Talk:CCTV Software Package

I have a PICO2000 card but the program does not see the card. What do I need to do?

Answer:

We have tested the program with a freeware driver that works with all capture cards based on CONEXANT 878a chip. Please follow the following steps to properly install and configure your capture card: *

First of all, please download the following software:

The free, universal btwincap driver, Btinstaller.exe. (By Eduardo José Tagle btwincap.sourceforge.net)

Also you can download a zip file which contains files required to install driver by hand if installer did not work.

A BtSpy application - the custom card profile generator.

FALL BACK TO A CLEAN SYSTEM STATE

First, let's get your system back to the state it was in before you started messing with things. Whether you are currently using the PICO Star Imavision driver, the btwincap driver, or some other Bt8x8 driver, you need to make every last remnant of these drivers go away. Let's try the following:

Begin by uninstalling any/all third party surveillance software

Uninstall the current driver from your control panel hardware tree (you've probably got an audio driver and a video driver. Uninstall both of them).

Run the btwincap installation utility, Btinstaller.exe

When prompted, select the UN-install option, the installation utility will search your system for any Bt8x8 drivers and delete them.

Reboot

INSTALL THE BTWINCAP DRIVER

Now it's time to properly install and configure the btwincap driver so that it will work with your capture card.

Run the btwincap installation utility, Btinstaller.exe

Select the install option this time around.

Select Custom Card when asked for a card type.

Load the BtSpy report.

Finish the installation.

Reboot and verify that the following two items show as correctly installed in your control panel hardware tree (i.e. no exclamation points next to either):

Conexant Video Capture

Conexant Audio Capture

To verify that your drivers actually work, run amcap.exe. Verify that you can see all four camera inputs, one at a time, using this utility. Note that you cannot view more than one camera at a time with the application.

NEXT STEPS TO GET ACTIVE WEBCAM WORKING

Add a new camera.

Select Capture Method - "Direct Show".

Choose "Conexant's BT PCI Capture" as Video Device.

To capture video from another video source on the same card:

Add a new camera.

Select Capture Method - "Direct Show".

Choose "Conexant's BT PCI Capture" as Video Device.

You should now see a second drop down box "Video Source" that shows different camera inputs to choose from.

• By courtesy of Andy ejtagle@tutopia.com

Other software unconfirmed existance...

• avermedia software

dvr cards on the market

kodicom, geovision, avermedia, pico and magic radar

Geo -vs- Iview

There are aproximately 10-15 manufacturers of DVR CARDS. These manufacturers sell their cards to "Software" developers. These software developers create a DVR software to record, view, log, ETC video transmision.

There are over 500 (I verified it) companies that sell their own version of a DVR card. It can be in the range of "pico 2000" .99cent software, to Witness, or Geo, or kodicom, ect.

Very very few of these companies have CCTV background before coming to market with their dvr products. Most of them basicaly, like a smart business man, saw a new hot market for a particular type of product, and, to beat the competition, rushed to sell their products without doing the proper quality control checks. Many of these companies lack the personel that is true Knowledgueble to provide proper support after the sale.

Ok, so this post don't take over the entire forum, let's just narrow it down to GEO, since that's who you are askin about.

Geo is very famous because of their marketing stratergy. What does this mean? Basically, my little brother, with enough cash to buy 25 card direct, can contact geo, and say that he's a dealer, create a fake website on let's say geocities.com, and say that he's a dealer, and guess what? geo will sell him the cards, and call it a day. Many TRUE distributors and dealers on this forum, DVR-Australia for example, can tell you that this is true, and how frustraiting it can be, expecially since geo basically went around the world, telling everyone who would sell their products, that they are going to give them "exclusivity" for their region, or sometimes their country, only to find out that 2 months down the road, your competitor has been told the same thing, and he's 2 blocks away.

Now, the software. I'm not going to be a hipocrate and sit here and say that their software is crap, because it's not, but it looks like a high school kid with too much time on his hands created it. It's not professional at all, everytime that you want to use a different funtion, like the webserver, or the log viewer, you have to open a different program everytime, instead of just creating a "central shell", where all funcions are streamlined into one program. If you click on the log viewer, just look at the windows taskbar, and there will be 2 programs open. You are going to spend all this money on their products, and it does not even have a decent GUI? come on!!!

Support. I'm just going to say this as simple as I can. Can anyone here tell me that you can call geo direct, weather is in their US or Taiwan offices, and talk to the egenieers who created and maintain and upodate the actual software that runs their cards? I-View, you can.

One more thing, did you know that the cards that geo uses are not manufactured by them? they buy OEM like almost everyone else, while I-view, manufactures their own. Don't you think that there is a little advantage of manufacturing your own cards and designing the software with both set of engenieers right next to eachother?

Video Capture Software for Generic DVR Cards

here are a few other software programs out there.

Drivers for most capture cards: http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/ Here is a list of supported cards for these drivers: http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/supportedcards.html And the download link in case you cant find it http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/download.html

If you have drivers properly installed for your card, they will look something like this. In this case, I have a 4 channel card, hence the 4 video and 4 audio drivers: (to find this goto the DEVICE MANAGER - located in the Control Panel, System)

Before you install those drivers, Run AmCap, and see if any Capture Card drivers appear under the Devices List. http://noeld.com/programs.asp?cat=video#AMCap

AmCap (also known as VidCap and other custom names under custom written versions) - this is also usefull for stand alone DVR users, if you want to capture and back up video from DVRs in high quality to CD, DVD, USB, etc. Once your Stand Alone DVR was set to record in high quality, you can capture the video from it as high as 740x480 as an AVI file, convert it to a WMV using Windows Movie Maker, or other, and copy to CD,DVD, USB, etc. for high quality evidence sharing. (NOTE: will depend on the DVR, Computer, Capture Card, and other factors)

And check this out for more info on capture cards and stuff: http://www.shrinkwrapvb.com/videocap.htm

Software programs can include any WebCam Software, you can search google for WebCam Software, or Video Capture Software.

Here are some of the software programs more geared towards surveillance, I have tested all of these with an Argus Card (Bt878):

go1984 - cheap but works - not the best http://www.go1984.com/Default.htm

Gotcha NOW - also very cheap, really not that great, but works http://www.gotchanow.com/

WebCam Watchdog - no comment http://www.webcamsoft.com/en/watchdog.html

Active WebCam - no comment http://www.pysoft.com/

LuxRiot - the best for IP and Local CCTV for capture cards without the original surveillance software - this one was great, though not cheap: http://www.luxriot.com/

And if you know C++ you can write yourself a Full Blown Multiplexed Surveillance system for alot of cards, mostly the generic ones, or there is open source code already written that you can build from and edit to your own requirements and GUI. Even using Visual Basic you can create a basic Capture Software Program.

Also see these posts:

http://www.cctvforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=1711 http://www.cctvforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=7700

Before you try LuxRiot make sure it works in AmCap or VidCap .. Also did you use the btspy software that creates the text file? Make sure there is no other DVR software running when you do that.

someone's valid opinion about low cost cards...

Ok, I always see people saying that the cheap cards suck, low quality, blah blah blah.

Here is my question, what then is the difference between the "cheap" cards and the expensive ones? At ISC last year I saw many different manufacturers and 99% of the cards used the 878a chip. If that chip is used then the picture quality should be about the same...

So then it comes to hardware features that are unique to the card, hardware compression, etc. I can understand that that adds price to the card but many "expensive" cards don't have that built in as well. (like the geo cards)

So then, if the hardware is pretty much the same, it's just the software... If the end user isn't looking for web access, PTZ control, object detection, blah blah, then what is the difference?

Then you say, reliability, ok so at the price of the "generic" card at 100 and the equivalent "brand name" card at 800, the end user could buy 4 card to spare and still save money!

But lastly, PRICE OF HARDWARE DOES NOT = QUALITY. I think the dvr hardware is highly inflated because it's not as main stream a market... look at the prices for a brand new video capture card at mid grade consumer level, its ~200. THAT is for NEW technology, developed within the past yr-6mo or so... most of the dvr cards have been developed years ago and cost of production should have gone down severely. Do you honestly want me to believe that when Tivo's can sell for ~200 and be bundled with lots more tech than a dvr card that the actual manufacturer of these cards cost more than a few dollars?

I think the real value comes from the software that comes with the card but that is overpriced as well... These companies will never be able to stop pirates when the factory that OEMs their cards also sell to ANYONE else. They should stop the business model of selling their "superior" hardware for insanely high prices and market their software.

Security companies should stop charging their customers 400% markup for overpriced hardware and charge fairly for their expert services. The market has changed since hardware multiplexers and tape rotations. Anyone sys/network admin can set up a dvr installation.

This is just MHO, if I am wrong and there is a good explanation for the prices please clue me in. I really would like to know the difference and not just that the price makes it better. In the computer age there are only like 4-5 major hardware factories that build the components for ALL other companies (geo, magic radar, kodi, ati, nvidia, etc), usually hardware quality isn't that much of an issue, it's more of the original hardware design.

HuperLab DVR 2400

http://www.huperlab.com/english/product/2400/app.htm

huperDVR 2400 is the perfect DVR (Digital Video Recorder) system for home, buildings, factories, offices, schools and general use.

Low cost card and how I got it to work with BlueIris

I purchased a low cost capture card from Ebay on Jun 16th 2010, $13 or so, it is the same one as featured here http://wiki.robotz.com/index.php/Pico_UCC4_Conexant_878A_4-port_PCI_DVR_Card.

I'm using it with the demo version of BlueIris, XP + SP3.

I only needed to install the card drivers, not the supporting software, the drivers installed Ok, I ended up with two items in Device Manager, 'Star Imavision Audio Capture' and 'Star Imavision Video Capture'. I then installed BlueIris, however, under the 'Video' tab then 'Device Type' of 'USB, Firewire, or Analog', the device is not listed in the drop down menu. I then did some searching and find this site/page, I tried the suggestions here but all to no avail - I did more searching. I decided the best way forward would be to try and get better drivers than the supplied ones, I found the following at http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/installation.html, they are WDM drivers, the installation of the drivers is slightly unusual, so please read the instructions, but basically you install the drivers 'over the top' of the existing ones.

After installing the drivers, and several reboots, BlueIris can now use the card, it shows up as a 'Conexant's BtPCI Capture' within BlueIris, and Device Manager it shows as 'Conexant's BtPCI WDM Audio Capture' and 'Conexant's BtPCI WDM Video Capture', one oddity is that you have to select 'Video Tuner' from the 'Input' drop down menu, selecting either of the 2 Composite, or the S Video killed the video.

The video quality seems fine, and it has been running for 12 hours without a hitch, to be honest, I don't have much faith in it as it was really cheap, the supplied software is a pile of junk IMHO, but as I said, it was cheap so I kinda expected a bit of a 'battle' to get it working. Another odd thing, seeing as the audio is not implemented on this card I decided to try and disable the item in Device Manager, as it was of no use every time I tried that it BSOD. There is a possible clue for why this maybe if you read fully the information in http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/custom.html.

I hope this is of some help to somebody.