Few general questions re dvr's

[kensplace 0]

What is the quality like on a typical low end price cctv drv, is it better than / comparable to or worse than say a hauppage pci wintv capture card at full resolution?

 

Is it better than VHS or S-VHS?

 

They seem to have (if the mention it at all) low recording resolutions compared to the display resolution, are they worth looking into - I dont want to get one if when it comes to the crunch vital quality has been thrown out of the window when it recorded.

 

Also what about a standard domestic hard disk based TV recorder, they seem to have good reviews, are they suitable for CCTV (any one tried one?)

 

How do either/both cope with recording from a multiplexer, which was designed for recording onto timelapse?

[securitymonster 0]

They aren't too bad at all, the big thing to keep in mind is that you'll have very little features and that you'll also get very little record time. Even with a big hard drive, when they say you get 5 days, figure you'll get 2 if your lucky. Other than that, they are fine.

[kensplace 0]

Im tempted to get a standard tv one, not bothered about the recording times, 1 day would do, 2 would be great - its just so I can leave it on, and forget about it really.

Until recently I was just hitting the record button on a vcr when I suspected trouble, now I can hit record on the PC, but I cant leave it on permanently on the pc as its way to resource hungry.

 

Anything that can record at least 24 hours, at at good quality (ie for evidential identification/prosecution purposes) would do the job.

[securitymonster 0]

the camera will be more of a determining factor on the type of video evidence you want. The standalone basic MJPEG dvr will probably keep you happy for awhile, but once you get used to it, you'll wish you splurged and got something with some more functions and features. But I guess we all have to start somewhere!

[kensplace 0]

Camera should be fine, after making the mistake of buying a couple of dome cams from ebay (utter junk....) I waited until some decent kit came along for next to nothing on ebay, got a plettac fac830 and a sony something or other, both good quality, mainly use the plettac as its better at night (its been used by town centers etc for their cctv systems, and I wish I knew the protocol for it.)

 

 

Got a videmech pan unit on the plettac along with a computar zoom lens (7.5 to 75) so I can zoom right in on the trouble makers.... Waiting for a dennard 2000 pan tilt to arrive (cheap, only 10 quid + postage) but not sure where on earth I could put it, as it looks slightly to large, and obvious for the window sill lol....

 

Course that relies on me being there at the time, but I can have a second cam with a wide angle lens on for a overview, that can show me where the trouble makers head of to afterwards (as they seem to live very near....)

 

Just ordered a liteon hd/dvd recorder, so can just record to hard drive, then burn to dvd if needed, should be arriving in the next few days, will report back what its like.

 

(plus the other half isnt going mad at me getting more 'camera' junk, as we can record tv on it...)

[kensplace 0]

Quick update, it arrived, and the picture quality is fantastic, it can record at full pal resolution, or lower for longer. Miles better quality than the cheapo 4-channel card of ebay, and miles better than the hauppage wintv card.

 

 

Comes with zoom, fast forward, slow motion etc, pal/ntsc, and all format dvd writer to burn recordings. Lots of inputs so I can switch between tv, sky digital, camera input, or pc tv card.

 

Sods law though, its a duff unit, keeps crashing, so its going back - fingers crossed the unit they send to replace it will be fully working.

 

Need to figure out how to get the multiplexer working with it, not even sure if it works properly for demux or not, or what settings, but got all the time in the world to figure it out lol..

 

Firmware is upgradable also, so who knows maybe someone somewhere will add cctv stuff to some hacked firmware.....

[MaxIcon 0]

What model LiteOn is that? I didn't know they made that type of recorder!

 

max

[kensplace 0]

Its a liteon 5045 they are pretty cheap these days, especially compared to cctv stuff, and the budget cctv ones I looked at recorded at a really low resolution.

 

The replacement (didnt even have to pay return shipping) works fine (touch wood, fingers crossed) so far, only glitch seems to a slight bit crosstalk/interferance on the sound now and again if I use the front a/v audio channel whilst using the scart channel. Will get on to support about that, see what they say, but i guess I can live with it for now.

[MaxIcon 0]

Thanks! I thought it was a Liteon security recorder!

 

I hadn't considered using one of these - I'll have to think through this one. You'd lose a lot of flexibility in frame rate, time stamp and such, but I can imagine the image quality is quite good.

[CCTVcams 0]

pretty interesting concept, kensplace - thanks for sharing. keep us posted if you can get it to work with a multiplexer - seems like a pretty decent alternative to a budget 1-ch dvr.

 

max, you mentioned losing flexibility in frame rate - you mean if you wanted to reduce quality to save hdd space?

[rory 0]

you could get a PC tower from TigerDirect for under $300 and add a 1 or 2 channel card ..

[kensplace 0]

Never had any decent results with PC cards (although not tried geovision). The pico ones are rubbish, and even the hauupage ones I tried are just reasonable at best (and only then if you dump there rubbish software and use dscaler instead).

Deinterlacing problems are also a pain with the pc cards, but dont seem to happen at all with the standalone unit.

 

 

The standalone gives so much better recording and playback quality compared to a pc unit, it has to be seen to be believed (course thats probably more to do with the fact I use a tft monitor on the pc, and the standalone is connected to a TV.....)

 

As far as the multiplexer goes, I can record ok of it, and view it back frame by frame, but playback into the multiplexer still does not let me select a camera to view, but then again, it does the same if I record to a standard VCR, so maybe its just a crappy (or faulty) tecton mux.

 

There are several modes for recording, ranging from High quality, which looks the same as the source to Super long play (more like old vhs)

 

I stick to standard, which gives about 67 hours recording. You could have up 300 or so hours, but I prefer the quality.

 

The best bit is the built in dvd recorder, so I can burn footage (and tv) to dvd, or even normal cds (vcd or svcd).

 

Probably will end up getting a proper multi cam dvr one day, as I use this one for recording TV far to often

[rory 0]

yep, the pico doesnt come close to the Geo software (just threw 2 of them in the garbage) ... the 2 channel Geo cards are really inexpensive and you get the full Geo software ..

[kensplace 0]

Are they capable of recording 25 fps without missing ANY frames?

 

A good test would be to record the output of a mux to see whether they are dropping frames or not. The naked eye cant tell, but if you record something like a mux then play back frame by frame you quickly spot problems.

 

I need something that can record the ouput from the mux, but the TV card I have misses frames now and again, which means I cant use software to select cameras when playing back.

 

Would love to try geo, but my main pc is mainly amd, so problably not a good move (although I do have a rackmount Intel job, but its not fast, p3 750 mhz)

[rory 0]

Well the GV250 is the basic card and not a real time card, the GV800 is the better card, cost more though. Same software all around. When they record, the files are saved as AVI Files, basically its different from using a mux. Not sure about the frames part, weve only ever used motion only record with any DVR.

 

They have different cards that do different speeds, the GV600 is the 30fps (real time on 1 channel), GV650 is the 60fps card, the GV800 is a better card over all and 120fps. Then comes the Combo cards which are better as they have the DSP Real Time Analogue output.

 

The GV250 runs on Via chipsets, the 600 may, not sure yet. The 800 definately doesnt run on the Via chipset, though will work on SIS and Intel. Combos need Intel.

 

Rory

[kensplace 0]

What is "DSP Real Time Analogue output"

 

I can guess at Digital Signal Processing, but what does it do?

[rory 0]

Its a multiplexed analog output .. real time display .. basically its an RCA output and you can place that into a CCTV Monitor for higher than PC quality.

 

So you get the best of both worlds, high quality live display (analog), and high quality evidence sharing (PC)

[kensplace 0]

cool, cheers.

[rory 0]

no prob .. this is a basic sample ..