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reliable pci card
By: WaseemCh Rank: Newbie Topics: 0 From: n/a	Added: 11/20/2010 - 08:27 PM hello, im new to abelcam. i currently have an ez watch pro 4 bnc camera setup. im thinking of switching over to abelcam because it is more open to configure and access. what would be a cheap reliable 4 bnc pci card that i could use? thank you seesoe
By: MelvinG Rank: Magna Cum Laude Topics: 661 From: Los Angeles, USA	Added: 11/20/2010 - 11:59 PM I'm afraid I do not have a good answer for you. The trouble with all the cheap 4-BNC cards I've ever seen is this: there is only one encoder chip on the card (not 4 chips) for 4 camera inputs. This means the card appears to Windows as 1 camera instead of 4, which then means the application software has to make the card "multiplex" 4 video signals and sort out what comes in. AbelCam isn't designed to do that. The solution is to get a 4-BNC card with 4 encoder chips - it will appear as 4 camera to Windows. However, such cards are definitely not cheap. The last time I went looking for such a card they were rather hard to find and the price was about US$300.
By: WaseemCh Rank: Newbie Topics: 0 From: n/a	Added: 11/21/2010 - 09:09 AM thank you for your response, definitely helped. that is exactly what abel does when i try and set the ezwatchpro card as a camera, the output to abel just cycles through the cameras every second. could there be another way? maybe 4 usb devices?
By: MelvinG Rank: Magna Cum Laude Topics: 661 From: Los Angeles, USA	Added: 11/21/2010 - 10:32 AM From WaseemCh: could there be another way? maybe 4 usb devices? Not quite sure what you mean... If you had 4 analog to USB video devices, AbelCam would see that as 4 distinctly separate cams. For that matter if you had 4 single-input PCI cards AbelCam would see them as 4 cams. On my AbelCam system I have 3 PCI analog video input cards (about US$45 each) and several Logitech USB webcams. Everything works together fine - AbelCam sees each one as a separate device. My analog PCI cards are "K-World", from Taiwan I think. In addition to analog input (BNC and RCA options) there are also TV tuners on the cards, which sounds like something you don't need. I also have a K-World gadget that converts analog video to USB. It works fine but its driver eats quite a lot of CPU cycles. I'm not using it right now on my AbelCam system, mainly because I'm running a 10 cam system and with that many cams streaming every little bit of CPU load matters. I'm not necessarily in love with K-World . It seems to be okay, and it is the "cheap brand" that my local store carries. I'm sure there are plenty of other equivalent brands out there (probably all the same design, from the same Chinese factory). http://global.kworld-global.com Edited to add: Actually, I just found the same PCI cards I'm using for US$31 here: http://www.xpcgear.com/kwltv7134.html Note that the video input is RCA connector, not BNC, so you'll probably need to buy a $2.00 adapter.
By: DaveDp Rank: New Member Topics: 10 From: n/a	Added: 11/21/2010 - 03:50 PM There is no such thing as a cheap PCI card that also provides the performance required. Using a card with a single chip and multiplexed output will be little better than using 4 USB webcams - and you'd need a fat 3Ghz+ machine (ideally 5Ghz) to handle four video streams at the same time. It's the same rationale as adding a high performance graphics card to offload the bulk of the video processing to other hardware. As usual, you get what you pay for and you should ignore the outrageous claims made for the cheap cards. They aren't telling lies, exactly, just being deceptive. If you have a machine with four spare slots you could consider adding a PCI card with a single channel processor one at a time, to spread the cost.