BI basic questions vs Dahua NVR

[bug99]

I am still dragging my feet in my home setup NVR. For one thing i figured that memory prices would come back down, but they have not, and another thing the availability of low priced I7 6700s is poor, likely due to the prevalence of laptops in the workplace now.

As i look into this move again, i wonder about the pluses and minuses of BI and a Dahua NVR for only Dahua cameras (i get the obvious benefit with BI for mixed cameras). I am sure this is personal preference here, but would love to hear the key value and pain points. If there is an up to date post of this elsewhere, please point me to it.

I do not understand why Quick sync H.264 hardware is needed (critical) if direct-to-disk is used. If BI decompresses the video stream then triggers on things (ex motion), then it needs to re-compress (same H.264 or different H265+), or it will take a lot more space on the disk (4x?). Does BI take up more disk space than Dahua (ex DHI-NVR5216-4KS2)? Can someone enlighten me here?

Does BI support the newest compression formats used by Dahua and Hikvision and others (ex H.265+, H.265)?


Cost and size comparison:
Dahua NVR comes in a 1U rack mount and costs ~$250 + HDD ($250 8TB)
Refurbished Dell i7 6700 tower (big and bulky) to take a 3.5" HDD is about $700 with 256GB SSD + HDD ($250 8TB)

I am leaning towards BI, or i would not be posting this here, but it never seems to be the right time to move.

 

[fenderman]

I am still dragging my feet in my home setup NVR. For one thing i figured that memory prices would come back down, but they have not, and another thing the availability of low priced I7 6700s is poor, likely due to the prevalence of laptops in the workplace now.

As i look into this move again, i wonder about the pluses and minuses of BI and a Dahua NVR for only Dahua cameras (i get the obvious benefit with BI for mixed cameras). I am sure this is personal preference here, but would love to hear the key value and pain points. If there is an up to date post of this elsewhere, please point me to it.

I do not understand why Quick sync H.264 hardware is needed (critical) if direct-to-disk is used. If BI decompresses the video stream then triggers on things (ex motion), then it needs to re-compress (same H.264 or different H265+), or it will take a lot more space on the disk (4x?). Does BI take up more disk space than Dahua (ex DHI-NVR5216-4KS2)? Can someone enlighten me here?

Does BI support the newest compression formats used by Dahua and Hikvision and others (ex H.265+, H.265)?


Cost and size comparison:
Dahua NVR comes in a 1U rack mount and costs ~$250 + HDD ($250 8TB)
Refurbished Dell i7 6700 tower (big and bulky) to take a 3.5" HDD is about $700 with 256GB SSD + HDD ($250 8TB)

I am leaning towards BI, or i would not be posting this here, but it never seems to be the right time to move.

I suggest you download the demo...
there are threads with the differences explained.
Here is a prodesk for 550 HP ProDesk 400 G3 SFF PC i7-6700 Quad 3.4GHz 8GB 500GB W10Pro 814173R-999-F74M | eBay
you can wait around and get them for 400.
You dont need the ssd, but i recommend it, so you need to compare apples to apples...an ssd is 80 bux, crucial mx300 via amazon.
h.265 is supported but not with hardware acceleration...+ will never be supported as it is proprietary to dahua, just like hikvisions + is.
you dont state your camera load, more than likely a 300 dollar pc will be more than enough.
The disk space used is EXACTLY what the bitrate the camera is sending at the time...nothing more nothing less.

 

[looney2ns]

BI will run circles around any NVR. The mobile app will also run circles around any NVR's app.
Dell OptiPlex 5040 Tower i7-6700 3.4GHz 8GB 500GB DVDRW Win10 | eBay

 

[bug99]

how easy is it to move the licence (win10pro) to a new SSD on these ebay machines? I assume that the image normally comes on a dedicated partition on the HDD and installed to the second partition for use, with no key printed anywhere so downloading an ISO to a new SSD boot drive will leave me without licence data?

 

[fenderman]

how easy is it to move the licence (win10pro) to a new SSD on these ebay machines? I assume that the image normally comes on a dedicated partition on the HDD and installed to the second partition for use, with no key printed anywhere so downloading an ISO to a new SSD boot drive will leave me without licence data?

Very easy you don't need a printed key at all... You'll do a clean install using Microsoft media creation tool on a USB will activate automatically

 

[Enrique]

I do not understand why Quick sync H.264 hardware is needed (critical) if direct-to-disk is used.

BI needs to process the video data from the H264 stream in order to detect events. The decoding of the video stream can be done by the CPU or, in the case of Intel QS enabled processors, it can be offloaded to the video processor. This needs to be done regardless of how and what gets saved to disk. QS is much more efficient than the CPU processor.

With respect to saving the video... You can choose to have it write out its own stream to disk instead of the raw stream if you choose. The only real benefit to having BI write its stream rather than the raw stream (direct-to-disk) would be for any overlays to be stored on disk.

 

[bug99]

BI needs to process the video data from the H264 stream in order to detect events. The decoding of the video stream can be done by the CPU or, in the case of Intel QS enabled processors, it can be offloaded to the video processor. This needs to be done regardless of how and what gets saved to disk. QS is much more efficient than the CPU processor.

With respect to saving the video... You can choose to have it write out its own stream to disk instead of the raw stream if you choose. The only real benefit to having BI write its stream rather than the raw stream (direct-to-disk) would be for any overlays to be stored on disk.

I think i understand now. The one stream from the camera(s) is sort of split. One goes direct to disk (no decompression and re-compression needed from the NVR BI PC, and one gets decompressed by the graphics section of the CPU for use by BI to detect events, where it makes some sort of meta record to point to the other stream, but otherwise tosses the decompressed video stream fork. Do i have this right?

 

[bug99]

Very easy you don't need a printed key at all... You'll do a clean install using Microsoft media creation tool on a USB will activate automatically

Strange that MS does not distinguish between basic and pro on the "after" , but they do on the going from section when using the media creation tool.

Your current edition of Windows (from):
Windows 7 Starter
Windows 7 Home Basic
Windows 7 Home Premium
Windows 7 Professional
Windows 7 Ultimate
Windows 8/8.1
Windows 8.1 with Bing
Windows 8 Pro
Windows 8.1 Pro
Windows 8/8.1 Professional with Media Center
Windows 8/8.1 Single Language
Windows 8 Single Language with Bing
Windows 10 Home
Windows 10 Pro
Windows 10 edition (to):
Windows 10

 

[fenderman]

Strange that MS does not distinguish between basic and pro on the "after" , but they do on the going from section when using the media creation tool.

Your current edition of Windows (from):
Windows 7 Starter
Windows 7 Home Basic
Windows 7 Home Premium
Windows 7 Professional
Windows 7 Ultimate
Windows 8/8.1
Windows 8.1 with Bing
Windows 8 Pro
Windows 8.1 Pro
Windows 8/8.1 Professional with Media Center
Windows 8/8.1 Single Language
Windows 8 Single Language with Bing
Windows 10 Home
Windows 10 Pro
Windows 10 edition (to):
Windows 10

The tool will detect your version...it uses machine identifiers...it will work 100 percent...just verify the installed version is accurate...

 

[bug99]

The tool will detect your version...it uses machine identifiers...it will work 100 percent...just verify the installed version is accurate...

Thanks for the tip on the nw image + licence transfer via the MS media creation tool. It worked great. I only had to deal with the first boot sign in in its original config and then after creating the USB, i reconfigured it to have drive 0 the SSD and drive 1 the 8TB and reboot.

I see that a recommended configuration option seems to be write first to SSD and then move (ex 50GB) chunks over to the HDD. What is the purpose of this? 50GB is on the order of half a day to maybe 30 hrs (depending on camera and settings). is it to easily see and push very recent trigger alerts to email etc, as read performance of the SSD is 5x of the HHD or so?

Do you leave a monitor connected to your BI server? Or do you remote in to make changes to the setup (Remote desktop with something like TeamViewer)?

 

[fenderman]

Thanks for the tip on the nw image + licence transfer via the MS media creation tool. It worked great. I only had to deal with the first boot sign in in its original config and then after creating the USB, i reconfigured it to have drive 0 the SSD and drive 1 the 8TB and reboot.

I see that a recommended configuration option seems to be write first to SSD and then move (ex 50GB) chunks over to the HDD. What is the purpose of this? 50GB is on the order of half a day to maybe 30 hrs (depending on camera and settings). is it to easily see and push very recent trigger alerts to email etc, as read performance of the SSD is 5x of the HHD or so?

Do you leave a monitor connected to your BI server? Or do you remote in to make changes to the setup (Remote desktop with something like TeamViewer)?

There is no need to write to the ssd first...write to the storage drive..only the database, BI and the os should be on the ssd..
yes, in most of my installs the monitor is left on 24/7....as a viewing station.