Why Your Yugo Doesn't Perform Like a Cadillac

["Bob La Londe" <nospam@xxxxxxxxx>]

I wrote this up today for a client who just couldn't wrap his mind aroound
why his DVR sucks.  I thought some of you might be able to use it.  Feel
free.


Yes you can get upto 30 days record time, but you will not be happy with the
recording quality. You can only get it at an extremely slow number of still
images per second stored on your recorder. About 2-3 frames per second.

Yes you can get decent usable record quality, but you can only get a couple
days record time because you have more images to store in a day. At 20-30
frames per second you can be pretty sure of getting most things, but only
for a couple days at best.

YOU CAN NOT GET GOOD RECORD QUALITY AND LONG RECORD TIME WITH YOUR KALATEL
2000 RECORDER.

You can not have both with this machine. The company who made it was bought
out by GE Security Group several years ago, and they no longer support the
unit. In fact it was no-longer directly supported even before the company
was bought out. It can not be upgraded.

WHAT DOES FRAMES PER SECOND MEAN. A real time video signal is approximately
30 still images per second. Each camera on your system is sending about 30
frames (individual still images) each second to your recorder.

16 Cameras X 30 images per second = 480 images per second.

There are some very good video recorders available at a pretty high price
that will record at up to 480 frames per second, but they can not store more
than a few days at that record rate. Most are set to record at a much slower
rate , and only record at a faster rate if there is an alarm activated or
possibly on motion sensing. A machine that could record all of that still
will have 1-2 Terabytes of data storage.

HOW DOES THAT COMPARE TO MY MACHINE? The little Kalatel DSR 2000 at your
shop has about 80 Gigabytes of storage. That is approximately 0.000976 5625
Terabytes

A Kalatel DSR 2000 has less than one thousandth of the storage necessary to
record real time video for several weeks.

HOW ABOUT PRETTY GOOD VIDEO? The unit will record for a month at 2-3 frames
per second.

WHAT IS 2-3 FRAMES PER SECOND? At 2 frames per second that means during any
given second 14 of your 16 cameras are not being recorded. OR... It takes
approximately 8 seconds before you have a chance that all 16 cameras have
managed to have a single still image saved on the recorder.

HOW ABOUT FOR JUST TWO WEEKS? This unit may record for two weeks at 4-6
frames per second. Assuming you can actually get two weeks record time at 6
frames per second, you may not be happy with the record quality.

WHAT DOES SIX FRAMES PER SECOND MEAN? At six frames per second during any
given second 10 of your sixteen cameras are not being recorded. OR... it
means that it may take 3 to 4 seconds before any particular camera has a
chance of having an image stored to the recorder.

WHAT IS MOTION ACTIVATION? Motion Activation is a technology built into many
digital recorders that will allow them to determine if the current frame
from a camera is substantially different from the last frame.

HOW IS MOTION ACTIVATION USED? Often it is used to give one camera priority
over another for recording or to change the record rate.

WILL MOTION ACTIVATED RECORDING SOLVE ALL MY PROBLEMS? No. The Kalatel 2000
is old 1st generation technology, and its not particularly good at video
motion detection. Also, it can not even process the number of images being
sent to it. The maximum number of images it can process is about 60 per
second. You are sending 480 images per second to the recorder.

WHAT IS THE BEST SOLUTION? With this unit there is no best solution. It can
not be upgraded, and it is no longer supported by the manufacturer. The only
real alternative is to replace the unit with a newer better recorder with
more storage and more processing capacity. Anything else will be an unhappy
compromise.