64 Cameras and 64 Audio Independantly

[simo923 0]

Hi guys. I have been looking into building a system recently and have had quotes from £6000 to £100000.

What i need to do is have live monitoring and recording at all times of 64 video and 64 audio feeds. All need to be independant. By this i mean, if i want to playback 1 camera i can also playback any audio feed at the same time. 1 camera might give a good view but a microphone and a different location might give a good audio.

 

I have been looking at a Dual Processor rack mount PC, gigs or ram attempting to power a couple fo cards totalling upto 64 channesls but now i realise i have been looking at it the wrong way.

 

Does anyone have any tips for completing a system built up of several PCs. For redundancy it would probably better having seperate backup servers running 16-32 video and 16-32 audio each.

 

Also, i would like to have 2 identical systems both using a centralised storage area, probably 30Tb RAID 6 using iSCSI over Cat6 Gigabit network. if the live system falls over then there is a hot standby that can access all the saved data and carry on recording.

 

A lot of information and i left a lot out, hopefully i can get a good discussion on this and get all the pros and cons. Money is no object.

 

Thanks

[surveillancePackages 0]

I would run two 64 channel systems and cluster the servers using Linux-HA. High Availability Linux will allow you to cluster your servers using software named 'Heartbeat' which is a cluster management program.

 

Microsoft also offers MSCS ... which essentially does the same thing.

[rory 0]

If money is not issue, 8 x 8-Channel Real Time DVRs for starters.

[simo923 0]

Thanks guys.

 

With regards to the linux idea. This system is going to be left in a foreign location so i need something that the locals can administrate so this may be an issue.

 

8x8 channel DVRs, would we be able to group them giving users a 64x64 view in total, i would want it to appear seamless to them.

 

With using standalone DVRs i see storage being a problem as well. They want to records a full res, 25fps all 64x64 feeds in colour every second of every day. With the PC i have been looking at a 30-40Tb iSCSI centralised storage solution with LTO-4 archive.

 

I take it from the two different solutions you guys came up with, that playing 1 audio and a different video channel together is going to be a problem.

 

I have come across a lot of systems that automatically corrospond audio channels to video channels, many people claim that you can play a video channel and ANY other audio channel but i have yet to see one.

[Kingwood 0]

I think you can monitor and record 64 chs video and audio easy.

 

But if you want to play the video and audio in one PC at same time,it's impossible at moment.As you see,video decode will spend a lot of resource,such as CPU,memory etc.

 

In order to obtain 64chs video and audio realtime record,I think HK-DS4016HCI is a good choice,which come from China,you can search it from google.

[simo923 0]

Thanks. I didn't think that live monitoring and recording at the same time was an issue. Where i saw an issue was playing 2, non related channels at the same time. I have seen plenty of system where i can lvie monitor a video and associated audio channel. Basically i have 2 cameras in a room and 4 microphones, i would like to put cam 1 on the screen and listen to anyone of the microphones.

If this is not possible i would like to be able to do it with playback of previous recordings.

 

I do like the look of that card though. What would be best? One large PC (duel xeon processors, as much RAM as possible) with cards stacked upto 64 channels, or a couple of seperate machines, each with 16 or 32 channels ( spread workload, if one system goes down at least some cameras will stay up) with all the computers saving to a centralised network storage.

 

Any advice is great guys.

[PMA 0]

I would go for a Dell poweredge, blade system. Quad core xeon, 4 gb of ram and external powervault for the hard drives.

 

or,

 

2 smaller servers dual core, 2gb of ram both handling 32 video and audio, both connected to an powervault.

[rory 0]

Tor a couple of seperate machines, each with 16 or 32 channels ( spread workload, if one system goes down at least some cameras will stay up) with all the computers saving to a centralised network storage.

 

Any advice is great guys.

 

 

Bingo. Its not just an issue with how fast the system itself will be capturing 64 channels of high resolution video, but if one system goes down, all 64 go down. I would max it at 16 personally. If you want highest resolution and fastest video frames then should stop at 8 channels.

[simo923 0]

Excellent. I think i will go for several seperate machines, fairly high specced. The Hyking card previously mentioned will probably go in or a Geovision card if the GUI will see all 64 channels.

As long as all the machines can save to the same centralised storage then that is great, also that the GUI can see all the channels and pull back any archived data.

 

 

I would love to go with standalone DVR's for stability but i just don't think that they would offer the functions that i need, neither the storage space.

 

Thanks for all your help guys, i will probably be posting a lot more this week as i start building the system.

[surveillancePackages 0]

I agree with Kingwood...

 

HikVision DS 4016HCI would be the best cards for the greatest resolution and frame rates. The cards are also stackable.... where as GeoVision cards are not.

 

DS 4016HCI 16 channels can have 8 channels of 4cif at real time or all channels at cif real time.

 

Great card

[Kingwood 0]

Thanks. I didn't think that live monitoring and recording at the same time was an issue. Where i saw an issue was playing 2, non related channels at the same time. I have seen plenty of system where i can lvie monitor a video and associated audio channel. Basically i have 2 cameras in a room and 4 microphones, i would like to put cam 1 on the screen and listen to anyone of the microphones.

If this is not possible i would like to be able to do it with playback of previous recordings.

 

I do like the look of that card though. What would be best? One large PC (duel xeon processors, as much RAM as possible) with cards stacked upto 64 channels, or a couple of seperate machines, each with 16 or 32 channels ( spread workload, if one system goes down at least some cameras will stay up) with all the computers saving to a centralised network storage.

 

Any advice is great guys.

 

Hello Simo,

 

For the first problem,I think you cannot hear the other microphone when you record the first camera.As you see,video and audio data record in same file. Of couse,you can mute it.

 

For the configuration of PC for 64channels,According to my experience,I think PIV 2.8G and 1G memory is enought,the mainboard must be Intel chipset. Because it's hardware compresion,will spend very lower CPU and memory when record the video.

 

In order to have backup function,I think you can use two PC machine,but if you want to save all video and make sure will not lost,I think 2sets 64channels is OK. One camera can output the video to two PC.

 

Hope above is clear.

[Kingwood 0]

Excellent. I think i will go for several seperate machines, fairly high specced. The Hyking card previously mentioned will probably go in or a Geovision card if the GUI will see all 64 channels.

As long as all the machines can save to the same centralised storage then that is great, also that the GUI can see all the channels and pull back any archived data.

 

 

I would love to go with standalone DVR's for stability but i just don't think that they would offer the functions that i need, neither the storage space.

 

Thanks for all your help guys, i will probably be posting a lot more this week as i start building the system.

 

Waiting for your experience of your system.Geovision card can not see all 64channels in one PC.

 

For standalone DVR,most of them have CMS software,I think they can suit for your requirement too.

[Kingwood 0]

I agree with Kingwood...

 

HikVision DS 4016HCI would be the best cards for the greatest resolution and frame rates. The cards are also stackable.... where as GeoVision cards are not.

 

DS 4016HCI 16 channels can have 8 channels of 4cif at real time or all channels at cif real time.

 

Great card

 

YES,I think HK-DS4016HCI card is a great card too.

[rory 0]

Dont forget it still has to write 32-64 channels of video to the hard drive/s, so a P4 2.8 with 1GB of ram will still be very slow, suggest if you are going to build a system like that, spend the cash and get a decent quad core extreme or a Core 2 3.0 Ghz with at least dual channel DDR2-800 2GB (more ram the better). Also get some noisy 10,000 rpm Raptor (or other) drives. Still if it were me I would not do 32-64 channels in one Computer, but thats just me.

 

I dont care how much processing the card is doing, if the video is going to be high quality and the software is saving all of that video to the hard drives, there will be alot of processing (CPU and Memory) going on (even if only background processes) and that will be done by the PC itself.

 

A P4 with 1GB of Ram is a budget system, under $200.

Dont go cheap on the Computer you will use, that is more important than the DVR card, without the computer the card will not work, poor computer will mean poor system performance and hence, poor security system.

[Kingwood 0]

Dont forget it still has to write 32-64 channels of video to the hard drive/s, so a P4 2.8 with 1GB of ram will still be very slow, suggest if you are going to build a system like that, spend the cash and get a decent quad core extreme or a Core 2 3.0 Ghz with at least dual channel DDR2-800 2GB (more ram the better). Also get some noisy 10,000 rpm Raptor (or other) drives. Still if it were me I would not do 32-64 channels in one Computer, but thats just me.

 

I dont care how much processing the card is doing, if the video is going to be high quality and the software is saving all of that video to the hard drives, there will be alot of processing (CPU and Memory) going on (even if only background processes) and that will be done by the PC itself.

 

A P4 with 1GB of Ram is a budget system, under $200.

Dont go cheap on the Computer you will use, that is more important than the DVR card, without the computer the card will not work, poor computer will mean poor system performance and hence, poor security system.

 

Haha, Rory,better computer will have better performance,it's true,but we use the P4 CPU and 1G ram to make sure the system work for a long time,and the system work for several countries,it's reun well yet.

 

When play back,it will need more CUP and RAM.

 

Perhaps we will use better Computer infuture.

[simo923 0]

Thanks guys, loads of input there.

 

I am definetley going with seperate machines running 1 set of cameras each.

I was thinking 4 computers all running 16 channels each. Hardware specs, obviously i would be looking at an Intel board, probably 2 x 3.0Ghz HT processors, 2 gig upwards of RAM.

Now, my next problem is bandwidth. I am looking at centralised storage, so a SAN or NAS, 30Tb upwards. When i was just having one DVR machine i was going with a quad Gigabit Intel network card running 4 links into an iSCSI Storage Server. Now i will have 4 machines, all contending for bandwidth as well as the operators attempting to view the live monitoring over 3 workstations. Thats a shed load of network access. I see this as my next hurdle.

 

With regards to live monitoring mics and cams seperately, i think i am going to have to give that a miss as it does not seem possible. It will have to be done in editing.

 

I am tempting to go with an Eyewatch system from watch-it and just get them to build me a system to let me get on with the covert cam install.