Appliance That Supports Your Choice Of VMS, Hybrid Analog And IP Configuration?

JH
John Honovich
Jun 20, 2017
IPVM

Who makes appliances lets you run your choice of VMS software with integrated analog encoding and IP camera support. Bonus points if the appliance also supports HD analog.

Perhaps the closest analogy would be Razberi except that Razberi is an open VMS appliance with an integrated PoE switch but not integrated analog encoding.

Any suggestions? We see this request come up periodically as users wants a higher-end VMS but the simplicity of a single unit that can handle existing analog cameras or re-using coaxial cable for HD analog cameras.

jk
john kesterson
Jun 21, 2017

John,

We (VayTek Inc.) make an appliance that supports both IP and 4 NTSC analog channels, with 4 audio inputs, and has output for power for the 4 analog cameras.  It runs Windows 7, 10 or server OS.  It can record from IP and analog simultaneously, with 30 fps on the 4 analog channels.  It was originally designed for interview room applications, but can be used in more general purpose settings.

The VMS is our own creation, although we can stream rtsp out to other VMS's. 

It does not accept analog HD.

The problem (for us) in supporting analog input is that we have to integrate a frame grabber board and that means special code - so support for any VMS is not possible - (for us) anyway.  However, since it is a standard MS OS, other VMS's can be loaded and run - but they probably won't have support for the frame grabber - although that is something to be determined.

Regards,

John Kesterson

 

 

JH
John Honovich
Jun 21, 2017
IPVM

so support for any VMS is not possible

But that is what is being asked here. Many recorders support their own VMS (Dahua, Hanwha, Hikvision, etc., etc.). The question is for an 'open' VMS appliance that supports other VMSes.

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SD
Sinisa Dumanic
Jun 21, 2017

You can use Hikvision DVR's (also HD analog) and NVR's with Milestone VMS.

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JH
John Honovich
Jun 21, 2017
IPVM

You can use Hikvision DVR's (also HD analog) and NVR's with Milestone VMS.

NO. You can do that but that is not the request here.

The request is to have the VMS (Milestone, Genetec, whatever) and have it run on the DVR machine. In other words, 1 appliance that does both analog encoding and VMS hosting.

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UE
Undisclosed End User #1
Jun 21, 2017

IPVM's previous article regarding HD Analog and Milestone comes to mind as one ingredient to the "cake" your looking for. Seems that the Dahua, Hikvision Tri-Brid and Pent-Brid NVR's are the appliances you are looking for, but not all VMS's treat the licensing the same.

 

So Milestone for higher end VMS and Dahua XVR5104/08/16HS for your appliance?

 

Or just and Exacq Hybrid NVR?

JH
John Honovich
Jun 21, 2017
IPVM

So Milestone for higher end VMS and Dahua XVR5104/08/16HS for your appliance?

No. Again, in this case, the request is to run the VMS (like Milestone) on the appliance. In your suggestion, some other machine still needs to run Milestone in addition to the Dahua appliance.

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UE
Undisclosed End User #1
Jun 21, 2017

Exacq A-Series NVR: (No HD Analog though....) *

 *On their Data sheet for 4u unit they specify 480/960/1440/1920 (NTSC) for Analog Frame Rate Settings, not sure if that means they can work with HD Analog or not

https://exacq.com/products/a/

JH
John Honovich
Jun 21, 2017
IPVM

For sure, that's good if you want to use Exacq but it's not open.

Again, the example is Razberi, which supports various VMSes, but for integrated analog encoding, rather than PoE.

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UE
Undisclosed End User #1
Jun 21, 2017

Honestly, I'm slightly confused by "Open VMS", Exacq works with many different IP Cameras, RTSP streams and Onvif etc...

So are you looking for Hybrid NVR with PoE ports?

 

JH
John Honovich
Jun 21, 2017
IPVM

I am looking for, as I said in the OP, "a 'DVR' that lets you run your choice of VMS software". I changed the title and the OP to make this more explicit.

MM
Michael Miller
Jun 21, 2017

I can confirm you can run Avigilon on Exacq's Windows servers but this is not something you would want to sell for a new project for obvious reasons. 

 

You're looking for a Windows box with built-in POE and/or Analog/TVI capture cards (that isn't sold from Exacq, Milestone....)  that you can install any Windows VMS on it.   I would think the Analog/TVI part would be an integration issue yes/no?   

Avatar
Josh Hendricks
Jun 21, 2017
Milestone Systems

The analog encoding seems to be the difficulty here. As previously mentioned, this typically requires an add-on card to do the analog frame capture and these are not broadly supported and can be fairly complicated to integrate with.

To be broadly supported by many VMSs, the server/appliance would probably need to embed an IP based ONVIF analog encoder. That way the appliance would provide support of both IP and analog while being immediately compatible with most VMS options.

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jk
john kesterson
Jun 21, 2017

I agree with Joshua.

For us the issue is the integration of the frame grabber board.

Per my previous comment regarding our DVR - and John's earlier response - 

Our DVR runs Windows' OS's.  So any Windows compatible VMS would run on it.  That raises three issues:

1) If the VMS has support for the frame grabber we use, then that VMS would run on our DVR.

2) If the VMS does not support the frame grabber we use - then there is a "work around" in that our service that talks to our frame grabber board could run in the background and rtsp a stream out the chosen VMS - assuming it would accept an rtsp stream.  This would be as close to an ONVIF solution that we would have now.

3)  My guess is that there is no "out of the box" solution for this currently.  But give us a set of end user requirements, or a real world operational scenario, and we will adapt our DVR to solve the problem.  We serve a niche market and that is our specialty.  If this happens, then we could move our product to a more general purpose device.

Regards,

John Kesterson

 

 

 

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #2
Jun 26, 2017

You can build your own server and run any VMS you want. Problem is you also want to run HD analog on the same non-proprietary box.  Actually, the real problem you have is wanting to run HD analog at all.  

Avatar
John Bazyk
Jun 26, 2017
Command Corporation • IPVMU Certified

Razberi is the only one I have found that comes close, I wish someone would make a TVI/CVI PCI-E Card for a PC so we could bring in analog video that way. I know GEO vision has in the past but I don't think there's anything ONVIF compliant or that works with the new HD analog formats. 

Avatar
Matthew Fox
Jun 26, 2017
IPVMU Certified

I know that Digital Watchdog makes an Analog HD to IP encoder that can be used with DW Spectrum, and knowing how DW Spectrum works I am guessing that it would work on any VMS that supports RTSP streams.  I know it's not an all-in-one solution but it might be the closest thing out there.

Avatar
Mike Dotson
Jun 29, 2017
Formerly of Seneca • IPVMU Certified

As several mentioned already, the 'integrated' analog capture is the tricky part.

A VMS developer has to write a driver for a capture card to be used.   Milestone and Exacq have done this with a particular vendor.   Note that Exacq will demand that you purchase their servers in order to enable the capture card driver.   Milestone is still an open usage and we have had this option for many years in our servers.

In the past, we entertained and even prototyped an integrated server that used name brand  encoder cards that were NOT PCIe based, however at $80/channel that would not be cost efficient in the market.   Sure, it worked with any VMS that could talk to the encoder, but the modern standalone ones are much less expensive per channel.

I have asked several of the more popular VMS vendors about this and they simply tell me they are not seeing enough demand to warrant the development expense.

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