Suggestions for new configuration in our surveillance room

[MetalguitarJames 0]

james, was it you that asked about the VGA convertor before?

If so I just installed one this evening for my LCD .. its a ViewSonic model, does TV and more .. i can get the model number tomorrow if you like.

 

Rory

 

Yes it was me Rory. We ended up finding 19" CCTV LCD's for $320 each so we alleviated that issue.

[rory 0]

james, was it you that asked about the VGA convertor before?

If so I just installed one this evening for my LCD .. its a ViewSonic model, does TV and more .. i can get the model number tomorrow if you like.

 

Rory

 

Yes it was me Rory. We ended up finding 19" CCTV LCD's for $320 each so we alleviated that issue.

 

OK ...

[rory 0]

james, here is the device im using BTW ..

http://www.viewsonic.com/support/accessories/tvvideoprocessors/nextvisionn4/

 

Its really cool, especially for home use .. i have 2 LCDs, a 17" im using as the main PC monitor now, and my older Viewsonic Wide Screen 19" LCD .. im using the 19" for this .. i hook my DVR into it using the RCA, then the portable DVD player into the S-Video .. sound goes to the LCD audio and that isnt actually bad, pretty loud and sounds good.

 

I did test the cable TV into it also, and it works, but I use a regular TV for that, so I can watch TV and also see my cameras at the same time.

 

next is to test my digital cameras in the inputs .. works out good as the TV im using now has no A/V input.

 

It has an IR remote which has resolution settings also, 640x480, 800x600, 852x480 .. and 1024x768 .. DVD movies look great on it

[MetalguitarJames 0]

Thanks for the info Rory!

 

UPDATE.....System has been fully operational for a bit now and the video quality is excellent. The most frustrating downside is the remote client software for these DVR's. They are using the DS-4016HCSI Hikvision cards stacked to 64 channels. There is a small latency issue which doesn't effect us that much. The things that frustrates me is that the remote software doesn't have very good functionality during a remote search. We can't go to previous frames without having to go to the minute before and it won't let us back up video by times (i.e. 14:30-14:35). There is a start and stop button for saving video files. Anyone who has worked in a casino understands this frustration. Not only that but to be able to review video of say.......4 minutes ago has to be done on the actual dvr itself because the remote software has a one hour delay on it meaning we have to wait an hour to be able to access that data. Again, we can't have this road block. We have spoken with the vendor about this and they got us in touch with their vendor who they bought it from. I'm not going to name names here. I've uninstalled and reinstalled the updated dvr server software and remote client software numerous times and we still have the same issue. Although the main vendor of our software says that they are completely revamping both the server and remote software, if anyone knows of any better, more functional software that works with the DS-4016HCSI DVR cards, please let me know because it's too cumbersome with the current software.

 

Thanks,

 

James

[survtech 0]

Not only that but to be able to review video of say.......4 minutes ago has to be done on the actual dvr itself because the remote software has a one hour delay on it meaning we have to wait an hour to be able to access that data.

You might want to run a fragmentation report on one of the DVR's data drives. One of the systems we tested before we purchased our alpha DVR (now the Honeywell Enterprise) was the Colby Systems. It wrote video data in one hour long files. If you wanted to review during that hour, you had to stop (and restart) recording the stream. Dangerous!

 

Anyway, the Pelco DX-9000 had a similar writing scheme and casinos who tried it had to replace it because the files became fragmented to the point that each server had to be taken down regularly and defragged. It took many hours to do the defrag. Meanwhile, the system wasn't recording.

 

If a DVR system writes lengthy files to a standard formatted hard drive or RAID (NTFS or FAT16/32, etc.), these files can become fragmented to the point that the system throughput slows way down and eventually can't keep up with the data stream(s). The best systems use other writing methods - small packets or cluster-by cluster writes, etc., that avoid fragmentation.