This Dahua DVR can't record all channels at the same time

N

neukyhm

n3wb
Jan 20, 2020
16
0
Spain
Hi there everyone, I hope you can help me with this problem I have. The story: I have had installed some cameras in my house. The system consists of 8 cameras, all of them AHD 1080p coaxial.

I bought a Dahua XVR7116HE-4KL-X and I noticed something strange the day I turned it on, I was unable to playback using smartpss, the webpage of the recorder or even on the recorder itself. I had no idea what the problem was. I configured the 8 cameras to record on movement (it was recording all cameras all the time). The problem self solved, smartpss worked fine, as well as the webpage and the recorder itself.

Yesterday it started to rain and the recorder is back to recording all cameras all the time due to the movement detection being triggered, and the problem is back. I'm unable to playback on smartpss, I get nothing but lots of "NETSDK returns error". Using a monitor connected to the DVR I see that it gets extremely laggy.

Captura.PNG

Sometimes it stops raining and the recorder stops recording, then I can playback and inspect what the DVR saved when all cameras were recording. The video misses frames (for example it jumps from second 12 to second 17 instantly) and sometimes it goes gray.

It seems to me that the DVR has serious trouble encoding and recording all cameras at the same time, if this is the problem then I will be extremely dissapointed with this device, in fact I would feel scammed, because I bought a DVR that claimed to be able to record 16x 1080p cameras @25fps and then this happens.

This is my setting for the codec in case you wish to know, I already tried to switch to h264 but it didn't help.

Captura2.PNG
 
weigle2 said:
One of the most obvious problems from your settings is 'i frame interval'. Normaly it should be the same as FPS. So, if FPS is set to 25 which is rather high, then I-Frame should also be 25. I would go back to H.264(+) for compression to see if that makes any difference.
Click to expand...
The manual on page 57 says it is the time between reference frames, and it's set to 1s, I'm not sure that's the problem.

Edit: I can only choose between 1s and 2s in that menu.
 
Last edited:
Turn off h.265 That recorder should do 8 1080p cameras just fine at max bitrate and FPS. 1 sec is correct for iframe

How are you viewing your NVR? what does your network look like?
 
bigredfish said:
Turn off h.265 That recorder should do 8 1080p cameras just fine at max bitrate and FPS. 1 sec is correct for iframe

How are you viewing your NVR? what does your network look like?
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I already tried to switch to h264, but I will retry.

With network, you mean my internet connection? It's gigabit, but anyway the network is not the problem since I can't even playback on the device itself, using a monitor and a mouse. It gets very laggy and slow when all cameras are recording.
 
Then must be a problem with the XVR. Have you checked the hard drive ? As mentioned that XVR should have no problem with 8 1080p cameras. What brand are the cameras?
 
I didn't notice this kind of problems with XVR's, using some for my customers... What kind of harddisk you have installed?
 
forinsec said:
I didn't notice this kind of problems with XVR's, using some for my customers... What kind of harddisk you have installed?
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I'm afraid I don't know, I didn't install it. However do you think it could be the harddisk? I mean, this xvr is supposed to work with 16 coaxial 1080p@25 cameras, I don't know the required HDD bandwidth for that, but I'm not using 16, only 8 and two of them are inside the house and almost never recording so, do you think the HDD can't record six 1080p cameras compressed with h265? I don't think the problem here is the HDD.

Note what I said, the device gets laggy. As far as I know, the OS of the xvr lives in a dedicated memory (right?) so if it gets laggy then it's not due to a high load on the harddisk, but rather too much CPU.
 
I'm just trying to help ;) So when the systems gets only laggy if it's recording, there must be something with the components included...

One thing is the HDD, the other could be the motion detection... You could try to switch on permanent recording and disable the MD....

I had the netsdk error with an NVR device, not sure what led to the solution back then anymore... What software and firmware versions are you using?
 
forinsec said:
I'm just trying to help ;) So when the systems gets only laggy if it's recording, there must be something with the components included...

One thing is the HDD, the other could be the motion detection... You could try to switch on permanent recording and disable the MD....

I had the netsdk error with an NVR device, not sure what led to the solution back then anymore... What software and firmware versions are you using?
Click to expand...
Thank you for the help :)

I'm using the last version of smartpss I downloaded from dahuawiki.com last week. The firmware is version 4.000.0000002.11, built on last august. I will try to disable MD, but if that is the problem, then why does the xvr have so many other functions like face detection if it can't motion detect and at the same time record all cameras?

Edit: remember that I have seen what the xvr records, once it stops raining and I can playback. I download the file and play with VLC, it misses frames and sometimes goes gray.
 
Honestly, the XVR7116 is made for up to 32 cameras with up to 8MP and 128MBps incoming bandwith, so I hardly believe it struggles in your configuration with about 16MBit and 8 FHD cameras.... It's running at 10-20% of it's total power, which is why I pointed to the HDD... If this one is to slow and it need's to write the files, it can't read the recorded stream which could explain it's behavior...

When you go on the info tab and on HDD info, you can check the SMART status, where you can see the HDD model:

1579631100141.png

IMHO:
The smart or Ai functions are not processed on the XVR itself, these functions always require the camera with these functions integrated.... so I'm back to my point that the HDD in your XVR is to slow....
 
Mine is about half a year old and looks like this:

1579633375519.png

I cannot promise that with a new HDD it is going to be good, but yours is a desktop drive, has lots of read and seek errors and a strange value for the hour count...

But chances are good and i would give it a try (myself I'm always using the WD purple drives, happy so far :) )
 
I'm doing a HDD detect now (that function the xvr has to detect bad sectors). It started at 3Mb/s. I disabled all recordings and it's now 185Mb/s.
 
"Fixing" a wonky drive with bad sector detection is wasting your time. That drive needs to be chucked.
Don't dink around with saving money on the hard drive. Recordings has to be reliable. The drives are a tiny fraction of a surveillance system cost.

Like everyone else says, I'd put in a WD Purple for an NVR. On a BlueIris PC or SecuritySpy Mac (both of which can't use the Purple's surveillance stream commands) I would use WD Reds.
 
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guykuo said:
"Fixing" a wonky drive with bad sector detection is wasting your time. That drive needs to be chucked.
Don't dink around with saving money on the hard drive. Recordings has to be reliable. The drives are a tiny fraction of a surveillance system cost.

Like everyone else says, I'd put in a WD Purple for an NVR. On a BlueIris PC or SecuritySpy Mac (both of which can't use the Purple's surveillance stream commands) I would use WD Reds.
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The purpose of doing this is not fixing bad sectors, but to see if the xvr says something is wrong with the drive.

Also I didn't know there were series of HDD designed for recorders, I thought any good drive would work.
 
neukyhm said:
The purpose of doing this is not fixing bad sectors, but to see if the xvr says something is wrong with the drive.

Also I didn't know there were series of HDD designed for recorders, I thought any good drive would work.
Click to expand...
It's already shown you something is wrong in the S.M.A.R.T data.
If you just purchased this machine, you need to take up the problem with the seller.
Otherwise, Purchase a Western Digital Purple Surveillance drive.
 
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