TVI disaster

[coolite]

Hello

The people covering our CCTV needs have disappeared, leaving half finished setup.
It's a pain, but I need to get some functionality.

The cameras are TVI format apparently

can anyone enlighten me what TVI means please ?

Do these have any specific requirements ?

They don't seem to be compatible with the recorder device

Can anyone help please ?

[Bjs]

If connectors are compatible then there's not much more to do except provide power and hard drive for cctv system if it needs one.

From there it's setup system date and time, format drive, check camera's are functional and adjusted accordingly.

Most likely the system is bnc and cameras rca ... you can get conversion connectors cheap in ebay to do the job.

Shouldn't take you long to fix the problem.

[coolite]

Bjs,

thanks for input,

the cables do have bnc connectors, and the cams do too.

I have M.Sc computer science, but I am way out of my depth with this stuff.
different media and protocols etc, I did not understand most of the tech terms in the comparison table

the simplest way for me would be to input the feed from cam into laptop,
but it doesnt seem to recognise the feed from the camera -
- what am I missing ??

[sum_guy]

I'm thinking you'll want to add a TVi DVR, here are some good explanations of what TVI is and some DVR's.

http://www.security-camera-warehouse.com/tvi-dvrs/

[redwudz]

Do a internet search for ' HD-TVI DVRs ' and you should find some compatible units for your part of the world.
Hikvision HD TVI DVRs are popular and should be available there.

And welcome to our forums.

[coolite]

Thanks
unfortunately previous experience shows that DVR units (especially hikvision) will not produce output suitable for our purposes.
perhaps this problem is why the installer disappeared.

Is there a way to get output from cam onto laptop pls ?

[JVRaines]

Here's a box that converts TVI into HDMI, VGA and CVBS (composite). Then you can use something like the StarTech USB3HDCAP to pipe HDMI or VGA into your USB port.

[usually_quiet]

Here's a box that converts TVI into HDMI, VGA and CVBS (composite). Then you can use something like the StarTech USB3HDCAP to pipe HDMI or VGA into your USB port.

The StarTech USB3HDCAP is a good capture device but has hardware requirements that prevent it from working well or working at all with some computers.

The StarTech USB3HDCAP hardware notes from Startech's website:

Confirmed compatible USB 3.0 host controllers: Intel, Renesas (NEC), VIA, AMD, Fresco FL1100

Incompatible USB 3.0 host controllers: ASmedia, Etron

A computer that supports USB 3.0 or higher is required. This product will not work with USB 2.0 or 1.1 controllers.

The StarTech USB3HDCAP needs a USB 3.0 port because it doesn't encode using built-in hardware like some other external HD capture devices. Instead, the StarTech USB3HDCAP supplies uncompressed video and audio output (too much data for USB 2.0) and relies on the PC's CPU to encode.

Since the PC's CPU does the encoding, a typical laptop's CPU won't be able to keep up when compressing the video to something of reasonable size, like H.264 or MPEG 2, assuming coolite wants to record anything.

For a laptop, I'd recommend a capture device that does hardware compression, like the Hauppauge HD PVR 60, or Elgato HD60, but recording the output from multiple HD security cameras on a laptop is probably not feasible even then due to storage requirements.