reply.

 

I plan on full time recording for the first year and then cutting back.

Okay, that makes more sense

 

I was concerned about taking the footage back to the office for review because I tested a dvr in the past and found it difficult because it cut the footage into 30 minute sections. I was hoping to find another way to do this without the frustration.

Most better DVRs don't have this limitation. I know with a Vigil, I can export any timeframe I want to a single file, up to the limitation of the filesystem. As a test, I just exported *two days* (actually, two days and one hour) of my front-porch camera, D1 @ 10fps, and generated a file just over half a gig (yes, only 500MB) in about 5 minutes. Granted that's motion detect, but with the public sidewalk and a bit of the street in frame, it does see quite a bit of motion... and it's a B&W camera, so it takes probably one-quarter the space that color video would. At those specs, you could take it all back to the office on a flash drive... dump it to your RAID, then use the drive again for the next day's video.

 

As a point of interest, I had a camera set up for a while to do a time-lapse sequence, 1 frame every minute, at 1.3MP... just looked at an export I'd done of that a while back, 10 days' worth, came out to just under 2.5GB.

 

I like the RAID idea. It seems crazy to have many external drives piling up around the office.

Thanks, that was an original - I get residuals if you use it