I've been working on the security camera system at my church for over a year and I was trying to find an automatic video switcher that would cycle 4 cameras into one video out... using BNC standard video connectors.... I wanted to put 4 cameras on one of the 16 location on one of the DVRs I'm installing... these are cameras in locations where very little goes on and so cycling through them and recording that should be good enough.

So, I found what looked like it whould work perfectly according to amazon... and I got the unit yesterday and hooked it up... all I get is fuzz on the four channels... then I went and pulled an old camera from about 15 years ago with the old 720p resolution and it works fine. I contact the folks I bought it from and their solution is just use the low resolution cameras! What the heck? I've over the last three years or so bought over 70 security cameras for these systems... I'm not even sure companies still make the 'standard' resolution cameras... this switcher is going back.... but then I'm an idiot because I actually today figured out how to do exactly what I want... just buy one of their 4 camera system DVR's with no hard drive it it will do what I want... and cost half as much as the 'standard' video switcher I'm returning.

If you are buying DVRs and cameras, have you considered switching to ip cameras and DVRs that provide POE?

quote:

Originally posted by SW_Sig:
If you are buying DVRs and cameras, have you considered switching to ip cameras and DVRs that provide POE?

This right here. At 70 cameras, I couldn’t imagine trying to manage it with the camera software.

When I was at Harbor, we had all the tobacco and other high dollar items on camera, and many others for monitoring workplace safety, etc. it was all POE, stored on large DVR servers. We ran Axis cameras and Tyco Security had a pretty kick ass program for setting up motion, activity zones, etc. we just ran all cameras on a continuous loop, and would overwrite every three weeks (approximately).

Check your options for POE cameras. Might be worth the investment to upgrade systems and sell the old one.

Since I've managed to put 48 in the church with over 6,000 ft of cable Im not quite ready to change at this point in time.... A goodly number of years back, probably over 10, they put in an 8 camera system for the entries.... and I actually managed to still use the cables for these.

I support a system with over 1,000 cameras and 6 servers.

I have a project soon to kick off replacing 377 cameras as well as a new software system and 14 servers. The new system will include analytics, facial recognition, license plate recognition, as well as other functionality.

There is also interest in expanding the camera coverage which would increase the camera count to over 2,000.

SW Sig, I'm thinking the computers are really monitoring all those cameras... guy at my church has something to do with our cities camera system and that's how I remember him explaining it....

No one is monitoring the ones I put in... I think of it as more an insurance policy in case something happens.... and we can go back and review. I spent about two hours a few weeks back trying to figure out how a guys back window in his car got broken and finally decided it was a fault in the window that just happened.

Unless you have staff dedicated to monitoring cameras, regardless of the number, they are typically used after the fact to investigate or during live, ongoing events to assist and guide first responders.

That is unless your system has advanced analytics to recognize identified people, vehicles, license plates, firearms, ... They can then send alerts as needed.

Also, if your cameras and system have motion detection capability, they can be used to send alerts from cameras in little-used areas and during specified time windows.

There are many other capabilities as well.

this is a basic consumer system that only has the motion detector capability, which I have so far kept turned off. The play back and search feature is terrible once you get past the current day but I have figured out how to do it. You can also access the cameras on a smart phone via the internet and the search function on a phone is much easier to manage than on the DVRs. I used a lorex system at my home for years... but the safety team leader at my Church bought the first camera system and it was a Zosi and so I went with those and even switched out at my home to the same system to be consistent. I discovered I can have all the DVRs/cameras on one account or the church ones can be on a different account and it still all works and you have access.