How do I get the best possible live video feed?

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evilblackdog

Young grasshopper
Jun 7, 2017
41
4
I'm setting up a 10 camera system with the Dahua Ultra 2MP Starlights. I want to have the best possible live feed through an on site 4K tv.

I've read hints on this site about issues that can arise that can affect this but not enough info for me to be comfortable not messing it up. Any help is appreciated.
 
Do you need to know how to watch the 10 cameras at the same time in the highest quality?
 
Are you asking about bandwidth concerns or how to display them?

If trying to display, are you using an hardware NVR or software (such as Blue Iris, Milestone, etc)?

Either option allows you to dictate display layout, so you can have all 10 up at once and lay them out as you wish.
 
CYANiDE said:
You will not get anything better than 1080P live view. What are you asking?
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I mentioned that it was a 4k tv because I recall reading a comment about needing a graphics card if you were running BI on a PC and sending feed to a 4k monitor.
 
davw said:
Do you need to know how to watch the 10 cameras at the same time in the highest quality?
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I'm not sure what options I have but I want them displayed on a 62" tv so as many as can be displayed while still having a decent portion of the tv (4 I'm thinking)
at top quality.
 
HereBull said:
Are you asking about bandwidth concerns or how to display them?

If trying to display, are you using an hardware NVR or software (such as Blue Iris, Milestone, etc)?

Either option allows you to dictate display layout, so you can have all 10 up at once and lay them out as you wish.
Click to expand...
The bandwidth is my main concern. I wanted to go NVR so there was hopefully less to dink around with but if I need to go the pc/bi route for the best quality I'm fine with that as well.
 
In terms of network bandwidth you should be fine, 10 2MP cameras even at highest quality barely saturated a modern gig ethernet line.

When I look at NVR's the biggest thing I concern myself over are:
What megapixel level does the NVR support? - IE some of the more inexpensive Hikvision's only do 2MP versus 3, etc.
Max throughput? - NVR's generally have a max bandwidth number associated with them for incoming/outgoing bandwidth. Usually you don't over-run this but it can happen.

Most of the Hikvision NVR's I've worked with have HDMI outputs so they'd be good to drive a TV, although I think most of your smaller ones will only output at 1080P and not 4k. 4k might be easier/cheaper to obtain via a Blue Iris setup but I've got little experience w/ Blue Iris and will let others answer in that regard.
 
The biggest problem I see, even if the NVR supports 4K - your source is the 2mp ultra Starlight whose maximum is 1080p (1920 x 1080). You will be in the position up upsizing 1920x1080 to at least 4000x? (didn't do ratio math). The problem with upsizing is that it simply enlarges the original and make imperfections stand out, actually introduction blur that, while there, looked sharp at the 1080p level. Don't get me wrong, the 2MP Starlights with the 1/2.8 and Ultra's 1/1.9 sensors are EXCELLENT cameras which phenomenal night vision, there is the problem of upsizing where can't escape the laws of physics. Unfortunately, the 3MP and 4MP 2K cameras and the 8MP 4K cameras drop down to the smaller 1/3 sensor which has its own issues. If they spread the 4MP or 8MP on the larger 1/2.8 or 1/1.9 sensor, they would be killers...but I don't think Sony has developed anything like that and probably won't as the 1/2.8 sensor is typically used in the entry level point-n-shoot still cameras, but that is a dying market typically replaced with phones which use around a 1/3.6 sensor size.
 
It is unfortunate having 10 cameras, because 9 is what fits perfectly. Add a 10th camera and suddenly you have a lot of black space.

Anyway, a lot of modern NVRs can output 4K resolution so I don't think that will be a problem (just make sure the NVR you get says it can do that in the specs). 4K TVs are 3840x2160 resolution. That will fit four 1920x1080 streams or nine streams at 1280x720, assuming no space is wasted on a user interface. Add more cameras and the size of each stream goes down of course, to make room. So it is no problem only having 2MP cameras. I'm not sure though, NVRs might display sub streams in the grid view, and you'd need to make sure the sub streams were 1280x720 resolution at least, or else you might not be able to fully utilize the 4K display.

Blue Iris is really inefficient at drawing video on the screen. It takes a LOT of CPU especially for high resolutions. I couldn't hardly do it with my 4K TV. However when I added an Nvidia graphics card, that reduced the CPU usage of drawing on the screen. Don't get me wrong, it is still really CPU-intensive and I have to limit the FPS to like 6 FPS but without the graphics card I would have had to limit it to 3 or 4 FPS.
 
bp2008 said:
It is unfortunate having 10 cameras, because 9 is what fits perfectly. Add a 10th camera and suddenly you have a lot of black space.

Anyway, a lot of modern NVRs can output 4K resolution so I don't think that will be a problem (just make sure the NVR you get says it can do that in the specs). 4K TVs are 3840x2160 resolution. That will fit four 1920x1080 streams or nine streams at 1280x720, assuming no space is wasted on a user interface. Add more cameras and the size of each stream goes down of course, to make room. So it is no problem only having 2MP cameras. I'm not sure though, NVRs might display sub streams in the grid view, and you'd need to make sure the sub streams were 1280x720 resolution at least, or else you might not be able to fully utilize the 4K display.

Blue Iris is really inefficient at drawing video on the screen. It takes a LOT of CPU especially for high resolutions. I couldn't hardly do it with my 4K TV. However when I added an Nvidia graphics card, that reduced the CPU usage of drawing on the screen. Don't get me wrong, it is still really CPU-intensive and I have to limit the FPS to like 6 FPS but without the graphics card I would have had to limit it to 3 or 4 FPS.
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Interesting... What fps could I expect to get through an NVR?
 
I'm not sure since I've never used an NVR besides Blue Iris, but it is probably unrestricted (whatever your camera is capable of providing, I bet it can display).
 
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