Nubie Question

[thekahuna 0]

I recently bought a DVR card and cameras from 123CCTV. Even though it is branded by 123CCTV, it appears to be a AverMedia Eyes Pro (Software & Hardware). I got it all hooked up and the video through the card is what I consider to be less than adequate. If I hook the cameras up directly to a TV, the video looks fairly usable. This implies that the card is where (my) issue lies. Will simply buying a card that supports a higher FPS solve this? Or is it simply the quality of the card? The Eyes Pro appears to support 30 FPS over the four cameras (even though I can only set each camera to display & record 5 FPS each - 20 FPS total). Will shelling out $500-$600 bucks for a 120 FPS card give me the quality I desire?

 

Thanks in advance for your help & advise.

 

- Dave

[qman 0]

Well, for one, tell us which cameras was it that you bought.

 

When I first started, they where my supplier, but the DVR cards where Geovision re-branded.

 

Avermedia 4 eyes pro is garbage, if your budget allows it, then get a high-quality DVR card, I sell the I-view, very, very good image quality, and stable DVR card. There is also Geovision, So far the best there is, but way overpriced, and good luck with support.

 

Other's recomend the I-chance cards, I personally never tested them, so I cannot tell you of their quality.

 

Give us the models that you bought at least on the camera side.

[AVCONSULTING 0]

Going to a higher frame rate will not help the quality of the video image, it only allows you to record more frames per second and on a 4 camera system 5 fps per camera is just fine. First check in your setup menus to make sure you have the cameras set at the highest resolution and also that the 640x480 picture size is selected. If you have done this and you are still getting poor quality video then the card you have simply does not have a high quality compression algorithim and getting a faster card from the same supplier will not help.

[cctv_down_under 0]

AV is right.. you are probaly watching and recording at 320x240 resolution, you would need to set the card to 640x480 or larger to see an improvement in the picture quality, howver raising the size of the resolution fills your HDD faster and will also lower the speed at which it records at.

 

The other thing that affects picture quality is the amount of compression or compression type, check what compression you are using and find out if it can be changed, on most DVR units you can adjust the amount of compression on a sliding scale so check this as well... Latsly the camera resolution that you have (TV Lines...well actually not really as only 2/3rds are read) affects the quality that you record with.

 

When you look at a DVR card on PC yopu are looking at a digitised image that has travelled through video card to display and it is a cropped image 640x480, there is overlay added to it and when recorded it is severly compressed, when you watch it on an analogue monitor you are watching the full resolution like 768x576 (Probably wrong.. but I cant remember PAL).. and it is not digitized or compressed so it looks better, but you can not record uncompressed data as it would be way too large to store, so compression is added, you see analogue just shows much less frame rate by using timing steppers in a VCR but digital does not do this, therefore the recording speeds can be faster..well they do do this but at a faster speed.

 

To geta round this concept some DVR card manufactorers sell a 480FPS Live Display card and this has an output that is not FULLY digitised and therefore provides a clearer and Real Time picture on 16 Cameras, because of the amount of chips needed to do this these cards can be very expensive indeed and it still has to interlace so it is not as sharp as an anlogue monitor but it can make adjustments to DSP processing which can make the image look better than Analogue

 

Lastly.. some dvr cards interlace the signals at a frame rate that is a straight division.. therefore 100FPS on 10 cams is 10FPS per camera, but some others like GEO etc can take the cameras that arent activated by movement and use the spare frames to move to a camera that has movement... for example. 100FPS card with 10 cameras without Buffering with 5 cameras moving means those 5 cams get 10FPS... A system with Buffering has 100FPS with only 5 cams leaving 50FPS that is spare that means each camera gets roughly 20FPS (actually its more like an extra 7FPS but that is another story)... This is a downfall in Standalone machines because most of them cant do the "On The Fly" adjustment.

 

My Tip is find a card that does 640x480 and Buy the Real Time Card and the faster the card or a card that does buffering.

 

You could find a Mpeg2 card but that would be large in file size or heavilly compressed.

 

I hope this helps

[CSScarlos 0]

That was a very clear explanation DVR_Expert.

What about increasing size of the picture? For example these cards from 123 cctv allow you to increase the size of the picture in the playback mode, it seems like you are zooming into the image. The problem is that increasing the size of the picture it also increases the bluriness. How can I get a better look of the picture without a zoom camera?

[rory 0]

"Lastly.. some dvr cards interlace the signals at a frame rate that is a straight division.. therefore 100FPS on 10 cams is 10FPS per camera, but some others like GEO etc can take the cameras that arent activated by movement and use the spare frames to move to a camera that has movement... for example. 100FPS card with 10 cameras without Buffering with 5 cameras moving means those 5 cams get 10FPS... A system with Buffering has 100FPS with only 5 cams leaving 50FPS that is spare that means each camera gets roughly 20FPS (actually its more like an extra 7FPS but that is another story)... This is a downfall in Standalone machines because most of them cant do the "On The Fly" adjustment. "

 

This is I guess what the Kalatel standalone does, if only 1 camera has movement, it records in real time, or as many as do have motion, they split up the total pps, at least on the all in one units, the single channel with a mux are not as good in that area.

[cctv_down_under 0]

The kalatel does a similar technique but not he same, it will only work with one camera, it does not spread evenly because it can not buffer.. I could be wrong though...

 

You will probably find the reason the image is blurred is due to either bad compression, too much compression or more likely you are using a 2.5 or 4mm fixed lens, the other reason could be that your camera is only Low res.... below 460 TVL

[rory 0]

Hi

 

It appears to do that. I played back recorded video from 3 cameras, 1 with motion, real time, when the other gets motion at the same time, it slows down slightly, then when all 3 cameras have motion at the same time, it will slow down more, then goes back to real time when 2 of them are empty and only one has movement. So I guess it does something similar.

 

Ofcourse it doesnt give me an exact pps number during playback, so its hard to tell exactly, this is a feature lacking in their remote software, that I would like, will see if there is a way to grab this from the DVR and at least put it in my own software