Recently we were victims of a ram raid in which nothing was taken because when they rammed into the front of the shop the door did not give way enough plus I was up and watching them by then and I had contacted the police and gave them a description after which a pursuit followed by their arrest. We are also victims of petty theft therefore to increase security I would like to install a further 4-6 cameras around the property.
Now I have profound knowledge of building computers etc as I am a gamer and love customising my custom built computer.
However I have no idea about those PCI video capture cards specifically for attaching cameras to. I would like to know-
1) I found some which say up to 8 cameras 50 FPS, firstly is that much FPS sufficient for 24 hour monitoring of the premises?
2) Secondly let’s say that it is cheaper to install 2 ‘8 camera cards’ is that possible because obviously you cannot use 2 incompatible graphics cards; do the same rules apply here?
3) Does anyone know of any good websites which sell good capture video cards specifically designed for cctv ( I don’t know what they are called) at good prices because I have looked some up but the pricing is ridiculous and DABS do some about 3 cards but they do not meet my requirements.
4) Is the software usually bundled? The software must be easy to use as my parents have very very little knowledge on computers (they can get to the point of turning one on and playing solitaire (even opening solitaire has to be done by myself!!) and the software must be able to quickly convert the recorded footage for backup onto a DVD.
5) Is there a range of suitable software for these cards as there are for example photo editing programs?
Onto the cameras themselves- must be full colour – zooming in would be ideal I mean after the footage has been captured a number plate or a persons face must be zoomable at high quality levels, currently the cameras we have which are apparently Sony although they have no labels to say they are… are attached to a rather crappy DVR unit thingy and the professional company that set it up charged £3000!!!
Must be night viewable. At the moment these cameras at night cannot even read the number plate off a car even with IR (Infra Red) and 2 150W flood lights!
Ideally I would like the type of cameras they use in Tesco’s where they can zoom in a lot being able to view a persons spot and they must cope well at night. They must be weather proof. Now what with the recent jump to HD being mind bogglingly confusing especially when it comes to computers + security as well as expensive I do not want any HD hardware nor cameras to keep the total cost down.
Also we are building a restaurant so that will require security as well.
I have planned on building a computer to the following spec (its rough as I have yet to decide the actual components)
AMD Athlon 64 4000+ San Diego
2 or 1 GB RAM
any socket 939 AMD supporting mobo (yet to decide) which can handle 1TB of hard drives (can any mobo support 1 TB upwards of hard drives?) Will most probably be a mobo with only AGP because I am pretty sure that recording footage does not require much if not at all any graphical power, and the only reason I am not going with integrated graphics is the performance hit and I need video in out.
Recently
700-1TB hard drive/s
DVD writer
480W PSU
Any case
Any graphics card with tv in out
2 of these will have to be built one for the shop and one for the restaurant so as you can see costs are to be kept in mind however for the 2 systems I have a budget limit of about £3000 not including cameras.
Budget for cameras is roughly £2000-3000.
One of these computers will become the primary use for my sister as she is currently having to cope with a dell Celeron 564Mhz!! She uses it for internet and Microsoft word not at all demanding however to be on the safe side go for 64bit especially as this is RAW footage.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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