Am I asking too much of my new CCTV kit?

[MoggyMan]

Hi

Please be gentle - this is my first post here and I'm not sure I'm in the correct place or if any of the questions that come out of my keyboard are dumb.

I've just installed a 4 channel kit (although I'm only using 2 cameras) I got from Amazon, which seemed well reviewed. The kit is made by some outfit called Yeskamo which is obviously Chinese and not something I'd heard of before. I have a couple of issues and I'm just curious if it would be possible to overcome them, if they are pretty standard problems with kits of this type/spec and what they are caused by.

The 'main' camera which watches over my car and the front of the house was using wireless and getting a Good reception (on their scale of Poor/OK/Good/Excellent) but I have now cabled it to a 1000 Mbps powerline adaptor - with the other adaptor being right next to my router. TP-Link's config utility shows a pretty steady link of around 700 Mbps. The NVR is within feet of the router and has a 2Tb disk in it. The Windows 7 software they recommend for driving the NVR is eSeeCloud but I can login directly to the NVR using IE and its IP address. I've been in touch with their Support and am running the latest versions of Windows client and NVR firmware, allegedly.

Issue #1 - In live feed and in captured video, some of the motion looks like it's from an old silent movie in that it jerks or stutters. I'll see a car or a person enter the shot and within a second or so they have advanced 10 paces or a car zips across the screen and I just see the backside of it leaving the shot. I've tried to find consistency between day/night viewing etc but I can't pin it down to a particular set of circumstances. I'm wondering if it's just down to cheapo cameras?

Issue #2 - Both the IE and eSeeCloud access methods allow me to download captured video to my PC, in theory. The former downloads FLV files and the latter MP4. The downloads from eSeeCloud in particular are iffy to say the least. It either hangs actually downloading them to the PC, claims to download a video successfully but the MP4 file is all but empty or it downloads an MP4 which is unrecognised by any Windows player known to man. I've tried using umpteen utilities to 'fix' whatever is wrong with these damned things but without success. I'm still testing but at the time of writing I don't know if it's dodgy video feed from the camera, bugs in the NVR itself, bugs in eSeeCloud or the whole thing is simply duff - in any event it ain't working for the purpose intended!! If the Police ask me for a copy of some CCTV footage, as they have done in the past, this kit would be near-useless if it won't pop out a video file that can be played. This doesn't happen to every video capture though, which I find odd.

So is this a case of "Well if you will buy kits from Amazon....." or can someone offer any guidance on settings/config/troubleshooting or if I ought to push for a refund?

Thank you for sticking with me

 

[MoggyMan]

 

[Phil]

I've never heard of the brand.

Issue 1:
Obviously the performance should be better.
Can you access any adjustments to improve it e.g. frames per second, bandwidth, etc.

Issue 2:
Try using your Internet Explorer browser - run IE in admin mode, right click on it to initiate admin mode
(sometimes admin is needed to create new files/folders etc.)

 

[MoggyMan]

Thanks Phil. I'll take another look for adjustments but I don't recall any. The best way to access the settings is to switch my PC's monitor feed to the output of the NVR and do the tweaking there rather than from the iffy Windows client. I seem to remember that some of the settings couldn't be altered, like once the NVR had detected the camera it then applied defaults that you can't mess with. I will double check though.

As for the downloading issue, it's the eSeeCloud Windows client which appears to be bug-ridden. I have more success with IE even in non-Admin mode. One thought popped in to my head. If I login directly to the NVR using IE and the captures are shown as FLV files, I wonder if the pesky Windows client takes those same files and does a conversion to MP4 on them before or during its download of them? I test software now and again in my job and that client is definitely flaky. Every time I mention it to Support, "Amanda" (the contact in China) changes the subject and starts telling me how to backup the NVR files to USB when connected directly - rather than getting at them via Windows. That makes me a bit suspicious.

 

[johnny warfarin]

Yep .. same problem. The brand I got is OOSSXX. It stores its files as .avi. Eseecloud and my IE interface download them as .mp4s, (do they convert them, or just do a crappy file transfer?) and they play back flaky, even in VLC. For law enforcement purposes I suppose I can get by with OOSSXX' extremely clumsy method of pulling the .avi directly to a usb but I would sure like to be able to get them off remotely as my NVR is buried and hidden and an intentional pain to get to. I tried 'Handbrake' to spruce these files up and I thot for a while that was working but now that doesn't appear to be the case. These camera companies are coming out of the woodwork these days and are all using the same crappy free chinese software, including ip pro. The thing that amazes me is only you and I seem to be aware of the issue. No reviews or questions from the general market consumers even pick up on this. As for the jumpy video I get this as well when I operate thru the router, not so much directly connected to the NVR.

 

[MoggyMan]

Since I last posted I have tried more viewers and file fixers but nothing has worked to a point where you could give it to the Police if they asked for it. I keep pressing them for software updates but I think they are fed up with me now. The only method I've used which results in anything half-playable is to transfer files to a USB stick via the NVR's own interface and ignore Windows completely. It's a shame that they ignore the functionality of their software and the standard of their support. Duff Windows NVR software doesn't seem confined to this sort of home system either. The system I manage at work cost the firm much more and the Windows front end is bloody awful - what I call 'user-aggressive' rather than user friendly!

 

[Des]

Yes Im in too.

I cannot download footage in windows environment. I connect to NVR via IP address on IE, Download never works for footage. Only when I go onto NVR box direct and use backup facility & USB Key can I get admittedly quite decent footage.

I think Phil would say you get what you pay for!

I like being a bottom dweller getting half decent results out of £30 IP Cams. However in due course I would like to get a decent NVR , where motion detection works during the action not just after, I can download footage on PC, and ANPR! I cant even imagine how that would work.

I use a ZXTECH 9 Channel NVR

 

[Stlsecurity]

These really are very poor quality cameras, you should expect the night vision LED's to fail within the first 6 months. Professionally installed CCTV is cheaper than you think. Try STL Security They have some great Blogs and offer Fixed Price Residential CCTV Installations

 

[johnny warfarin]

One of my cameras from OOSSXX has failed its night vision already in its first month. I suspect I will be using all of the cameras as dummy cameras within a few months.