Newbie to the forum and CCTV

[themobilelocksmith]

Hi all, we purchased a house 6 months ago here in the UK and thought CCTV would be a great investment.
I purchased a Hikvision DS-7604NI-K-4P NVR (not the best for these cameras I’ve since found out) and 3 Hik DS-2CD2385G1 8MP Darkfighter IP cameras. I installed them at the start of February and apart from a few small repositioning issues they’ve worked fantastically. I thought they were great at night and we were very happy, especially when we are away and can check things are ok back home with the Hik-Connect app.
Now everything was great up until approx a week ago when suddenly one of the cameras stopped working properly. Using the Hik-Connect app I could view it on the HD setting but the lower resolution “basic” setting just would not work. I understand this is the substream. So I checked the NVR settings and on that camera and when I selected sub stream the message “this camera does not support this function” kept popping up! It baffled me for a bit and a few days later when I had more time I rebooted the NVR hoping that would sort the problem. Back at work later day that day I tried to view the cameras and I noticed that all 3 now were suffering from the same problem....not able to view them using the basic setting on the app. I have such poor phone signal I just have no hope of viewing them on HD so it’s quite important to me.
Later that night I check the setting s on the NVR and it’s now saying on all 3 cameras that the camera does not support this function!
I’ve tried rebooting the system, have upgraded the firmware yesterday to all components, have even restored everything to factory default and still nothing helps! I’m assuming a factory default restore resets everything to ‘out of the box’ new? I also tried the IVMS4500 app and it’s the same on there.
I contacted the vendors technical department but the best advice they could give me was ‘it shouldn’t do that’ and to reboot the system. To be honest they were pretty poor help.

I’m baffled because everything was working perfectly and it happened suddenly. Not like anyone was fiddling with them...it was just a sudden occurrence.

I’m not an expert by anyone’s standards but managed to set these up so I understand a little, but this has me stumped.

Can anyone shed any light as to why this might be happening?

Thanks In advance to anyone who has any ideas and stay safe to all.

Fergus

 

[catcamstar]

Hello,
this is indeed strange and unexpected behavior (also from your support point of view). So let's try to do better. Rebooting and factory reset are already good options. But from my experience: if you do a "software" factory reset, somethings things remain crippled. I don't know about your hikvisions (I only do Dahua): do they have a hard-reset button? With Dahua: you connect your camera to power/POE, and you hold down that button inside the camera for +-20-30 seconds. It will go into a full reboot cycle and all your settings are gone gone. Do not try to restore an "old" configuration file (as you might run into the same issue again), but you'll build up your settings like they were. Check after each "main" change if the streams (including substream) are still healthy. If all works again smoothly, then save your configuration and watch your log files. If possible: do not use P2P/cloud services/port forward to "expose" your cameras to the internet. Leverage VPN to get into your LAN (this already encrypts but also compresses your traffic, massive thumbs up if you are on a tight (mobile) quota).
Hope this helps!
CC

 

[themobilelocksmith]

Hi, thanks for your reply. I think these cameras do have a reset button but I was rather hoping I'd be able to avoid getting the ladder out again, especially as it seemingly could happen again with no explanation. Support was pretty terrible offering me nothing more than a reboot should cure it....but it doesn't so they were all out of ideas
Another strange one is almost every time I reboot the system the cameras start up with random settings, different frame rates and bit rates...
Thanks for your help though

 

[catcamstar]

Hi, thanks for your reply. I think these cameras do have a reset button but I was rather hoping I'd be able to avoid getting the ladder out again, especially as it seemingly could happen again with no explanation. Support was pretty terrible offering me nothing more than a reboot should cure it....but it doesn't so they were all out of ideas
Another strange one is almost every time I reboot the system the cameras start up with random settings, different frame rates and bit rates...
Thanks for your help though

Are those grey market cams? Did you happen to have them connected to the internet? Is there a possibility they got hacked?

 

[themobilelocksmith]

No, they are genuine. I've got excellent passwords so I doubt it although the thought crossed my mind very briefly.
I think something maybe is faulty but I'm not knowledgeable enough to know what or why unfortunately. The sudden change in the settings and operation made me think that. I suspect the NVR because the odds of 3 cameras failing the same way in days is high methinks.
I do know this NVR struggles with these cams from time to time as it's near the limit on processing power if all 3 are recording. But all was ok until this issue suddenly appeared.

 

[alastairstevenson]

Suggestion to try :
Connect the PC to an unused NVR PoE port and use SADP to see the cameras and their IP addresses.
These are likely to be in the range 192.168.254.x
Change the PC IP address to be in the same range - for example 192.168.254.100
Use IE11 to connect to the camera IP address.

Check how Live View works, for both main stream and substream, using the swizzler with the circled 1 or 2 at the bottom left of the window.
1=Main stream, 2=Substream

Go to Configuration | Video / Audio and check the settings for Main Stream and Sub Stream
Check the settings for Video Encoding, in particular if Substream is set to MJPEG
And check if h.265+ is set for Main Stream.

 

[themobilelocksmith]

Suggestion to try :
Connect the PC to an unused NVR PoE port and use SADP to see the cameras and their IP addresses.
These are likely to be in the range 192.168.254.x
Change the PC IP address to be in the same range - for example 192.168.254.100
Use IE11 to connect to the camera IP address.

Check how Live View works, for both main stream and substream, using the swizzler with the circled 1 or 2 at the bottom left of the window.
1=Main stream, 2=Substream

Go to Configuration | Video / Audio and check the settings for Main Stream and Sub Stream
Check the settings for Video Encoding, in particular if Substream is set to MJPEG
And check if h.265+ is set for Main Stream.

I'll try that thank you. The only thing is the substream setting is greyed out so can't check it or make changes.
Thanks though. Will make up a lead this evening to connect it

 

[alastairstevenson]

The only thing is the substream setting is greyed out so can't check it or make changes.

Greyed out in what? Presumably not the camera web GUI.

 

[themobilelocksmith]

Right I've connected to all 3 cameras as you suggested and I can see both main and sub streams on each. When I connect to the NVR via my browser, or direct with a monitor on the NVR the sub stream is not viewable and it tries to load and then message says 'live view failed'. I cannot change the sub stream setting via the NVR as it states 'camera does not support this function'. On the NVR monitor I can find no substream setting....I can find main stream (and adjust setting if I wished) but no substream....which is strange because I seem to remember when I set these up there was a drop down option for that....but maybe my memory is playing tricks.
But I think I've determined it's an NVR issue and not a camera issue anyway...I think

 

[alastairstevenson]

Right I've connected to all 3 cameras as you suggested and I can see both main and sub streams on each.

And the substream is set to what codec?
h.264 or MJPEG?

Example camera web GUI configuration (Using the Stream Type dropdown at the top) :

 

[themobilelocksmith]

I set it to MJPEG, but it doesn't seem to matter what it's set to. Is MJPEG correct?

 

[alastairstevenson]

Is MJPEG correct?

No, the NVR won't like that.
Use h.264

 

[themobilelocksmith]

Ok. I'll change it to 264, but when I did it earlier I tried the 3 different settings and it made no difference. I'll try it though.
I really appreciate the help you guys are giving me as well. I'm stuck without it so thank you

 

[themobilelocksmith]

So a couple of days ago I changed it back to H264. Still not working despite numerous reboots. Bank holiday weekend came and went and I thought I’d give the suppliers another call. Just before I did that I checked the system again and all of a sudden it’s working fine again!!! Main stream and substream working perfectly! Can’t understand this. Been about two weeks now and nothing and then all of sudden working fine again.
Not much I can say really other than to thank those who’ve helped me no end, especially teaching me how to log in to the cameras to check things.
Brilliant guys. Thank you.