Does anyone have experience with the new Amcrest NV4216-AI?

[camelian]

Our neighborhood has several Amcrest cameras for our security camera system. We were planning on buying the Amcrest NV5216 NVR but saw there's a similarly priced new NV4216-AI that includes AI capabilities.

I asked Amcrest what the differences were, and if there were any downsides going with the NV4216-AI over the NV5216.

Lower decoding capacity
NV4216-AI: Decoding Capacity: 2CH @ 4K @ 30fps simultaneously or 8CH @1080P @ 30fps.
NV5216: Decoding Capacity: View up to 4CH @ 4K @ 30fps simultaneously and the NVR will dial the remaining channels to 1080P @ 30fps.

Lower HD capacity
NV4216-AI: Up to 2x8TB
NV5216: Up to 2x10TB

Neither of those limitations really affect how we plan to use it so I'm leaning towards the AI model, but I just wanted to see if anyone had any experiences with either. The AI features are only fully functional with their AI cameras, which is fine..we might get some down the line if they get cheaper and would just like to future proof the NVR.

Thanks all!

 

[drrich1101]

Here is my take, now I wish I had a do-over because I have the 5216. I would have gotten an even better unit. The real question is incoming bandwidth. The 5216 is 320, which means you can view 16 channels at 2mp at 30fps. Seems like a lot. Right? But not really. If you have 8mp cameras, that’s only 4 at once. After that not enough bandwidth to see any more cams. That means the 4216, if you had 8mp cams, 4 of them, you couldn’t see them all at once. Now can they all record at once? Not sure. Don’t think so though. That doesn’t include sub streams either. Watch this for a better understanding

 

[camelian]

The rep noted that recording is not limited, only streaming. For us, we don't actively monitor the footage anywhere. I might pull up the app to check live on a few cameras to see what's happening, but we primarily only go back to review footage if an incident happened. In this case, do you think the limited streaming capability would be an issue? If not, I was leaning towards the AI so it would be easier to sort through events.

We primarily monitor for after hours activity in the community mail room (person detection is very helpful here) and vehicle detection on the LPRs for cars passing through the entrance gates. I'd love to be able to filter for person detection and vehicle detection when reviewing footage to save time.

 

[bcc243]

I have an Amcrest 4K NV4216-AI NVR and Amcrest IP8M-T2669EW-AI camera arriving on Dec 8 - 11th from amazon. I will post my thoughts and answer questions after setup.

 

[cd36]

Here is my take, now I wish I had a do-over because I have the 5216. I would have gotten an even better unit. The real question is incoming bandwidth. The 5216 is 320, which means you can view 16 channels at 2mp at 30fps. Seems like a lot. Right? But not really. If you have 8mp cameras, that’s only 4 at once. After that not enough bandwidth to see any more cams. That means the 4216, if you had 8mp cams, 4 of them, you couldn’t see them all at once. Now can they all record at once? Not sure. Don’t think so though. That doesn’t include sub streams either. Watch this for a better understanding

This doesn't seem quite right. There are 3 important specs for determining what cameras your NVR can support. The amount of cameras it can support (often 8 or 16), the incoming bandwidth, and the decoding capability.

The amount of cameras it can support is an easy one. If the NVR only supports 8 cameras, thats it, even if you have more bandwidth available, you can't have anymore than the hard limit of cameras it can support.

Incoming bandwidth is a measurement for recording to the hard drive. This is not about being able to view them on the NVR, this is purely about being able to record them. All the Encoding is done on the camera itself in IP Cameras, so that means when the stream hits the NVR there is no Encoding that needs to happen, it can just record it directly to the HDD of the NVR and be done. That is why all Encoding settings are saved on the camera itself. So if you have a NVR with 80Mb/s Incoming Bandwidth, with an 8 channel NVR, you can have each camera streaming at a max of 80/8=10Mb/s. This doesn't tell you AT ALL if your NVR is able to display all 8 of those cameras, just if it can record the already Encoded stream to the HDD.

Now if you are concerned about being able to view all 8 cameras on the NVR at the same time, you need to look at Decoding capability. This isn't measured in a bitrate, but more often in amount of cameras at a certain resolution at a certain frame rate. The reason why there is a different spec for how many cameras you can view, is because like I said before, the Stream from the Cameras comes to the NVR already Encoded (264/265), so while it can record it direct to the hard drive, if you want to view them something has to actually Decode that stream back into something viewable. That can be pretty CPU intensive, so NVR makers give you a rating that their NVR can support say 2ch @ 8MP 30FPS or 4ch @ 4MP, 30FPS or 8ch @ 2MP, 30FPS. So as you can see as the resolution goes down you can view more cameras at the same time.

So you can see how you can end up in situations where you could record all the cameras, but not be able to actually view all of them. So in your example, with 320Mb/s incoming bandwidth, you can have 16 cameras recording at 20Mb/s, regardless of what resolution the cameras are at, because all it cares about is your bitrate settings for recording.

Now with higher resolution cameras you typically want higher bitrates so that you don't end up with compression issues in your stream. So while higher resolution tends to have higher bitrates that doesn't have to be the case.

 

[alastairstevenson]

A picky comment - maybe worth for playback differentiating between using the VGA/HDMI interface, where the NVR does all the work, or the Web GUI, where the PC plugin contributes.

 

[camelian]

That's an amazing explanation..thank you for making it so clear!

For my use case, i just need to make sure the incoming bandwidth is sufficient I suppose.