CCTV cam with Blue Iris?

[thejbgc]

I personally use and love blue Iris for my home security system. I have 12 cameras connected (mostly HikVision) to a dedicated computer and find any excuse to add another whenever I can. I love how easy it is to wire and connect a new camera using PoE.

My neighbor purchased His house with cameras already installed. The problem is they are CNB cameras that have CCTV connection, not Ethernet/cat5. The exact model of the camera is WCM-20VF. He has six of them. The original owner of the house had them hooked up to his television but my friend who purchased the house has not used them at all. He wouldn't care much for the TV set up anyway, his main priority is being able to access it on his phone or computer while at work or on the go (like I can) as well as all of his footage being backed onto a decicated computer.

Is this even possible with his current camera set up? or would he need to purchase new IP cams like mine and rewire them, essentially starting from scratch? Blue Iris is a must have for him. Any comments or help would be appreciated.

thanks!
James

 

[fenderman]

@thejbgcWelcome to the forum. By FAR the best and proper solution is to rewire and use HD ip cameras.
You can use a limited number of capture cards with blue iris but they are expensive and have limited driver support.
You can also upgrade to tvi/cvi then stream from the DVR but it will ultimately prove unreliable.
They do sell devices that let you use ip over coax but it will be cheaper, neater, and more reliable to pay someone to run proper cable.

 

[thejbgc]

@fenderman thanks for the fast reply and thank you for welcoming me to the forum!

Your answer is the answer I feared but also the answer I hoped for. IP is the way to go. Any recommendations as to what to do with the current cameras? Sell? Donate? Trash? Also, I was thinking I could tape a cat5 or cat6 cable to the end of the existing camera cable and pull it through. Quick and easy, hopefully no hiccups. Your thoughts?

 

[fenderman]

@fenderman thanks for the fast reply and thank you for welcoming me to the forum!

Your answer is the answer I feared but also the answer I hoped for. IP is the way to go. Any recommendations as to what to do with the current cameras? Sell? Donate? Trash? Also, I was thinking I could tape a cat5 or cat6 cable to the end of the existing camera cable and pull it through. Quick and easy, hopefully no hiccups. Your thoughts?

The cameras are likely low res analog..not worth much...donate it...
You might be able to fish the wire in that manner, cant hurt to try. Make sure you use quality ethernet cable (solid, and copper not CCA/copper clad aluminium)

 

[Jack B Nimble]

In the walls you may try to tape to the old wire and pull through the same holes as they may not have stapled the wire down anywhere inside the walls if they were installed after drywall stage.

 

[mikeduncan]

I have a lot of experience using blue iris in a retail setting where I setup HD IP cams for critical areas but had 32 CCTV cameras already installed in the building. At the time I was googling like you looking for a solution and kept reading about expensive capture cards that may or may not do the FPS stated on the box. Luckily I remembered that some of those super cheap DVR's have raw video streams accessible so I got on Amazon and purchased 2 of these:


ANRAN 16 Channels H.264 Network Full D1 960H Motion Detection 16CH DVR CCTV Surveillance Security System Digital Video Recorder


In blue iris:




I have been running these for ~9 months at 10FPS with 16 cams each feeding into BI with h264 streams and they have been very stable so with only 6 cams one of these should do everything you need, or maybe there is a cheaper 8 channel one you could get. For the price it is worth getting those old cams going, don't discount the old CCTV cameras, any eye on an area is better than nothing

You are probably done messing with this by now but just in case you're not that is my 2 cents

 

[thejbgc]

Wow! Thank you for the info! I'm sure my Neighbor will be more than happy to hear this news! I will purchase one right away.


Quick question: after plugging the CCTV cameras into this DVR, what did you plug into blue Iris? A cat 5e/cat6 cable? Then add each h264 cameras seperately?

 

[mikeduncan]

Wow! Thank you for the info! I'm sure my Neighbor will be more than happy to hear this news! I will purchase one right away.


Quick question: after plugging the CCTV cameras into this DVR, what did you plug into blue Iris? A cat 5e/cat6 cable? Then add each h264 cameras seperately?

All the cams will plug into the back of the dvr with BNC connections, so hopefully that is what is already on the end of those cables, if not there are adapters for that. Also on the back of the DVR there is an ethernet port to plug it into your network. After that just log into the web interface of the DVR and take a peek around at all the menus and set a static IP on the DVR. In one of the attachments above I showed the camera configuration page, just add the cams one at a time and set them up like the one in the picture. In this line:

/user=admin&password=password&channel=1&stream=0.sdp

change password to the password you set and "channel=x" can be from 1 to 16 for whichever channel you want to pull from and also change "192.168.0.48" to the IP you set for your DVR. One thing I should say is that the DVR does not come with a hard drive and I am not sure if you even have to have one in it or not. I put an old 320gb drive from a broken computer into mine, but you might try it without a drive in it and see if you can still pull the streams into blue iris. No storage is really necessary since we are just using the DVR as an analog to h264 converter. The main settings you will be concerned with on the device is setting up whatever overlay (or lack of) you want and configuring the streams to what resolution you want. Here is how most of my old cctv cams are setup:



I took all the overlays out on the DVR since I could never get the time to synch up correctly, I even setup a local time server lmao, never worked. If I really want an embedded overlay I just bite the bullet and burn the cpu cycles in blue iris to do it because I need the time to be straight or not be there at all. For evidence that is going to be given to the police I just let blue iris embed the timestamp when I export the video. As for the quality of the video on the cctv cams, yeah they look a little dreary sitting next to my HD cams, BUT I would feel completely blind without them and they serve their purpose perfectly to give me eyes on every square inch of the place. In my situation it can really save my butt on being able to catch that that one important moment at just the right angle out of the years of video that gets recorded XD

Since only 6 channels are required you can probably save the money and buy the 8 channel version instead:



ALSO, from reading that description just now, it kind of implies that you don't really need the hard drive afterall I think I will pull the drives out of mine tomorrow and check it out, would make it run cooler anyway so bonus

 

[CSTC Uruguay]

@mikeduncan: Thx a lot. My neighbor here in Uruguay will also be happy!

 

[Joe88]

@mikeduncan : wanted to thank you for the info you posted, I know this thread is a little old but wanted to find out if you were able to keep things working after pulling the hard drives? Also, have you tried this with one of the AHD dvr's?

 

[CSTC Uruguay]

Yes, i've tried it with a 1080N DVR, but my old HTPC (with Blue Iris) was not able to handle 8 of the 1080n streams, so I've reduced resolution for Blue iris and use the second stream of the DVR.

 

[fenderman]

Yes, i've tried it with a 1080N DVR, but my old HTPC (with Blue Iris) was not able to handle 8 of the 1080n streams, so I've reduced resolution for Blue iris and use the second stream of the DVR.

Make sure you are using direct to disk recording and if the pc supports intel quicksync enable hardware acceleration..

 

[Tmos]

I wanted to bump this post because it helped me in moving over a system to Blue Iris.

I have 8 cameras that are CCTV type with the BNC connection that needed to move to an IP based connection. I had 2 options.

The first option is to replace the camera and use an IP to Coax/analog adaptor with POE.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07G194BQD/

In a different install, it works great in a 1890 feet coax run to a Dahua camera. Be aware you only get 10 watts POE MAX with this product. This is not the cheapest way to go.

The second option is to use a DVR. It is a much cheaper. I used

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014KTGAMI

ANRAN 16CH Security DVR 1080N. I runs without a hard drive. It’s not needed because blue iris stores all the data. I connected up the 8 cameras I have and got the ANRAN unit working like normal. I connected it up to the network and logged in via web browser. This is where I adjusted things so that Blue Iris could see it.

Under the menu DeviceCfg, Encode will be a form to fill out for each camera. Here Channel refers to camera. You will need to set up each channel(camera) and save them one at a time. I use “D1” for the resolution with best quality.

Now go to Blue Iris and setup the each camera one at a time. Remember in the PATH the channel is the camera number and you will need to change the CAMERA setting to match that.

Also remember to adjust for the password. I left it blank in this explanation.
I hope this helps!

 

[dubb]

Can I use this instead of the $99?

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1376918-REG/dahua_technology_lr1002_eoc_passive_converter.html

Also, I have an old cctv wire running to my garage but I was thinking I can use this converter for the wire, then plug in a poe switch at the garage and run more ip cameras from there?

 

[fenderman]

Can I use this instead of the $99?

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1376918-REG/dahua_technology_lr1002_eoc_passive_converter.html

Also, I have an old cctv wire running to my garage but I was thinking I can use this converter for the wire, then plug in a poe switch at the garage and run more ip cameras from there?

no

 

[pozzello]

Dahua's Ethernet over Coax (eoc) requires special tech at the cam end as well.

 

[dubb]

Alright thanks for the answer. I currently have 15 cctv cameras with the BNC connection that display at 1080p but the current dvr onky supports up to 15fps. The dvr posted in this thread supports 1080n.

Is there a dvr that I can connect to blue iris that can save the recordings at 1080p at 30fps?

 

[Tmos]

Is there a dvr that I can connect to blue iris that can save the recordings at 1080p at 30fps?

If you are locked in on having to grab 30fps, then you maybe going down the wrong path using a DVR to convert the feed for Blue Iris. The concept behind this solution is to lower costs to the rock bottom. We only run 10fps per camera in this solution. They just didn't need more data then that. I think the best possible was 20fps from the DVR. (But I am not sure about that.) By the time you throw money at a solution for 15 cctv cameras with 30fps, you may be better off just taking a different path for a better solution.

 

[fenderman]

Alright thanks for the answer. I currently have 15 cctv cameras with the BNC connection that display at 1080p but the current dvr onky supports up to 15fps. The dvr posted in this thread supports 1080n.

Is there a dvr that I can connect to blue iris that can save the recordings at 1080p at 30fps?

You don't need 30 frames per second..

 

[dubb]

If you are locked in on having to grab 30fps, then you maybe going down the wrong path using a DVR to convert the feed for Blue Iris. The concept behind this solution is to lower costs to the rock bottom. We only run 10fps per camera in this solution. They just didn't need more data then that. I think the best possible was 20fps from the DVR. (But I am not sure about that.) By the time you throw money at a solution for 15 cctv cameras with 30fps, you may be better off just taking a different path for a better solution.

It is for a grocery store. At the last incident, the suspect ran past the camera but the footage of their face was blurry. Currently, I am using a DVR but I want a clear picture of the face if it happens again.