Ip camera , what do i need to start up

[bsculptor 0]

I currently have a 4 channel avermedia dvr card on my computer and looking to change to a better quality system. What are some good ip cameras out there and what else do i need to record and how does this work ? where does it record to ? how many cameras can i hook up ? if i wanted a PTZ camera do i need anything else ? I already have bnc cable lines throughout the house can i still use these in tandem with ip cameras ?

[buellwinkle 0]

There are many good brands of network cameras, so it depends on your budget. Some cameras you can record to internal SD cards, you can record to a NAS device but most people here either use an NVR appliance or NVR software running on a PC.

 

You can hookup thousands of cameras, so not sure what you mean by that. Clearly if you buy an 8 channel NVR you can connect only 8 cameras but many enterprise level NVR solution like what maybe used in casinos easily handle hundred if not thousands of cameras. Once you get past about 6-8 HD cameras, you are going to have some knowledge of networking to make it work properly and move up to gigabit switches.

 

PTZ network cameras are controlled through a buttons on the NVR software or from the camera's web browser. Typically you set "presets" of locations you want to go to and it quickly moves to that preset as the arrow button on not always easy to use on network cameras because of latency. Most let you set a patrol of your presets, so say you have 6 presets, you can have it spend say 10 seconds each and each area would be visited once a minute.