VMS Supported Cameras And Risks

Worst case -- they aren't recognized by the VMS. If they are ONVIF certified you are able to support many features if the VMS supports it. This does not mean all features will be supported (e.g. embedded analytics, audio, etc). There is always to option of pulling a RTSP stream but that is simply a video feed with no additional functionality.

They won't work :)

In 2015, presumably the VMS and the IP camera supports ONVIF. In that case, the more practical risk is that it basic functions work, like streaming video, but motion detection, PTZ control, VMS side camera configuration, video analytic events do not work.

If you know a VMS does not officially support a camera, you minimally should be testing to see how well, if any, it can be integrated with ONVIF.

thank you for your reply,

we undesratnd that ones the camera suppoerts onvif would work, but what about if the vms supplyer will upgrade the software and we are using a camera trough onvif, are there any concerns we have to worry about example recordings failer and bugs we can face from time to time.

thank you

The big risk is that things break at weird times (usually around new releases) and fixing them tends to be low priority for unsupported cameras/encoders/devices.

Usually if a camera is supported it is part of the overall testing/QA process and hopefully continues to work smoothly across new releases. Unsupported cameras are usually not tested, so you can find that features that used to work randonly break. Because an unsupported camera is essnetially not very popular with that VMS (for hopefully obvious reasons), the VMS manufacturer probably doesn't have great contacts at that camera company. This makes getting bugs resolved moderately difficult, and the overall issue is likely to be low priority.

With a properly supported camera it's safe to assume that anything that breaks gets fixed quickly (though there are examples to the contrary). With an unsupported camera it is not safe to assume the things that work properly today will still do so in the futre.

is there any documentaton about the supported cameras ?

It sounds like the OP is looking for a list of potential problems and risks when using an unsupported camera. I dont think a list like this exists. Clarification would definitely be helpful.

Some cameras may have been tested and shown to be unsupported by a given software vendor/camera maker and you may be able to find out what doesnt work in that scenario.

You can always test for yourself and find out but the biggest problem will likely be if/when something breaks you will receive no manufacturer/software vendor support for that combination and be left to support it yourself.