Doing Away With Cam Server And Just Using Cams' Built-in..?

[PeteCress 0]

I use BlueIris at home and at another installation - and see no reason to change.

 

That being said, I have been fooling around with the built-in Alert, Clip, Motion Detection, and FTP functionality on one of my HikVision DS-2CD3332-I's.

 

Can't say it's ready for prime time by any means... but it seems like it may have possibilities.

 

The Question:

Has anybody set up a minimalist installation using only the cameras' built-in functionality, no camera server or NVR, and just writing to a local hard drive on the same LAN and/or FTP-ing to a remote site? ....and had it actually real-world work.... -)

[40th Floor 0]

One camera could be doable. I would not want to do that for any remote connects. Put it on a network sniffer and see all your bits go flying by in the clear.

 

Connecting by HTTPS (rare, already), doesn't mean the software is going to use that channel for the stream.

 

FTP to a remote site? That's all in the clear. Now they (yeah, them) have control of your ftp site, not just for your videos - if even - but to use as a drop site for malware, file distribution, and other things you don't want traced back to you.

 

Chances are, if you have even considered using FTP, you may not notice that happening right under your nose. How will you know? Change your password often, and don't allow anonymous logons.

 

For home (local-only) use, and one camera, I suppose it would do fine for starting out. Why are you even considering it, though?

[PeteCress 0]

Why are you even considering it, though?

Strictly an effort at due diligence. People keep asking me about my IP cam setups and I keep saying that the only thing I know is Blue Iris - and would recommend it as long as the person is willing to cope with technical details and provide a PC with enough horsepower for the number of cams they plan to use.

 

The IP-cam-only approach occurred to me the other day while I was exploring the UI on a new cam..... And I thought I had better have a reason for recommending that somebody spend sixty bucks on BI and, maybe, whatever it costs for a dedicated PC instead of just using the camera's built-in functionality.

 

So far, my little experiments have been limited by the cam's motion detection: haven't figured out how to get a useful degree of sensitivity - getting too many trigger events regardless of sensitivity setting specified.

 

The other solution that I have had in the back of my mind since bringing a previous PC to it's knees with too many cams on BI is ACTi's cam server: only works with ACTi cams, but claims to offload all the heavy lifting (mainly motion detection, I guess) to the cams making it usable (they claim) with more cams on less PC.

[Quantum` 0]

I run Linux exclusively, and so there is no software for me, effectively. I've just gotten two Hik cameras set up and have them set for local storage and to do motion detect.

 

I plan to tie in to their SNMP which should ring a tone on my server when an event happens, and I'm trying to dissect the protocols of the camera for video streams to display them. So far I have RTSP, but that's TCP and thus pretty slow with lots of overhead.

 

Also if I can get sshfs installed to the cameras they can record to a remote NAS with SFTP. Since I'm doing New Science and no one else knows about these things, it's taking me a while to deconstruct things though.

Edited June 22, 2015 by Guest

[dan732 0]

If you have the -f models with build in Micro SD Reader, just buy a 64GB Micro SD Card and store to that per camera, clean, easy and no external servers or whatever to go bad or get hacked.

 

You may have to buy SD cards to swap them out every so often, they do "wear" so it is best to buy a name brand one as well.

 

And you can use the built in web interface on the camera to review footage and download clips to your computer as well

[Quantum` 0]

Yes I have 64GB SD cards in my two 2632 Hik cameras, and also they FTP all events to the backups server which is in the far end of the garage. (in case of fire or theft) I don't have sensitivity or zones down quite yet, but ultimately the cameras will email my phone.

 

Sandisk now makes 'long-wear' SD cards specifically for video. They rate them for about a year, if constant use.

 

Hik cameras, in Live Preview, call for the video on port 554 via RSTP. (I've confirmed in Wireshark) RSTP does authentication and herds through the RTP transport stream. Unfortunately the default RTP stream is TCP which, although it ensures the packets get there, has alot of overhead. In Hik cameras you can set this to UDP thankfully, and RTP does a fine job with integrity, but then the Live Preview goes away in the web interface. I'm looking for an Android app that can do RSTP using a URL which might look something like:

rtsp://admin:12345@192.0.0.64/h264/ch1/main/av_stream?udp

or

rtsp://admin:12345@192.0.0.64/h264/ch1/sub/av_stream?udp

 

VLC in CentOS does these links just fine (including audio!), but haven't had time to look in Android. Haven't gotten that far yet.

 

No one actually knows what port 8000 is for; AFAICT, nothing useful.

[Quantum` 0]

I am astounded to be running two cameras now which together, use less than 1.5Mbps of network bandwidth! And this is in a Nomachine NX window which also is using bandwidth. These are the Hik 2632's running at highest rez (2048x1536), Highest video quality, and at 6144Kbits/sec. With audio!

 

My tricks: Variable bitrate, SVC on, and most importantly UDP in Local Config. G.726 for audio and Environmental filter on. Of course I'm not using an NVR, but instead the RTSP stream directly (as NVRs do), since I run Linux and there's no other choice. Don't worry, RTSP knows when you've switched to UDP; UDP doesn't have the overhead of TCP, and RTP keeps packet discipline for you.

 

It is incredible to be using this low a bandwidth for near-top quality. Yeah, it's using alot of CPU (upper-right, 4 bars), but that's only because VNC isn't hardware-accelerated. If I can find an RTSP client that is, well...

 

A trick for focus: Get some electrician's tape and go to where you want the best focus (as it varies with depth-of-field). Put up a cross, and focus to make the cross sharp.

[MaxIcon 0]

What's your quality setting? The grass and shadows are pretty heavily compressed - this almost looks like Dahua instead of Hik. That would make sense if you're only getting 1.5Mbps from 2 x 3MP cams.

[Quantum` 0]

As I say quality is Highest.

 

When I set bitrate higher, as trees sway there's pixellation. At 6144Kb/s it sort of switches between fuzzy and clear.

 

Yes I'd say two cameras, each at 6144Kb/s, running both in a 1.5Mb/s stream is pretty compressed, but I don't know why.

[Quantum` 0]

Oh, you know what the compression artifacts are, is the NX remote desktop software. When I run the stream on a local machine it's quite clear. (attached) And even that is reduced to 1920x1080 from the native size.

 

See what you think.

 

Still, the bitrate is extraordinarily low. H.264 magick?

 

I am getting disturbing messages from VLC though:

[h264 @ 0x7fe4c400b9e0] error while decoding MB 109 8, bytestream -47                                
MultiFramedRTPSource::doGetNextFrame1(): The total received frame size exceeds the client's buffer size (200000).  487028 bytes of trailing data will be dropped!                                         
[00007fe4b018db78] freetype spu text error: Breaking unbreakable line                                
[h264 @ 0x7fe4c40eaca0] error while decoding MB 100 16, bytestream -33                               
MultiFramedRTPSource::doGetNextFrame1(): The total received frame size exceeds the client's buffer size (400000).  267723 bytes of trailing data will be dropped!                                         
[h264 @ 0x7fe4c400b9e0] error while decoding MB 95 38, bytestream -23

Ostensibly there's a place to set buffer size in VLC menus, but I can't find it.

[Quantum` 0]

Here's a retarded thing: In Hik's web interface, on the Playback tab, when you clip a piece of video (with the scissors), it does not save the audio. There is no audio track in the file.

 

Another retarded thing: If you download the file that's actually on disk which was recorded by the camera, you do get the audio track in that file, but it will not play in VLC or any other app.

 

Audio plays just fine watching the direct RTSP stream live.

[Securame 0]

Here's a retarded thing: In Hik's web interface, on the Playback tab, when you clip a piece of video (with the scissors), it does not save the audio. There is no audio track in the file.

 

Another retarded thing: If you download the file that's actually on disk which was recorded by the camera, you do get the audio track in that file, but it will not play in VLC or any other app.

 

Audio plays just fine watching the direct RTSP stream live.

 

Do you hear audio when you playbak on the camera's web interface? But do not have any audio when you download the recording?

 

It should play fine with VLC if you do have Hikvision's codecs installed. Also, try it with Hikvision's player.

 

Make sure you are actually recording the audio, the fact that you hear live audio does not mean it is being recorded. Also make sure you do have audio enabled on all streams. You have main stream, main stream (event) and substream. And you can have them be just "Video", or "Video+audio".

[Quantum` 0]

I have them set to Video+Audio. I have streaming set to UDP so I don't get video in the Live Preview.

 

I run Linux exclusively, so the Hik plugin doesn't work. Also I'm 64bit, and the (ancient) Hik plugin for Linux is 32bit.

 

I depend on the RTSP stream, viewed in VLC and indeed there's sound there from both cameras. The experiment I ran was to first cut part of a recording, then to download another recording. Then I opened each in MediaInfo and then KDENLive. No audio track at all in the cut clip, and an audio track in the downloaded one but it doesn't play the audio in VLC (or anything else) for some reason.