hardware & software for 4-channel video capture?

[apjorz]

Hi all!

Reading through the related topics did not really help me, because my question is a bit special.

At work, we have to build a system for simultaneous 4-channel analogue capture. The sources are surveillance ccd cameras, and the capture card will be this one (http://www.kobicctv.com.tw/KP-304,308,312,316.htm) (the 308) or this one (http://www.kobicctv.com.tw/KP-160A.htm). They have both 4 input channels, the first has four bt878 chips, the second only has one.

I have to build a pc around this card. As this is kind of sponsored, I have to choose the components from this company (http://www.rufusz.hu/webshop/index.php?t=0). (You have to select the component category at the left side, or you can click the XLS link to have it all on one page) I guess we can order other things through them too, but it would be best to choose from here.

Basically, we want to capture in the best possible quality, but will be content if we can get around 15 fps @ 352x288 from all four sources at the same time, and compress all this with huffyuv.

At the moment I don't know where the bottle neck is (cpu, pci bus, hdd?). What is the max theoretical resolution and framerate we can get from 4 sources simultaneously?

In the beginning, we would use the supplied cra... I mean, software. But this one is very unstable, and can only capture in its own cra... codec :) (lossy). So ATM we are using Virtual VCR, which allows us to capture at full resolution and framerate with huffyuv, but only one channel.

So the questions are as follows:

1. What would be (generally) a good enough PC for this task? Of course, reliability is very important! Does this mean the Intel platform, because of the better chipsets? What cpu speed, RAM amount, HDD etc would be possibily enough? What are the decent chipsets you would recommend on both platforms?

2. If you happen to have time to check the above link, what would you choose from the page? I don't yet know where our financial limits are, so you are free to 'buy' :)

3. Could you recommend a software which we could use to capture from four sources in huffyuv? Free is always the best, but you can suggest commercial software too... (but we'd prefer the try before you buy construction)

Any other questions and suggestions are welcome, please tell me if I've been unclear or if you need more information to help.

thanks in advance!

[apjorz]

Also, if we go for RAID, is it wise to use any integrated (SATA?) raid controller, or buy a separate one? If so, what card would be a good choice? :)

[kempodragon]

Looking at the cards, I'd go for the 4 chipset one, because of the faster fps recording. Each chip is digitizing only one video signal, so the workload is lighter. The bottleneck would most likely be the PCI bus. A serial ATA hdd should have no problem keeping up. Make sure you get the biggest hard drive you can, because a four source Huffyuv will be huge, even with each source at 320x160.

Regarding CPU, memory, and motherboard, get the max you can afford. I didn't get decent captures until I started using a decent processor. Look at the minimum system requirements for either card, and then add to it.

I remember there was another thread similar to your situation, and a forum search should recall it.

Here is the thread I was thinking of. Hope it helps. http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=65377&highlight=multichannel+capture

[apjorz]

Thanks for your post!

So you mean the bigger the better :). Any particular chipset or technology (i865, SATA RAID for example) you would or you would not recommend? How well the AMD's perform with video capture?

HD space is not an issue atm, because we record short sequences from multiple angles. But of course we'll get the most we can... :)

[apjorz]

Any multi-channel, huffyuv capable software you would recommend? They give something called SkyView, but as I mentioned, it's not very good.

[apjorz]

Originally posted by kempodragon
Looking at the cards, I'd go for the 4 chipset one, because of the faster fps recording. Each chip is digitizing only one video signal, so the workload is lighter. The bottleneck would most likely be the PCI bus. A serial ATA hdd should have no problem keeping up. Make sure you get the biggest hard drive you can, because a four source Huffyuv will be huge, even with each source at 320x160.

Normally, I would choose the 4-chip one too, but we had problems with it so far. Please check here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&postid=592661) if you're interested!

[kempodragon]

I honestly don't know how well AMD does captures. I've always used Intel, mostly because Intel had a better fpu than AMD until recently. I read the thread you mentioned, and I was wondering, have you tried uninstalling Skyview and just using VirtualVCR? VirtualVCR clearly has no trouble accessing the card on its own. Might be worth a shot.

I can't recommend any particular chipset or RAID tech. My own setup doesn't use RAID, so I don't know how good they are. As for chipsets, the only chipset I had a bad experience with is the VIA. I realize other people get great performance from this chipset, but for me, I'll never buy another motherboard with a VIA chipset. Both cards specify the Intel i865 chipset, so I'd definitely get that.

[apjorz]

Thanks for your advices. Via is, of course, out of question. We'll probably go Intel to avoid unnecessary risks.

Yes, I could use only VirtualVCR, with btwincap it works perfectly. But it doesn't allow me to do multi-channel recording :(. So until I get something better, I'm forced to use Skyview - and this one only works with its own driver.

Thanks again, you were very helpful.

[Rancid1]

As for the processor, go for intel. Of the processors listed on that site, no AMD 32bit processor could ever come close to the encoding efficiency of it's Intel counter-part, or even a cheaper Intel processor. I never understood why anyone built Intel based systems untill I started doing encodes/conversions of misc. A/V sources. (I'm just an AMD gamer lost in this damn Intel multimedia world.)

AMD slaps Intel (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1722274,00.asp), about time
Though an interesting article (yet pretty much irrelavent) if you had a wider range of ($$$$$) sponsorship available.