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Bypass NVR to access Hikvision camera for RTSP feeds?

maxfury

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Hi all,

I bought an open box DS-7604NI-K1 / 4P(B) NVR and a new DS-2CD2387G2-LSU/SL camera to get me started. I've been tinkering for about a month now and constantly Googling answers, I certainly have a new found respect for CCTV installers as these systems can be unbelievably confusing at times!

At some point in the future I want to ditch the NVR and store footage on my server at home.

I notice that my camera has a third substream option that isn't possible to access, presumably because the NVR is too old or cheap. But I want to try and get the RTSP feed for this stream as the 2nd substream is too low res for my needs.

Currently I'm able to access my camera after enabling the "virtual host" option, so seemingly I'm accessing the camera via the NVR. What I want to do is access the camera directly. Is that possible? And is it possible to get that third substream? If it's not possible with the NVR still being in the system then how would I go about accessing it when I do remove the NVR?

Cheers,

Max
 
It'd probably be better to run CCTV software on your server.
For example Blue Iris (or ZoneMinder, if Linux).
You can then do away with the NVR.

Add the camera to your LAN.
Configure the CCTV software to the camera's IP address.
Record on your server.

By using software you will have a much better experience whenever you need to review / extract video than if you simply send files into folders on the server.
 
Can be done. You need a router or switch on your local network where you can set up a static route.

The static route directs your local subnet to the Nvr subnet where the cams are located.

I’m no network wiz but I managed to set it up on my ASUS router.

I can access the RSTP streams direct from the cams behind the NVR.

As an example my local network is 192.168.0.x And the cams are on the 192.168.100.x subnet behind the NVR. The NVR local network port is on 192.168.0.100.

Set up a static route that looks like 192.168.100.0 / 255.255.255.0 -> 192.168.0.100

The specifics will depend on your device.
 
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Can be done. You need a router or switch on your local network where you can set up a static route.

The static route directs your local subnet to the Nvr subnet where the cams are located.

I’m no network wiz but I managed to set it up on my ASUS router.

I can access the RSTP streams direct from the cams behind the NVR.

As an example my local network is 192.168.0.x And the cams are on the 192.168.100.x subnet behind the NVR. The NVR local network port is on 192.168.0.100.

Set up a static route that looks like 192.168.100.0 / 255.255.255.0 -> 192.168.0.100

The specifics will depend on your device.

Thank you for the help, really appreciate it. I think I'm close but I must be missing something as I can't access the RTSP streams via the direct IP address yet.

My NVR IP is 192.168.178.55
The camera IP is 192.168.254.6
Subnet Mask is 255.255.255.0


On my router I've created a new Static IPv4 Route with the following settings:
IPV4 Network - 192.168.254.0
Subnet Mask - 255.255.255.0
Gateway - 192.168.178.55

I can now access the camera settings via http://192.168.254.6 - so something must have worked.

but - the RTSP streams don't work when using this -
rtsp://admin:PASSWORD@192.168.254.6:554/Streaming/Channels/101/

What am I missing?

Thanks again
 
It'd probably be better to run CCTV software on your server.
For example Blue Iris (or ZoneMinder, if Linux).
You can then do away with the NVR.

Add the camera to your LAN.
Configure the CCTV software to the camera's IP address.
Record on your server.

By using software you will have a much better experience whenever you need to review / extract video than if you simply send files into folders on the server.

Cheers also for the reply Phil, I will probably come back to this when I ditch the NVR but I'm planning to use www.frigate.video to record and detect people. But I need to be able to feed in the RTSP address of the camera, perhaps it will be obvious when I come round to doing this but right now I can't see how I will get that information.

As a side note - can you recommend a PoE Switch for when I get round to this? And would it need to be managed or unmanaged in this case?
 
Thank you for the help, really appreciate it. I think I'm close but I must be missing something as I can't access the RTSP streams via the direct IP address yet.

My NVR IP is 192.168.178.55
The camera IP is 192.168.254.6
Subnet Mask is 255.255.255.0


On my router I've created a new Static IPv4 Route with the following settings:
IPV4 Network - 192.168.254.0
Subnet Mask - 255.255.255.0
Gateway - 192.168.178.55

I can now access the camera settings via http://192.168.254.6 - so something must have worked.

but - the RTSP streams don't work when using this -
rtsp://admin:PASSWORD@192.168.254.6:554/Streaming/Channels/101/

What am I missing?

Thanks again

Assuming your router is not the cause of the issue. The next thing is to check the default gateway on the NVR and camera.

In my case the NVR internal network card address is 192.168.100.100 / 255.255.255.0

the NVR external network port is 192.168.0.100 / 255.255.255.0 with Gateway 192.168.0.1

The camera needs the gateway address to be 192.168.100.100 which it should be by default. Also set the DNS address to your local network router for good measure or it defaults to Google DNS on 8.8.8.8.

With the third stream enabled (Camera VCA in Monitoring Mode) you should be good to go.

If that doesn't work you might need to post some screen shots of your router, NVR and camera network settings.

EDIT:

I just tried with a new camera connected to my NVR.

I couldn't access the RTSP stream, even though I can access the web interfce, until I manually set the camera default gateway to the internal IP address of the NVR.

By default, camera gateway address is blank when adding a camera automatically.

The only way to over-ride the gateway address is to use the "Manual" adding method in the camera management page of the NVR.

I just finished testing and was able to pull the third stream direct from the camera behind the NVR.
 
Last edited:
Assuming your router is not the cause of the issue. The next thing is to check the default gateway on the NVR and camera.

In my case the NVR internal network card address is 192.168.100.100 / 255.255.255.0

the NVR external network port is 192.168.0.100 / 255.255.255.0 with Gateway 192.168.0.1

The camera needs the gateway address to be 192.168.100.100 which it should be by default. Also set the DNS address to your local network router for good measure or it defaults to Google DNS on 8.8.8.8.

With the third stream enabled (Camera VCA in Monitoring Mode) you should be good to go.

If that doesn't work you might need to post some screen shots of your router, NVR and camera network settings.

EDIT:

I just tried with a new camera connected to my NVR.

I couldn't access the RTSP stream, even though I can access the web interfce, until I manually set the camera default gateway to the internal IP address of the NVR.

By default, camera gateway address is blank when adding a camera automatically.

The only way to over-ride the gateway address is to use the "Manual" adding method in the camera management page of the NVR.

I just finished testing and was able to pull the third stream direct from the camera behind the NVR.


Morning!

Thanks for the edit, I'd done some Googling yesterday and tried to change the gateway address only to find it reset to blank after rebooting the camera, changing to "Manual" seems to have solved it.

I found my internal NVR address was 192.168.254.1 and I only found that by randomly typing it in to the address bar. Following your description I would have expected the internal address to be 192.168.254.55 as my external is 192.168.178.55 - but at this point, who cares!

Long story short - it works!! I would have never figured all that out in a million years, thanks very much for the help.

Now to make a note of all this for whenever I need to set this all up again.
 
Morning!

Thanks for the edit, I'd done some Googling yesterday and tried to change the gateway address only to find it reset to blank after rebooting the camera, changing to "Manual" seems to have solved it.

I found my internal NVR address was 192.168.254.1 and I only found that by randomly typing it in to the address bar. Following your description I would have expected the internal address to be 192.168.254.55 as my external is 192.168.178.55 - but at this point, who cares!

Long story short - it works!! I would have never figured all that out in a million years, thanks very much for the help.

Now to make a note of all this for whenever I need to set this all up again.

Your welcome. Glad I could help. I've learned a lot from various forums and it's always good to give something back.
 
Thank you for the help, really appreciate it. I think I'm close but I must be missing something as I can't access the RTSP streams via the direct IP address yet.

My NVR IP is 192.168.178.55
The camera IP is 192.168.254.6
Subnet Mask is 255.255.255.0


On my router I've created a new Static IPv4 Route with the following settings:
IPV4 Network - 192.168.254.0
Subnet Mask - 255.255.255.0
Gateway - 192.168.178.55

I can now access the camera settings via http://192.168.254.6 - so something must have worked.

but - the RTSP streams don't work when using this -
rtsp://admin:PASSWORD@192.168.254.6:554/Streaming/Channels/101/

What am I missing?

Thanks again
What you are missing is the Correct RTSP URL to access the NVR Connected Camera Feed

Try the following and see how you go
rtsp://192.168.178.55:554/Streaming/Channels/101

Effectively you are requesting the Mainstream RTSP Feed from the Camera Connected to Channel 1 of your NVR

Alternatively, you may need to enter your Cameras Username Password, as you have shown above, which should be as follows
rtsp://admin:PASSWORD@192.168.178.55:554/Streaming/Channels/101

lets us know how you go
 
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