CPU needed?

[jay964 0]

I am planning on adding about 4-5 I.P cameras to my existing geovision system. Will be upgrading my cpu and ram. In total I will have about 8 cameras (4 analog + 4 I.P). What do you guys recommend for a cpu? The cams will be 3 m.p.

 

Also, the majority of people recommend that I build a system strictly for video surveillance. I am kind of opposed to this idea because I will do not want two computers in my office. Also I am using one computer for my work needs as well as my video surveillance right now with no problems. Do you guys think I can get away with my current setup? All I really do is email and use excel on this computer.

 

Thanks

[waawaaweenie 0]

I am planning on adding about 4-5 I.P cameras to my existing geovision system. Will be upgrading my cpu and ram. In total I will have about 8 cameras (4 analog + 4 I.P). What do you guys recommend for a cpu? The cams will be 3 m.p.

 

Also, the majority of people recommend that I build a system strictly for video surveillance. I am kind of opposed to this idea because I will do not want two computers in my office. Also I am using one computer for my work needs as well as my video surveillance right now with no problems. Do you guys think I can get away with my current setup? All I really do is email and use excel on this computer.

 

Thanks

that depends on what your current system is

 

I am running a first gen Mac Pro with 2 dual core Xeon chips with 7gb memory and it lags with 5 cameras going and I have them turned down to 720p

[kamicrazy 0]

I've only ever used IP cameras, so all my experience is in that area.

 

Recording the video should not be a very taxing on your computer. After all the camera itself encodes the stream in h.264 and your PC simply writes it to storage. Refer to your recording software though for guidelines about minimum and recommended system requirements for the number of IP cameras you intend to have and the settings you intend to use.

 

Playback and live viewing is where the CPU and ram matter. As decoding the streams is where the grunt of the work. Geovision systems offer GPU decode to reduce CPU loading. However there are specific requirements you need to follow, and limitations.

[StanLee2066 0]

Do you guys think I can get away with my current setup? All I really do is email and use excel on this compute

 

If your PC is not doing video motion detect/recording, it will really help to keep the CPU usage down. Are you streaming all the cameras at once? But you can do some quick checks on your own to see what an impact adding those cameras might have by running Task Manager and checking the actual CPU usage .

 

I just checked my own PC. The CPU is at 1-2% on idle. The IP cameras on my network are self contained computers and do all the work. I also record to NAS/local camera SD. When I stream just one camera at 640x480 @ 15fps it goes to 5-6%. You can experiment and see for yourself what might happen if you add those cameras.

[mkkoskin 0]

Could you give us more specific details on your current setup and cpu/mem/network usages (Task Manager/Resource Manager on Windows)? With those, it's probably rather easy to calculate what the requirements are.

 

Also what's the software you're using, does it record all the time, does it have motion detection built-in or are you using the motion detection on cameras? You say 3mp cameras, what bitrate you use on those?

[MaxIcon 0]

Just to boil it down a bit:

 

It totally depends on the software you use. In general, if your software only records, you can get by with less CPU overall. If it displays the cameras and/or transcodes the video, it will take a lot more. As mentioned above, motion detect and other features (on-camera displays, pre-trigger video cache, etc) will increase your CPU as well.

[jay964 0]

Right now I am using Geovision software and would like to keep using it. It records 24/7 and displays live viewing. Cpu usage right now is at 24% when just running the geovision software. I dont do much else on the computer than a few excel sheets and checking email.