Small Diskless Servers

This article describes the concept and need for small diskless servers. This concept is quite applicable to the building of a VMS with enterprise storage or the infrastructure of a PSIM.

 

Megapixel Evidence

Most are familiar with the process of exporting captured video archive as an AVI file using the facilities built into DynaView. This process becomes a bit more challanging when dealing with megapixel archives. Often the area on interest is only a small part of the entire image. Converting a large number of complete megapixel or multi–megapixel images can result in unmanageably large AVI files.

A better process can often be used as follows:

1. Export the desired time interval from DynaView vPlay as a series of JPGs
2. Perform a batch crop operation using a program like XnView to select the desired area
3. Convert this cropped sequence to an AVI file using DynaView vMovie

Some further notes:

Try to use a standard crop size like 320 x 240 (CIF) or 640 x 480 (4CIF) to capture the area of interest.

It is possible to “follow the action” by cropping various sections of the exported JPG sequence with the same crop window size postioned differently.  This will appear as a jump cut in the final movie.

When converting a small crop area to AVI, try using vMovie to up-sample by 2X (for example, using 640 x 480 as the output size for 320 x 240 cropped JPG’s) during the conversion as this will often produce better results than expanding on playback.

Use the (free) DIVX codec from within vMovie to create smaller high-quality AVI files. DIVX is also an extremely fast compressor in comparison with any standard Windows codecs.

Always keep the original  video archive aside as part of the chain of evidence and bear in mind that the basic validation will be human affidavits confirming the continuity of that chain of evidence. Complete the entire process in one session and do not leave a window of time where someone else could make changes. Burn the results including the original archive on a DVD and keep it in a safe, with a lawyer, or on your person.

XP Service Pack 3 blocks .NET security patches

Many IP network solutions run on Windows XP and some of those use Dot Net. This article is worth review

http://windowssecrets.com/2008/12/04/03-XP-Service-Pack-3-blocks-.NET-security-patches

DynaView does not use Dot Net and DynaView SOC does not use XP Pro, so we neatly avoid this problematic issue.

Great System Demonstration

Some testing today has confirmed that it is possible to run a basic version of DynaView direct from an installation on a USB Key. The complete installation is well under 100 Megabytes so just about any key will work. Once this installation is made to the key (or copied to the key from any other running machine’s /nvr folder) it can be used by inserting it into any windows XP or better machine. Then, navigate to vMaster.exe and double click to start. Any module configurations and cameras licensing that were present will be lost but the system will work in 4-camera demo mode.

You will need to “re-configure” including resetting all module IP addresses which takes a minute or so. But, if your source for the install was a running machine on the same network, even the cameras data will be intact and valid except for the machine names and configurations of vCapture and other modules.

It is also possible to set up file-based demo cameras on such a USB key or even run VGen for live images.

Do bear in mind that some of the special facilites like CamPatrol and Scheduler depend on installation of windows services and may not run.

This is by far the quickest and easiest way to do a live demo short of bringing in a working machine.

RAID 5 May Be Doomed in 2009

A story appearing online is forecasting the doom of RAID 5 in 2009. Apparently with storage capacities of modern SATA hard drives now reaching 2-terabytes in size, the odds of a read error during a RAID 5 disk reconstruction is becoming unavoidable.

Help From Afar

The ability to administer a network video system from a remote location is a great time and cost saver. Windows remote desktop is commonly used for this purpose but does not work well with IP video environments. There are several available solutions that do work and an open source remote control package we highly recommend is UltraVNC.

UltraVNC consists of a server part installed on the machine(s) you wish to control remotely and a client part installed on your local machine. The machine(s) running UltraVNC server must be reachable by an IP address or Domain. Note that this IP address or domain could be temporary as long as it does not change during the remote control session. Complete installation instructions are provided for UltraVNC.

By default UltraVNC requires ports 5800 and 5900 to be open in your firewall. These ports may be changed if need be. You should not expect video viewed through UltraVNC to be of good quality – this package is meant for control and admnistration and will serve the purpose very well.