Security Cam

[tgm4883]

This is what I need. Currently I have 8 security camera's that play back on 1 tv. 4 camera's on the tv at a time, and it flips from camera's 1-4 to 4-8 and back again every couple seconds. All of this records on 1 vcr. We get 24 hours worth on 1 regular vhs tape and we reuse the tapes every three months.

My question is this, we had a security problem a couple months back but due to our reuseing of our tapes we had already overwritten the tape from that day. I would like to know if I could capture this to a hard drive in some format that would be equal or better quality, and would be able to last longer than three months before I had to overwrite them.

[Bob W]

I was at Sams Club a few weeks ago and noticed they had this special VCR for security that said it recorded something like 320 hours on a single tape. Anyway I'm interested in what people have to say about all this myself as I want to set up a system in my new house when I move next week.

My first thought is if your being robbed what happens if they steal your security recorder?

Oh I should say I think you could capture from a camera to something like mpeg2 or mpeg4 with a computer but I don't have a clue how you would do that with multi camera's.

[FOO]

Wire your security recorder case to 480 VAC.

[jdizzy40]

Ouch!!! Tha would smart a bit!

[Richard_G]

If you get the signal from the first 4 cameras displayed and then the signal from the next 4, I would think you have a pair of 4 way video multiplexers and some sort of video switcher to switch between the 2 multiplexers. This will give you a single video output which is fed into the TV. When you say the pictures are displayed on a TV, do you mean a standard TV or a video monitor? I suspect that the switcher is going to output composite (or maybe even S-Video) video which either goes into a video input on a TV or even through an RF modulator to give you a signal you can put into your TV antenna socket and tune into (which is probably the best way known to man to degrade a perfectly good video signal).

Whichever you have, you can substitute your PC for the TV/monitor using a capture card of some description. This should then allow you to capture the video to hard drive. You will then be able to backup these videos to RW CD or DVD disk. How much you can capture is going to depend on numerous factors. The format/resolution used for the captures, the size of your hard drive, etc.

It can be done (and often is) but bear in mind that you can't use the PC for anything else while it is capturing and if you do get broken into, the PC probably stands more chance of getting stolen than a video recorder would.

[tgm4883]

There is some sort of switcher that displays the pictures on a regular tv. This is fed through coax cable. I would need to hook this cable up from the switcher to the capture device and the tv so that we could still monitor, or have the computer display what it was capturing and get rid of the tv. I am looking at putting them on dvdr's, but was wondering if dvdram would store more.(<--probably a stupid question) I was also thinking of storing in divx, but was wondering if i could go to SMR/nAVI and record up to 40 hours. I don't want to lose any more quality because it's bad enough right now, but since the quality is not great and its going to a vhs currently, what could I go to.

As for stealing the pc..... This is for use in a credit union and the security station is in a whole different back room than everyone else. Our problem before was with an employee. I believe that if anyone was to break in, the money would be more priority than this computer.

[tgm4883]

I almost forgot, If at all posible, I would like to burn while capturing by maybe capturing to another computer over the network(if possible?)

[FOO]

Do you seriously want to incrementally burn video
on to one DVD over a period of more than 3 months ?

[tgm4883]

I would like to burn maybe 2 days worth or more onto a dvd.

[gmatov]

tGM,

Actually, that sounds feasible at MPEG4 compression, 264kbps.

2 9 hour days should only be approx. 2.138 gigabytes, meaning you should be able to get 4 business days per DVD.

You'd probably be better off with DVD-RAM, as you wouldn't have to erase or reformat when it came time to re-use that date's disk.

But, then, if you are looking to keep these disks permanently, maybe you should get the best quality, lowest priced DVD Rs of your chosen format and burn those. Best quality means read the forums and see those people who are complaining of deterioration after a few months. You won't want to have all these stored disks, which you may need, wind up useless frisbees.

That may, actually, be an argument against this idea. Tape seems to be a better storage medium than home made DVDs. Maybe just buy more tapes and go to a shorter record time total, better resolution, and have enough for 6 or more months.

Sorry, but that's the way I see it.

[redwudz]

I would have to agree with gmatov. A special vcr is used for your type of system that takes one frame of video every few seconds to every few minutes. To copy this tape, it would probably have to be played back in real time, which would be a very long encode. There are digital timelaspe recorders on the market which is one answer. For your present system, I would only reuse the tape about 3-4 times and visually check the tape condition and bulk erase them before each reuse. I can tell you that the first time you try to solve a crime from the evidence on a low quality video that is split into four pictures on a small video monitor, you will you wish you had one full screen monitor and vcr for each camera. It depends how much you think your security is worth.

[arealgijoe]

Forget DVD for this, a good TLR, Time Lapse recorder is the best option. Using a Robot 4x recorder you can get full frames at a rate of 7.5FPS on a 6 or 8 hr tape. Robot units are not cheap. I have a 2 page x 4 camera system. Cost effective and pratical. A good comercial TLR can be had for cheap and built for 24/7 operation. What you really need to do is buy a few more tapes! DVD is not the most reliable format for such use, YET.

JD