My parents bought themselves a swann DVR system from Costco and keep having problems with it (now it won't even boot up). I think it would be far less hassle for me to hook their cameras up to a linux server running ZoneMinder. I consider myself a power user of Linux but I have never messed around with camera equipment before. I found this site selling video capture cards and was quite keen on the 800E as it supports up to 16 channels at A total of 120 FPS and uses a PCI-e slot. However, I can't figure out how one is supposed to connect 6 BNC camera connections to it. Also, 2 of the Swann cameras are "720p SDI video cameras" which it doesn't look like that card supports the resolution of.
Any advice on whether the card is suitable or not is appreciated along with any information of adapters I may need etc.
I'm not too worried about the Linux compatibility as that site specifically states supported on Linux and one can send a product back that was bought online within two weeks for whatever reason (at least here in the EU). I just want to get some information on how I'm supposed to plug 6 cameras into that card.
I have the feeling that they use the SUB-D connector commonly known as VGA as a collection port - I guess one needs a SUB-D to BNC adapter that works with that card. Maybe write the maker if its included or an extra one hast to buy.
@Th3Zone yeah i thought it looked like VGA and thought that was wierd as I'm used to that being an output, not an input. I have shot an email to the supplier to see what is included.
It pretty sure is the same connector - but one can use connectors for different purposes ^^ (RJ45 plug for console cable, not network on routers for example)
They have to come around the physical constraints of BNC, they are actually HUGE compared to most other connectors
I managed to persuade my parents to scrap their DVR system and they are replacing the cabling with cat6 cables with a POE switch to provide power to the cameras. We will continue to use zoneminder, but this setup will allow us to use higher resolution cameras and not have to worry about getting specific adapters in the computer to take the inputs of the DVR cameras. I will be working on it this weekend and will keep you posted.
So I set up and deployed an Ubuntu 14.04 server running a Debian 8 KVM guest running Zonealarm today. That allowed me to take snapshots as I went along and I can always restore it to a point in time if my parents mess up the configuration.
IP Camera Compression Unfortunately there seems to be a big problem I had overlooked with regards to IP cameras. When I first looked into it, I was impressed by the massive resolutions and framerates vendors were posting, and we went with this one. It appears that the compression is WAY too high. The images look block and smudged with the amazon review posted by someone else being spot on:
To judge the compression, I took a photo and had to compress it to just 10% quality in GIMP to achieve the same look.
Ideally, I would like to be able to configure Zone alarm to take raw or only slightly compressed images once or twice per second whenever an alarm is triggered. If there is a thief, I would like a high resolution mugshot of them to be able to identify them, rather than a high-framerate, silky-smooth pixelated/smudged image of something that could be anybody.
Does anybody know of any IP cameras where the compression ratio is adjustable, or I can perform all the compression on the recieving end (on the server running zonealarm). Since these cameras are connected by gigabit cables which also provide the power (POE) bandwidth really shouldnt be much of an issue (especially since I am willing to reduce the framerate)
