DVR m-peg to H.264

[pakmafia 0]

I have a 4 Ch Dvr which at the moment supports only m-peg format and records only for 70 hrs but I am been told a H.264 format Dvr can record for 500hrs. is there anyway I can upgrade the firmare on the DVR there is no brand name on the DVR and i think its a chinese made DVR with usb and internet function.

[Thomas 0]

Generally not.

[pakmafia 0]

so what is the theory behind it? is it the software/firmware or Hardware that makes a DVR m-peg or H.264?

[rory 0]

Its the compression, either in the software, or the firmware on hardware, depends on the DVR.

 

With a budget DVR its lucky to have Mpeg4 even.

 

I wouldnt bet on that 20 to 3 day ratio though ..

[Nwavguy 0]

First of all, it depends on what you mean by "mpeg"? A lot of people don't realize this, but H.264 is just a later version of MP4 (known as "part 10" to be exact). H.264 was mainly developed for HDTV, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray video formats. It's an attempt to provide a more complete standard for high-end video compression supporting higher resolutions than the NTSC standard as well as the 16:9 format. There have been a lot of problems getting various file formats, software and hardware to interoperate with each other. H.264 is supposed to fix a lot of that.

 

I'm not sure about CCTV applications, but for a movie, H.264 is, at best, only about twice as efficient as the original MP4 Part 2 standard. I wouldn't expect it to be much different for CCTV. So, at best, it might double your recording time for comparable video quality.

 

Generally more advanced codecs, like H.264, require more processing power to encode and decode in real time. Sometimes its done with specialized chips designed just for video encoding/decoding. Sometimes it's done in firmware with a general purpose processor. So the odds of upgrading an older DVR are slim to none unless it's based on a PC platform.

 

You have to take the recording time numbers given by manufactures with a big grain of salt. The figure quoted is often at the lowest resolution, highest compression, and is for their model with the largest hard drive (or multiple drives). So that "500 hours" may be only 50 or 100 hours with the standard drive at realistic resolution and compression settings.

 

In my opinion, H.264 isn't a big deal for CCTV. If you consider you can double the capacity of most DVRs by spending around $100 on a new drive, that's a lot cheaper way to double the recording time than buying an entire new DVR that supports H.264?

[pakmafia 0]

Thanks for the detailed information. It does makes sense now. I am sure it will be easier to convert the DVRs formats but for now I think ill just have to get a bigger hard drive. Thanks Again

[Thomas 0]

It's not that easy to do the converistion. Differant codecs tend to have differant CPU useage requirments. Embedded systems generally only have as much processing power as they need and not much more. Switching codecs can increase that requirement and make it physically impossible.

[Walteryubo 0]

IF you need H.264 compression DVR,you should buy a new one.upgrade is null for your M-JPEG DVR.