CCTV 4 channel DVR card

[housty]

Hi all

Does anyone know if the DVR cards you get for your computer are any good?

Can you get realtime cards?

housty

[whistle]

No but i have seen them on EBay for as little as 99p. I might get one as for that price i can try it and bin it if its ****

[Guest bigbro]

They are utter ****, stick with geovision or something similar

[Guest Lee Tracey]

Hi all

Does anyone know if the DVR cards you get for your computer are any good?

Can you get realtime cards?

housty

There are hundreds of cards available and it would take up too much space to cover them all. An excellent mid cost card is from a company called DIGIFLOWER but you have to look them up on the web and contact direct in Korea. The absolute top of the tree is a card with the H264 algorithm. It has eight channels of video input and eight channels of lip-sync audio input and can deliver DVD quality. If you reduce it to four channels then it will deliver 4CIF resolution and near broadcast quality and - at all time can deliver 25 images per second on all channels at the same time. If you are selling to a customer then this is the absolute minimum you should sell. But if you want for your own PC and amusement then okay to buy any one of the massive load of rubbish available. If you are a serious installer and you want a DVR that will make you proud, give a good profit and make you the darling of the law enforcement world then you should choose an RTOS 16 channel video and lip-sync audio standalone machine using the H264 algorithm. It will hold ( you can put them in yourself ) either one DVD writer and four hard drives or no DVD writer and eight hard drives - any size and will also work with a remote NAS RAID ARRAY RAID 6 of any size. If you leave out the DVD writer you can use a stand alone writer and plug it in USB. If any of you want to go down the quality route then contact me at dvr@dsl.pipex. com and I will send you the data. If you want the full package I will need your snail mail address.

Why do I care> Because I am a Forensic Video Analyst for a Police Force and every day I have to throw away 80% of all material made on **** DVR's because the result is not good enough for evidential purposes.

Regards to all.

Lee Tracey

[Rich]

There are hundreds of cards available and it would take up too much space to cover them all. An excellent mid cost card is from a company called DIGIFLOWER but you have to look them up on the web and contact direct in Korea. The absolute top of the tree is a card with the H264 algorithm. It has eight channels of video input and eight channels of lip-sync audio input and can deliver DVD quality. If you reduce it to four channels then it will deliver 4CIF resolution and near broadcast quality and - at all time can deliver 25 images per second on all channels at the same time. If you are selling to a customer then this is the absolute minimum you should sell. But if you want for your own PC and amusement then okay to buy any one of the massive load of rubbish available. If you are a serious installer and you want a DVR that will make you proud, give a good profit and make you the darling of the law enforcement world then you should choose an RTOS 16 channel video and lip-sync audio standalone machine using the H264 algorithm. It will hold ( you can put them in yourself ) either one DVD writer and four hard drives or no DVD writer and eight hard drives - any size and will also work with a remote NAS RAID ARRAY RAID 6 of any size. If you leave out the DVD writer you can use a stand alone writer and plug it in USB. If any of you want to go down the quality route then contact me at dvr@dsl.pipex. com and I will send you the data. If you want the full package I will need your snail mail address.

Why do I care> Because I am a Forensic Video Analyst for a Police Force and every day I have to throw away 80% of all material made on **** DVR's because the result is not good enough for evidential purposes.

Regards to all.

Lee Tracey

Nice to have you on board Lee, seems you have a lot of info that will benefit many here, especially trade members, hope you stick about.

Regards

Rich

[ian.cant]

Why do I care> Because I am a Forensic Video Analyst for a Police Force and every day I have to throw away 80% of all material made on **** DVR's because the result is not good enough for evidential purposes.

Hi Lee, quite a statement there. Could you expand on the exact reasons or machines that cause this headache. Naturally noone would install such **** if they knew it was such a waste, too good an oppertunity to learn something here me thinks.

[Mavrick_001]

Waste of time, plus you need to leave ya pc on all the time... pants!!! Get a proper job!!

[Guest Lee Tracey]

Hi Lee, quite a statement there. Could you expand on the exact reasons or machines that cause this headache. Naturally noone would install such **** if they knew it was such a waste, too good an oppertunity to learn something here me thinks.

The problem is too complicated in technical detail for the space available here but in essence if we understand that a conventional 44 degree FOV lens on a 400 TV line camera transmitted to a DVR cannot decode a vehicle registration plate beyond eight metres but this camera is then fitted by a brilliant expert of an installer - probably Robin Hughes - at the top of a 12 metre pole. You will see where the problem starts.

The other day I received a visitor who gleefully told me he had solved the problem of the atrocious quality images he had been producing with his DVR. He told me he had purchased a new camera with claimed performance of 600 TV lines. This man, probably a relation of Robin Hughes, just sat there dumpfounded when I explained to him that he had wasted his money. The DVR he owned was only capable of resolving 136 TV lines so it did not matter if he fitted a £50,000 BBC studio camera the most he could ever get would be 136 TV lines. To illustrate the difference between the 80% of **** and what we really need I will prepare some comparison photographs and if the Webmaster allows I will put them up for viewing.

The biggest mistake made by so many installers when purchasing a DVR is that they believe what the salesman tells them and they believe what they see. Most DVR's are displayed to potential buyers with an image from the camera on LIVE display. This display is of no value and should be ignored. A simple test is to take a vehicle registration plate with you and put it about 10 metres from the lens of the CCTV camera and look at the analogue or RGB screen and in almost every case you will be able to read the registration plate number.

Fine. But totally useless. What you need to do is tell the salesman to now RECORD your registration plate and then playback the recording. Now see if you can read the plate from the recovered video from the hard drive. A tip to beat dishonest salesmen. When the plate is being recorded make a note of the time - minutes and second - and when you are offered the playback check that the display is showing the original time and not the current time. If it is showing the current time then you are still watching LIVE.

I run a number of computers ( PC's) and my main machines have been running non-stop for over a year ( would be longer but I change the motherboards every year ) and they are never switched off. I have a DVR that has worked for over seven years and has never been switched off. Switching PC's ON and OFF does a heep of damage and shortens their trouble free life by about 70%.

Lee Tracey

[ian.cant]

Thats a pretty specific example where the DVR wasnt **** as such, it was just the wrong kit being used for the wrong job, but i get your point. That is of assuming that the camera was purely there to record a number plate.

As an installer i find that most cameras are installed to give overviews of areas, very rare to be asked to provide a camera for a specific job (except coverts). Also a clients budget is rarely enough to cover the expectations which is probably the main reason why this happens, not so much the **** installer or **** kit. As you well know, you get what you pay for, this is what dictates usually i find.

Looking forward to more examples though, always good seek another viewpoint.

[Guest Lee Tracey]

Thats a pretty specific example where the DVR wasnt **** as such, it was just the wrong kit being used for the wrong job, but i get your point. That is of assuming that the camera was purely there to record a number plate.

As an installer i find that most cameras are installed to give overviews of areas, very rare to be asked to provide a camera for a specific job (except coverts). Also a clients budget is rarely enough to cover the expectations which is probably the main reason why this happens, not so much the **** installer or **** kit. As you well know, you get what you pay for, this is what dictates usually i find.

Looking forward to more examples though, always good seek another viewpoint.

You are absolutely right about getting what you pay for and I agree that this aspect is the major influence and I also agree that most systems are put in to give an overview. But stop to think for a minute. What use is an overview. I can illustrate this with another example. A highly successful software writing company had so much work it was using two shifts and consequently working through the night. It had a car park by the side of the building open to a major road and pavement. Just a gap to allow the employee cars through.

The local scumbags now had a new target of some twenty odd cars parked with easy access. This car park became a "store" for them to both break into the cars and also steal them. So the company installed CCTV and sure enough the overview CCTV recorded the scumbags car arriving and recorded the figures getting out and recorded the overview activity. The police were called. Next morning we examined the recorded footage of digital video stored on the hard drive.

The quality was so bad you could just make out the the brand of vehicle used by the scumbags but the quality was so bad it was impossible to obtain the numberplate or any special features. The quality was so bad that the figures getting out of the scumbag car and doing the scumbag business looked like stick images from a cartoon. The quality was so bad that you could not even make out what type of clothing they were wearing. Identification? Not a hope in a million years. Great overview though.

I asked the owner why he installed a CCTV system. His answer was that he was fed up with the scumbag attention and wanted evidence so that the police could identify the scumbags and arrest them. So I said to him okay! What is the make of car. He had no idea ( one of our expert Traffic Cops had identified the make though so we had got that far ) I then asked what the registration plate number was so that we could get a move going in that direction. He could not get the slightest idea from the images, even zoomed up for the zoom only produced pixels. I then asked him to tell me the name of one of the stick images. Obviously he could not. So I asked if thr stick image was a man or a woman. He could not tell. I then asked if the stick image was Black, White or Asian. He had no idea. I then asked him to describe the clothing they were wearing. He could not offer even a suggestion.

So I asked just what has this CCTV system told you?

He answered that it told him that his cars had been attacked last night.

I replied but you knew that last night when your employees came out to go home. Your own eyes gave you that information. Why have you spent thousands of pounds to discover what you already knew some ten hours earlier?

He replied - yes you are right I have wasted my money, this CCTV system is useless.

The total maximum information that the CCTV system gave us was that the scumbags were using a specific make and model of a specific car. That is of no use to the police and even if by some other means we managed to arrest the scumbags we could not prosecute them for this car park caper as they would deny it and we had zero evidence.

So yes the CCTV system did give an overview but an overview that does not provide detail is utterly and totally useless. The only reason that this CCTV system was installed was because the poor victim was led to believe that it would provide high enough quality and evidence that the scumbags could be identified or some aspect identified so that the police would be able to take action. Inmost cases where CCTV is involved it is an eye witness that provides the clue,not the CCTV. If you remove the CCTV systems put in for traffic or pedestrian management knowledge then the only and sole purpose of a CCTV system is to obtain evidence to assist the police - that is the answer given by the hundreds of purchasers of CCTV systems that I have interviewed. I have never found a different reason.

As over 80% of all CCTV systems fail to provide that evidence then they are not fit for the purpose. They are a waste of time, effort and money.

One Betting Shop Chain has woken up to this after being robbed so many times but the CCTV overview CCTV systems installed for them failed to provide evidential information even inside a betting shop. On our advice they installed more cameras but this time in a semi-concealed position close to the exit door. The act of exiting the premises brought the faces of the scumbags to within three feet of the camera lens.

Now we had the evidence and could make arrests and put the scumbags away. This time, because the two were being used together, the overview cameras told us how the action went down and exactly what happened but failed to provide any evidence identification - so the overview was now of value and the close quarter cameras gave us clear sharp images of scumbag faces.

The overview system of CCTV, without the additional close quarter camera is of little, if any, use.

It is not rocket science to analyse a proposed CCTV covered area to work out some key places were scumbags are likely to go. At these places put in concealed or semi-concealed cameras and these cameras may give you the power to identify the criminal and the overview then plays a useful back-up part. But overview on its own is a total waste of time.

In the war against terrorism we have a camera called the "GOLIATH". This camera observes a scene of 44 degrees FOV and records 25 images per second at **** quality - the usual PAL CCTV system quality from which we only get an OVERVIEW. BUT THIS OVERVIEW IS VALUABLE. Three times every second it also takes a 22 million pixel snapshot and processes both streams in digital format from camera through to recorder. The normal recording gives us the overview and when we see something of interest weswitch to the snapshot side. This snapshot can read a number plate and also the faces of the driver and front passenger at a range of 100 metres from the camera position but it only has a 44 degree FOV lens.

Unfortunately we are back to that old problem of cost. The Goliath is very expensive and that will keep it out of the commercial world for a long time but you can still emulate the Goliath by adding those extra cleverly sited cameras in addition to the overview cameras.

The next big headache for us after lack of quality is frame rate. We do not want any CCTV system to record at less than 16 images per second on every camera at the same time. We know that overview cameras fail to tell us anything. Another example:

A murder is committed and the murderer escapes in a vehicle and uses a back alley shaped like the letter C only more rectangular. A local business has a camera recording activity in this back alley, but overview only. His DVR only records 2 images per second. When we recover this video it shows only one full image of the murder vehicle while it is traveling at speed in the alley. But the quality is so poor even our experts are unsure of the make. Registration plate - you must be joking. So just one total **** image. We have no chance.

If however the DVR had been working at say 25 images per second we would have had over 25 images. Admittedly 25 **** images. But we have a software programme that is often successful in interpolating all the images and building one good image, sometimes even the reg plate. But it really needs 40 separate images to be 100% successful. So in addition to you giving us lousy quality you also give us lousy frame rate.

If your CCTV system is not helping the police combat crime then exactly what function is it performing?

So you think it is a deterrent to crime. You must be joking again. I have a video of a man killing another by shooting him in the street. He then puts more bullets into him while the victim is on the ground. The murderer then turns to the camera and gives the two finger salute. Why? Because he knew that the camera and recorder system was incapable of producing any recognizable evidence. He discovered that a 100 crimes back when his "brief" told him not to worry about the CCTV evidence as it was so bad it was not being offered in evidence against him.

Before any clever dicks rush to claim that they have see high quality CCTV video evidence, let me exclude PTZ cameras controlled by a mark one eyeball. If the operator is aware of the incident and can pan his camera and zoom in then we have a good chance of viable evidential quality video. But "Orrible Arry" knows how to beat this one. In a High Street scene "Orrible" arranged for mates to start a fight towards the West end of the street while he and his crew robbed a Post Office at the East end. You guessed it. The operator concentrated on the fight and totally missed the robbery.

Professor Martin Gill has recently completed a massive investigation into CCTV in the UK on behalf of the Home Office and his conclusions are virtually in agreement with the above.

I understand the problems installers face and that they have to make a living and they are controlled by the money their clients will pay. But we do need a group of installers to start to try to raise the level of quality and performance. I, and some of my peers, would be willing to lecture and provide actual visible detail information at a one day conference. Probably in the Birmingham area but to cover costs we would have to charge about £25 per head and we would need at least 500 to attend. Nobody thinks we would ever get that number or anywhere close so the idea never gets off the ground.

If any of you have any other topics you would like me to cover or questions then just ask.

Lee Tracey