Ether9808 DVR very slow with radeon 9250 graphics card -Help

[russ1150 0]

Hi;

I have been using a Geovision GV-800 card but it was just not capable of recording crisp pictures and the 120fps was just too slow. Anyhow I just purchased a Ether 9808 and was running it on my Dell B110 computer with 2.5GB celeron D processor, 750 mb of Ram and had installed a Diamond radeon 9250, 256MB video card. The system was extremely slow one transaction in about two minutes. I removed the Radeon board and software and went back to my on-board Intel 82856G graphics card, 96MB and it went much faster but I am running the processor 95 to 98% all the time. The pricture quality is good and the 240 fps is great. I believe the on-board graphics is running from the cpu causing it to run all the time. My question is what graphics card is best to run with the Ether 9808 DVR Card?

Or does anyone have any suggestions

Russ

[CollinR 0]

What was the CPU when the radeon was installed?

 

This is usually more realted to software transcoding rather then decompression to the display.

 

I have no problems with the newer Intel graphics, don't know which one you have but the GMA950 has been fine for me (you listed the northbridge chipset #).

[russ1150 0]

Hi Collin

The cpu was the Dell B110 with the Celeron D 2.53MB . How much of the CPU are you using the DVR, mine is using 95 to 98% all the time, unless I shut off the DVR and then it goes to 1% or less. I am hoping that by going to a graphics card with the memory on the card it will free up some of my cpu.

What is a good graphics card?

Russ

[CollinR 0]

If you are at max CPU adding memory alone isn't going to help. There are other functions a video card can sometimes help with but this is somewhat card and DVR specific. I know nothing of your specific DVR card but I doubt there is a video card to help you much.

 

Do you still have the GV800? I have had a GV800 in a B110 2.8 IIRC before, no problems with the on board graphics. I never did actually test the framerates either though, looked fine to me by eye across 8 channels. CPU usage will be high if you use alot of quality compression, only the DVR card itself can help you there. Video cards can only help with decoding not encoding or transcoding. Well obivously you could get a multi core Pentium processor but I doubt thats what you wanted to hear either. 98% CPU is just that CPU maxed out, you need to kill other system resource hogs or get more CPU capacity.

 

Look at your task manger (Alt+Ctrl+Del) and see what other PROCESSES are running from all users. Sort by CPU use and start trimming the fat.

[russ1150 0]

Hi

I have looked over the task manager and all of the loading is coming from the decode.exe program. I am running the DVR at its max 8 channels at 640 X 480 at 30 fps using the h.264 compression. I can back off the recording by going to motion detection and that is how I normally run my system. I was just interested in running the DVR wide open and seeing what the results would be. I guess I now know. You are correct about the dual processor but most of the DRV cards (to my knowledge) can operate in that mode yet. I bought the Dell B110 to be a Dvr dedicated unit. In the future I will get the dual processor and use my personnel computer for the DVR it has a 800mb FSB might make it a little faster.

I just backed the system down to one camera recording and it is still running at 92% of the cpu. Maybe there is something else causing the high usage but the manager says it is all encode.exe

Russ

[CollinR 0]

Hi

I have looked over the task manager and all of the loading is coming from the decode.exe program.

 

...Snip...

 

I just backed the system down to one camera recording and it is still running at 92% of the cpu. Maybe there is something else causing the high usage but the manager says it is all encode.exe

Russ

 

 

Which one is it or did they switch on you?

 

encode.exe = make the recording files on hard drive.

decode.exe = make the recording visable on the local screen.

 

If it's decode a video card with hardware support for decoding that video codec would help you.

[russ1150 0]

SORRY it is the encode.exe

I did find something unusual, when I set the screens to watch real time from 8 cameras to 1 camera the cpu dropped from 95% to 73%. The DVR is still recording 8 channels on continous motion. The amount of cameras recording 1 or 8 made no difference but the view screen makes a big 20% difference.

weird--

Russ

[phred 0]

Pretty sure CollinR is on the right track and the route of your problem is

not your graphics card.

 

 

Please remember that this card is not a hardware compression card.

Unless the design has changed, the Ether uses Philips SAA 7130. This is a

9 bit ADC (analogue to digital converter) and not a hardware video

compression chip - video compression is done by your CPU.

Processing 240 fps in H.264 takes a lot of processing power.

 

If you want to run at this frame rate and also want low CPU usage then

you need a proper hardware compression card.

The card I use will run on a 2ghz pentium doing 100fps at 704x576 with

around 6% cpu.

 

 

One other thing-

I remember something about a bug in the software for this card that

causes high CPU usage even with only one channel running, so check

Wave-P for a fix.

[russ1150 0]

Hi;

The compression into h.264 is accomplished on the Ether 9808 board. What is unusual is that the viewer seems to take more cpu than the H.264 encoding. I have almost no cpu difference between recording one camera or recording 8 cameras. What does your DVR use in cpu processing?

Regards,

Russ

[phred 0]

Must be a new design then, what compression chip are they using?

 

My DVR only uses a few % cpu at 100fps and D1 res. with motion

detection also running on all channels.

[russ1150 0]

I dont know what compression chips they are using but here are the sepcs.

Specifications

 

Camera Input: 8 Channels BNC Female

Audio Input: 1 channel audio input through motherboard sound card with microphone

Image Quality: 9-bits Philips ADCs for Super High Quality

Image Compression: H.264 optimized (high recording definition, especially when there is intense movement)

Live Video Total Frame Rate: 200 fps in PAL, 240 fps NTSC

Recorded Video Total Frame Rate: 200 fps PAL, 240 fps NTSC

Display Resolution: 1280 X 1024, 640 X 480, 352 X 288, 320 X 240

Recorded Video Resolution (Per Camera): 640X 480, 352 X 288, 320 X 240

Compression Ratio: 8-150M/H/C

Network Protocol: TCP/ UDP

PTZ Support: Multiple Protocols

Operating System: Windows 2000/XP (XP Media, Vista not supported)

Russ

[phred 0]

Thanks for the info Russ,

 

I would really need to see the chips on the card to be sure but here are

my thoughts.

 

There is no mention of hardware compression in the spec so I am

wondering why you are sure that the card does hardware compression –

maybe it says so in the manual or something.

 

 

Why do you have encode.exe running in software

– have not seen anything like this while running a full hardware

compression card (but I don't know them all).

 

Dropping from 8 camera view to 1 , I would expect less CPU if software is

serving the video but agree it seems excessive.

 

The change from the ATI card to on-board graphics could simply be

caused by BUS arbitration ie graphics card and capture board sharing the

same BUS (just guesswork though)

 

 

Have you checked the recorded video to see if you are getting the frame

rate you think you are getting. I have seen a few cards that just drop

loads of frames when they cannot keep up.

If you can transcode the video into an AVI then load into VirtualDub you

will find the true frame rate.

 

Also check the size of your video files - H.264 should compress them way

down - just for reference I get around 2Mb for 1 minute of video at D1

25fps and quality is hard to tell apart from the live view.

 

Don't forget to check your software for that bug I mentioned, there should be a patch for it that could be an easy fix.

 

Regards

[russ1150 0]

Hi Phred:

The specs on the card say h.264 compression. The recorded video looks great with no jerky movement at 640 X 480. For a 24 hour period on 8 cameras it runs about 39.3 GB or 27.3 Mb per minute or 3.4MB per minute per camera.

I had a Geovision GV800 card prior to this one and the motion with 8 cameras was very jerky because it was 120fps. Speaking about my Geovision when I rceived the version 8.0 I also had a problem and had to revert to version 7.05 and I had no further problems.

I believe there is some problem with the program loading correctly. There was a note in the manual which stated "Note : Before installing Display adapter driver, you must install Mainboard driver ,otherwise DVR consumes a lotof CPU resource and does not work well." When I loaded the software without the display driver the instal program said I had to have 1024X768 so I had to load the display drivers before the system would load.

I am only a novice computer jock so I probably did something incorrect.

Any Ideas?

Thanks for your help, sorry I am taking up all your time with my problem,

Russ

 

I also contacted the company I purchased the ether 9808 from and gthey are going to send me a earlier version. I have also sent a note to wave-p to see if they could be of assistance, as you suggested.

[kylep 0]

I had a similar problem with the equivilent 4 channel card. I had run the software out of the box, and encode.exe was consuming 90+ % of cpu cycles. Minimizing the system (not displaying the software on the screen) would lower the value somewhat.

 

What dropped the cpu was taking out the software and drivers (that were included with the card), and installing another newer version of the software that i obtained from the site. Seems like there was an encode.exe bug in the very early version of this software, and was fixed later on. I may be wrong, but i believe the version now at wave-p is not password protected for your card.

 

There is also a warning about the installation order of the drivers / software, causing cpu overload. This is mentioned in the help file.

[rory 0]

I would put all the issues down the the Dell PC ..

Have you tried either card in a new PC?

 

Do you know what motherboard is used in that dell?

 

2.5 celleron, you are looking at a CPU with a 128K cache probably ..

How much memory is installed in the PC also?

I doubt the onboard graphics will do much if that board is as old as the CPU.

 

Rory

[russ1150 0]

Hi PHRED

B110 Specs

Processor

 

Processor type

Intel® Pentium® 4 with HT Technology and Intel Celeron®

 

NOTE: Not all Pentium 4 processors support Hyper-Threading technology.

 

Level 1 (L1) cache

8 KB

 

Level 2 (L2) cache

128-KB or 512-KB (depending on your computer configuration) pipelined-burst, eight-way set associative, write-back SRAM

 

 

 

Memory

 

Type

333- and 400-MHz DDR SDRAM

 

NOTE: DDR333 and DDR400 memory runs at 266MHz when configured with Celeron 400MHz FSB processors

 

NOTE: DDR333 memory runs at 320MHz when configured with Pentium 4 800MHz FSB processors

 

Memory connectors

two

 

Memory capacities

128-, 256-, 512-, or 1-GB non-ECC

 

Minimum memory

128 MB

 

NOTE: Between 1 and 64 MB of system memory may be allocated to support graphics, depending on system memory size and other factors.

 

Maximum memory

2 GB

 

BIOS address

F0000h

 

 

 

Computer Information

 

Chip set

Intel 865 GV

 

DMA channels

Seven

 

Interrupt levels

24

 

BIOS chip (NVRAM)

4 Mb

 

NIC

integrated network interface capable of 10/100 communication.

 

System Clock

Intel Pentium 4: 800 MHz

 

Intel Celeron: 533 MHz

 

 

 

Video

 

Type

Integrated Intel Extreme Graphics 2

 

 

 

Audio

 

Type

AC97, Sound Blaster Emulation, ADI 1980 audio controller with 2.1 implementation

 

 

 

Expansion Bus

 

Bus type

PCI

 

Bus speed

33 MHz

 

 

 

 

PCI

 

 

connectors

three

 

connector size

120 pins

 

connector data width (maximum)

32 bits

 

 

 

Drives

 

Externally accessible:

 

 

One bay for a floppy drive, and two bays for CD/DVD drives

 

Available devices

Floppy drive, USB memory devices, CD drive,

CD-RW drive, DVD drive, DVD-RW drive, and DVD and CD-RW combo drive

 

Internally accessible:

 

 

One bay for 1-inch-high IDE hard drives

 

I have not tried the Ether board in another PC

There is 750 MB of Ram in this PC

Hope this may help

Russ

[russ1150 0]

Hi Kelp

I just went to the wave-p site and downloaded the latest version and I am still using about 75% of my CPU.

Thanks for the input

Russ

[phred 0]

Hi Phred:

The specs on the card say h.264 compression. The recorded video looks great with no jerky movement at 640 X 480. For a 24 hour period on 8 cameras it runs about 39.3 GB or 27.3 Mb per minute or 3.4MB per minute per camera.

I had a Geovision GV800 card prior to this one and the motion with 8 cameras was very jerky because it was 120fps. Speaking about my Geovision when I rceived the version 8.0 I also had a problem and had to revert to version 7.05 and I had no further problems.

I believe there is some problem with the program loading correctly. There was a note in the manual which stated "Note : Before installing Display adapter driver, you must install Mainboard driver ,otherwise DVR consumes a lotof CPU resource and does not work well." When I loaded the software without the display driver the instal program said I had to have 1024X768 so I had to load the display drivers before the system would load.

I am only a novice computer jock so I probably did something incorrect.

Any Ideas?

Thanks for your help, sorry I am taking up all your time with my problem,

Russ

 

I also contacted the company I purchased the ether 9808 from and gthey are going to send me a earlier version. I have also sent a note to wave-p to see if they could be of assistance, as you suggested.

 

Your mainboard drivers should have been installed by Dell (unless you have a late Friday afternoon special ).

 

Have checked out all I can find about your card and I am sure it does H.264 in software. If it was full hardware compression Wave -p would be making a big song and dance about it.

Hardware compression cards are relatively recent and the chips make the cards much more expensive (my four channel card is $600 in the US).

Running at 240 fps you are getting remarkable performance especially since H.264 is very processor intensive. High CPU usage is definitely what you should expect at this frame rate. Dropping down to only one channel or cutting back the frame rate should give you a drop in CPU but a bug in the software keeps the CPU running high.

Wave -p have a fix that should solve the problem but cpu will still be high at high frame rate.

 

 

I see a lot of cards coming from the far east described as ' H.264 Hardware Capture Card' - better read that twice. If you are ever looking for a true hardware compression card then check the chips onboard.

A true hardware compression card will have DSP chips like the Texas Instruments DM64x or Philips PNX1500. All the ones I have seen also have around 256Mb RAM on board.

 

Regards

[S-M 0]

sounds very strange, i cant remember exactly what card i have, but i think the ether804 software was the one i was supplied with, and the one i recently updated to

 

 

my "cctv pc" is a complete old barge i built from old parts, a 1.2ghz atholon with 512mb ram

 

 

i have just checked my resources and the DVR encode program is using about 16 % here

 

the GFX card is a geforce 5600xt (crap card TBH)

 

i currently run my system with 4 cams and max quality settings

[phast13 0]

Russ - I have just purchased one of these, but the disk seems to have no drivers and the installation file runs with chinese directions,. Document and help files are all garbage with a few english characters thron in.

Any idea where to find the missing files???

 

Stephen Love (Australia)

[www.wave-p.com 0]

wave-p Ether series cards ---minimum system requirements

[www.wave-p.com 0]

Hi Stephen, PM me, i send you the latest user manual.

[alvinqbk 0]

I installed two 9808 card on a P4.1.8 for my customer and after 3 days, the problem creeps up. The system stopped recording. I rebooted and the system starts to record again. After a few days the system recording fails again.

 

I wrote to the manufacturer and they asked me to download their new software and everything will be ok. Happily I downloaded the latest 8.0.0.0 ver and uploaded into the system. What do you know; the system problem still persist.

 

Don't know "liaw"(chinese dialect). Now still waiting for the manufacturer to reply me.

 

Anybody out there who can help!!!.

 

Thank you in advance.

[golden1967 0]

I have two wave-p cards in one machine (pentium d 3.2Ghz, with 512 ram) and it tends to work ok. I installed their latest version of the software (V8.0 beta). My only problems with the card is that it two of the channels on one of the cards intermittently shut down and start at some later time, even though the settings are for continuous recording.

 

On a previous email, I had spoken to Effie Zao regarding resolution and system requirements-

 

 

Hi Mark, Nice to hear from you!As for your questions, answers are as follows:

1. You no need to use P4, Celeron D 352 (3.2G)is enough, we recommend to use this model, which can work very well with our cards.

2. No need to get another video card, intel 950 on board graphics is adequate.

3. 512 Ram is ok. In fact the resoluation of our cards is a CIF, but we will realise D1 very soon, technicians are testing D1 effect now and will release it very soon. .

If you need any further inforamtion, please do not hesitate to let me know. Regards. Effie Zhao

 

I am curious regarding this card being able to do a D1 recording?