web cam cctv

MNuTz

MNuTz

MNuTz

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Joined
17 Mar 2004
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Market Drayton, Salop
hi all,

after a piece of software that i can use with my video camera that will transform it into a cctv camera.

ive got the camcorder (panasonic NV-GS300) connected and i can view the picture through msn or explorer but im after a decent and preferably free piece of software that will either record to HDD continually or i can set to take snap shots every few seconds.

I think i will be creating my own CCTV system straight to a standalone PC in the future. Cheap CPU and mobo with a huge HDD + a couple of cameras.
 
A dedicated box may be better suited, it will use less power and have all the inputs required for cctv cameras as well as hardware encoding.

For simply using your camera though, I would reccomend virtualdub, you can choose what video encoding options to use at what resolution etc. It's completley free.
 
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thanks for the suggestion.

I will be investing in a decent setup of some sort once ive been able to do a spot of research. Just need something quick and easy for now, we had the g/fs car scratched last night! :rolleyes:

I could use a long play DV tape but id have to get up every 90 mins to reset :D
 
Yeah I always wondered why they didn't put in a 2.5" hdd slot in cameras, it would give a much better video capacity and much faster video transfer to pcs espically if they used a decent codec like h.264 instead of dv.

At 1Mb/s it works out at 450MB for an hour of good quality vga xvid video.
 
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Not sure if the camcorder would be any good , most turn themselves off if there not recording .I once setup a domestic cam , the sort you can buy a *aplin etc .Linked it to a TV card in a PC using some good software . You could setup an area on the screen ,if anything moves in the area it will take snapshots or video footage and notify you by sending you an e-mail .It would also take images at timed intervals .It actually worked and was good . This was about 4 years ago so I would think there is better devices and software.
 
well i had it running last night from 4am until 12 today, just over 100gb recorded!

Works well, although i had trouble viewing it an external program like Media player. Some of the other ones i made worked fine but some just werent recognised.

that was using virtualdub and my camcorder, which can also be used as a webcam! didnt know :D
 
MNuTz said:
well i had it running last night from 4am until 12 today, just over 100gb recorded!

Works well, although i had trouble viewing it an external program like Media player. Some of the other ones i made worked fine but some just werent recognised.

that was using virtualdub and my camcorder, which can also be used as a webcam! didnt know :D
Click to expand...

100gb, did you tell it to compress the video to xvid or h.264 640x480 at 1Mb/s? It sounds like it was recorded at 320x240 uncompressed.
 
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because of the way the video camera was setup it wouldnt let me compress while it was recording, only after it had finished. It was set to MotionDV (??), i am going to try webcam tonight and see what that does!
 
Dv is the codec most camcorders use for compression but it's a poor codec for anything other than video editing. Webcam mode should work fine though.
 
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