I'm curious if anyone has done any comparison on what benefits or other differences in these video monitoring softwares. I know from my experiences in them is that the CMS is poorly developed and is mainly used and distributed from China.
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Has Anyone Done A Comparison On VMS And CMS
JH
John Honovich
May 10, 2018Donald, we have a tutorial post on this: VMS vs CMS. Your experience is reasonable, there is a fair amount of CMS used outside of China, but to your point, it generally is for those using Chinese DVRs or NVRs who want software to view/access multiple recorders at once.
Donald Dubuque
May 11, 2018Very brief in its comparison. I was looking for functionality as the CMS I'm using has many issues in that when you access the camera settings from the CMS software the developer failed to build the menus to allow full view of the apps in that popup.
As you can see in the image the apps on the right are cut off. Which indicates to me that a free CMS is a poor choice. Where as a VMS which one pays for would be a more robust software.
JH
John Honovich
May 11, 2018Donald, well, that is pretty bad. In general, VMSes, which one pays for, are better. But, e.g., NUUO is a VMS and it is not that good so I hesitate to make a universal point here. However, generally, VMSes are better than CMSes, both in terms of usability and functionality.
UI
Undisclosed Integrator #1
May 11, 2018I had written a long response, but deleted it as it was going down the technical and feature set variables.
I personally see them as much different in the beginning and slowly merging, up to a point.
I viewed a CMS as a way to manage and view multiple DVR’s over some form of LAN/WAN. Each box still independent, with a way to view and configure locally with a mouse and/or keyboard. The two may look completely different in appearance. A CMS was a way to have software support hardware sales. A free CMS is usually brand specific on the hardware.
While features could be added in a CMS, the hardware was primarily the limiting factor and the push to reduce hardware costs and the desire to move away from Windows based platforms limited it even more
Revenue source is hardware.
I viewed a VMS as a way to manage and view multiple IP cameras or Encoders over some form of LAN/WAN. In this case, without the main server running, you would have no viewing, recording or management at the device, for the most part. A VMS is mostly hardware agnostic.
The primary method of operation would be a form of thick or thin client working with the server. A VMS enabled hardware to sell software.
Features in a VMS were mostly limited by today’s coding methods and computer hardware.
Revenue source is software and SMA,SSA,SLA or whatever you want to call the recurring revenue model.
Today, they are merging somewhat by distributing resources, edge based recording, VMS platforms using DVR’s as sources and managing, SaaS centralizing management and storage.
Well, that’s my 642 words worth, or so.
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