Testing Vivotek IP7161 - 2MP MPEG-4 Camera

Published Jun 03, 2009 06:45 AM

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  • Video ******* - I thought the video quality was solid but not as sharp as others that I have been testing. Additionally the low light images tended to be nosiy and less sharp than others. As I did not do a formal comparison test, I will limit my remarks here. You, of course, can download the actual video clips below.
  • Bandwidth - The camera uses MPEG-4 rather than H.264 so there is potential for increased storage and networking cost. However, in the tests, bandwidth consumption was fairly modest with 2Mb/s to 3.5Mb/s the average consumption for 1600 x 1200, 10fps. It's hard to make a definitive claim here because different vendor's H.264 implementations consume different bandwidth levels.
  • Frame **** - The frame rate is definitely no more than 10fps. With Vivotek's own internal tool, I measured 8-9 fps consistently. If you need more frames per second, this is certainly an issue. For general monitoring (as the video samples show), the frame rate was sufficient.
  • 3rd ***** *** ******* - VMS support is currently very limited. Exacq helped me by providing a beta version. Vivotek's cameras are widely supported so I view this as more of a short term issue than a permanent barrier. However, if you are going to use the camera, you should be sure that your VMS supports this model.

Video ******* **** ****

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Physical ********

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Configuration *** ************

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Examining ********* ********* ** ******* *** ***** **** ********

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Comparing *** *** *** ******** - ***** ******* *********

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