I need this forums brain (help)
 

Lets say you wanted to set up a camera and have it run for 48 hours. A security type thing but with better video than cheap security cameras. What setup (camera and storage) would you use. Is it possible to get 48 hours or would 24 be hard enough to achieve. I remember at the city where i once worked we had a VCR that recorded, but the tape only lasted 6 hours (old technology), what length of time could you folks squeeze out of todays technology.

Camera would have to be capable of decent video. unsure about audio at this time, but is audio another storage problem.

What type of configuration would you use.

Thanks
Donny

P.S. Forgot the hard part, it has to be portable enough to be installed at different locations, supplying power however is not an issue, that is already solved.

how about a dv camera with composite outs into a dvr with an 80gb hard drive? or better plugs if possible to a better dvr.

Don,
Do you really need 48 hours of continuous 30 fps footage? Could it be intervalometer footage? For that matter, does it really need to be video?

Can you tell us more about the application?

Thanks Ken, Josh, It is for monitoring and security as a new business. Someone throwing eggs at your house while your gone, neighbor shooting BB's into your windows, tires getting slashed while you sleep? The reason for the video is in my research I have found that the individuals committing the offense sometimes only show themselves for a split second, such as sticking a BB gun out a window 3 inches and then their gone, missing a second or two may miss the action. Throwing eggs at your vehicle at night can from a distance may only be caught by continuous video. And I forgot to mention camera must have night mode, so this almost makes it have to be a jiggly wiggly with night mode. What about tivo or something like that, It can't be 50 lbs but it can be the size of a vcr. The 48 hour mark is the mark for someone to maintenance/review the system.

Josh, how long would an 80 gig HD run with constant video, that is some of the guesses I am having to make. Maybe 200 gig Hd. If one did not stop this recorder would it just record over itself making it maintenance free until the customer decided some event has occurred.

Thanks all.

Hi Don,

Two things you can try...
1) FireStore FS-3 and DR-DV5000 have a new feature called loop record. Loop record will record to available disk drive space until the drive is full. It breaks the recording up into 2GB increments, and once the drive is full, it will start recording over the oldest 2GB segment and so on in a continuous loop. If you are using an 80GB drive, your loop will be 6 hours, if you are using a 300GB drive, your loop is about 23 hours. If no event occurs, you just leave the drive recording. If something does happen, simply stop the recording and you will have the previous XX hours (whatever the capacity of your drive) saved for review. You don't have to use the removable drive in FS-3/DR-DV, you can connect any FireWire drive to the external HDD I/O port.

2) Another option is that all FireStore products have the ability to daisy chain up to four FireWire drives. Fill up one, it starts recording to the next drive. So, it is possible to do some fairly long recordings that way.

Hope that helps,
Matt McEwen

Don,
Have you looked at SmartHome?

They're long-standing specialists in such gizmos.

Ken, that link did have some solutions but not continuous video, it went from 12 hour video to 1 frame per 8 sec x 4 days. They did however have some interesting possibilities in cameras.

I was thinking Tivo still as the firewire solution was ex-pen-sive. As long as tivo can record 40 hours of tv it should record 40 hours of video right ?? Tivo is around 250 bucks by the time I install a larger hard drive to obtain the length of time I need.

Shot in the foot, both Replay TV and Tivo support techs say that their unit will not record without a subscription.

Security Video
 

I don't know how much you want to spend but JVC has a D-VHS machine that will record up to 40 hours of standard video on their machine as mpeg. As far as I know it records it in mpeg but will accept a firewire connection from a camera and convert it to mpeg to be recorded. I've never used it so I don't know what kind of quality you will get; i.e. VHS, S-VHS, or better, ???

If high mpeg compression is not an issue then you may do well with this unit.

Another option would be to use a hauppauge wintv USB unit and record your camera output to disc using a laptop and possibly an external harddrive again using the MPEG format. I don't see you recording to DV unless you purchase massive amounts of hard drive.

I hope this helps a little and good luck.

Jaime Rivera
E-mail me if you have any other questions about these ideas.
riverajaime@cox.net

Found it
 

While still trying to find a solution I ran across a conversation on the internet, and wallah !!

RCA 40-Hour Digital Video Recorder/DVD Player DRC7005N

just like Tivo but no subscription. $ 398.00 and hard drive can be replaced just like the others.