foxguard 0 Posted November 8, 2011 Can any one just give me bullet points of the main differences? Simple things to explain to customers like.... Ip NVRs are easier to get the video clips from as you don't have to convert to a AVI file that you have to do on a DVR system.... Does that make sense? Cheers. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Soundy 1 Posted November 9, 2011 Just a few things off the top of my head... Analog: Benefits: Cheaper (in general - there are some pretty f'n expensive analog cams too!)Plentiful, lots of selectionAll recorders compatible with all cameras (well, 99.99% of the time)Easy - truly plug'n'play Drawbacks: Limited resolution (D1 = 0.33 megapixels)Point-to-point home-run wiring limits installation optionsComplete lack of standards in specifications allows "junk" vendors to over-sell their products' abilities IP: Benefits: More flexible wiring options means more versatile installationsCapable of higher resolutions (from CIF up to 16MP currently available, up to 25MP announced)Saves the cost of separate capture hardware (DVR card, etc. not required)Health monitoring of the cameras themselves is possibleRemote control/configuration of any cameras (only a few analog cameras support this via RS-485, which requires separate wiring) Drawbacks: Individual cameras cost moreRequires a modicum of smarts to setup and configure (DOES NOT require a rocket scientist!)Possible compatibility issues between some cameras and some NVRs Simple things to explain to customers like....Ip NVRs are easier to get the video clips from as you don't have to convert to a AVI file that you have to do on a DVR system.... This is not necessarily the case. In its most basic form, and NVR simply receives a data stream from the camera, and writes it to disk... in that case, the ability to play those files on "any PC" depends entirely on the camera itself, and the stream format it uses. An NVR may also break recordings into multiple small files for management and search indexing - on a Vigil DVR/hDVR/NVR, for example, a video file contains at most, one minute of video... the file is named as 'ccmmss.mjp' where cc is the camera number (starting at 00, just to further confuse things - 00 for camera 1, 01 for camera 2, etc.), mm is the minute of the hour that the file starts, and ss is the second of the minute that the file starts, and stored in a folder numbered for the time (on a 24-hour clock), which is in a folder named for the date (in yyyymmdd format). So for video from camera 5 recorded at 5:34:20pm on November 8, 2011, you'd have to go into the folder x:\Data\20111108\17\ and find the file 043400.mjp (last two digits might be something else if that clip didn't start exactly at 5:34:00). So with the above system, if you DID find the right file, you'd be able to play back that minute... then you'd have to go to the next file. So while it IS technically possible to watch the video without exporting it via the VMS, it's not very friendly or convenient - the file structure is done to accommodate the software, not the operator. Oh, and in this case, while it IS an MJPEG file, it's a normally a proprietary codec (unless you change the configuration otherwise), and you have to install their Windows-only AZTECH codec on your PC to play these files. Not difficult, but something else to consider. Anyway, the point of all that is, you CAN'T NECESSARILY playback IP camera video on just any computer without other considerations. Sometimes you can, but it's not something I'd count on as a selling point. Again, it will depend on the camera used, AND the NVR. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
foxguard 0 Posted November 9, 2011 Thank you, exactly what I was after. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
