# Best CCTV Video Capture Card?



## CoryG (Jan 27, 2022)

I'm looking at setting up a CCTV server running FreeBSD and was specifically looking at GeoVision GV-1480B cards, but wanted to check a) if FreeBSD supports them and b) if not (or even if so) what the best/most-reliable/high-resolution realtime CCTV capture cards are which work well with FreeBSD from experiences others have had. Does anyone have experience with these they might share, or other capture cards of similar resolution+framework to turn BNC lines into realtime recordings? I'd also appreciate knowing which software for managing/streaming CCTV videos people have had the best luck with on FreeBSD.


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## covacat (Jan 27, 2022)

are analogic cameras still a thing ?


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## CoryG (Jan 27, 2022)

covacat said:


> are analogic cameras still a thing ?


If you care at all about security.


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## Phishfry (Jan 27, 2022)

Analog CCTV cameras died well over 10 years ago.
I know of no capture card that works. Brooktree chip card might work.
The problem with the GeoVision is much like the AverMedia cards I have.
Propietary software. Big old boat anchor. They were never open source and cost alot.

IPCams are well established. I have one Arecont that has been in service over four years.
BluecherryDVR is now open source now and I recommended it for ipcams.


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## Phishfry (Jan 27, 2022)

When I first started on FreeBSD ZoneMinder was still analog and there was a h264 version for IPCams.
That changed too around 2017.


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## Phishfry (Jan 27, 2022)

CoryG said:


> If you care at all about security.


Some of us know how to setup a packet filter around here.


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## Phishfry (Jan 27, 2022)

POE switches replaced the analog CCTV card. Metaphysically.


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## astyle (Jan 27, 2022)

For actually capturing, there's a USB device that may be of interest. OBS Studio should take it.


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## Phishfry (Jan 27, 2022)

Many v4L card should work.





						Brooktree Bt878 - LinuxTVWiki
					






					linuxtv.org
				




The fancy ones like Geo and AVer have rom chip and use serial numbers.
They might use Brooktree but they are not going to work.


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## CoryG (Jan 27, 2022)

Phishfry said:


> Some of us know how to setup a packet filter around here.


It's still stupidly overkill.  A camera is a camera, a BNC line is more stable than an ethernet one, and you don't need a microprocessor you have no control over powerful enough to do IP translation within cameras.  I prefer the philosophy of "a toaster should make toast," not "a toaster should be an IoT device connected to the cloud et al," an IP camera is a very short hop from that.  Sure, you can set up packet filters, you can set up a separate LAN just for cameras, but why even run the risk?  It's not smart to over-engineer devices in any security context using things you don't control, and regardless of how well you set up your filters, there WILL BE bugs or outright backdoors discovered publicly eventually, just as has been the case for literally every device made in the last several decades.  Why take on the attitude of "just do the easiest thing, because it works for now" when you can build a system that will work for life and you never have to worry about the security of even once?


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## covacat (Jan 27, 2022)

do you use centronics printers for the same reason ?


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## CoryG (Jan 27, 2022)

covacat said:


> do you use centronics printers for the same reason ?


More of a paper and pen person.


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## Phishfry (Jan 27, 2022)

OK if your insist. I know this market pretty well.
First off this was Windows market exclusively.
I have resold AverMedia MP3000 then DV5000; NV7000 in the past to many small business.
I even had a AverDVR version with Linux on DOM from them.
All those were nice but expensive. GeoVision came along and undercut them some.
Then Hikvision came along and really cut the market up. They did not have as nice of software but they were dramatically cheaper. They also didn't use rom chips because their software sucked. Nobody wanted to clone that.
So look for the old Hikvision CCTV cards. They should not be encumbered as much.

Since I mentioned BluecherryDVR there was a card they sold that was somewhat popular.








						GPL'd Driver and Linux Support For New H.264 Capture Card - Slashdot
					

azop writes "Almost a year ago Slashdot covered the story of a MPEG-4 multiple input capture card with a GPL Video4Linux licensed driver.  Earlier this year, Ben Collins added H.264 support into the solo6x10 Video4Linux2 GPL driver.  The H.264 PCIe cards are finally released and shipping to...



					developers.slashdot.org
				




These are not sold on the website anymore and I don't know for sure that FreeBSD would work with them.
That would be a path I pursued. They are a good company.
I remember they had a buyback program for the old hardware encoder cards. So somebody was using them.
That or they were pumping license sales with a small kicker.


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## diizzy (Jan 28, 2022)

I think your best bet as far as analogue capture cards goes are https://www.freshports.org/multimedia/cx88 (usually a consumer product with not great capture abilities) unless you have a vendor driver. As mentioned by several IP-cameras have replace the old analogue ones...
There a some concerns about Hikvision and privacy but you can go for pretty much any brand these days (Axis, Panasonic etc) since they all work the same in 99.9% of all cases.


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## First_Law_of_Unix (Jul 3, 2022)

CoryG said:


> It's still stupidly overkill.  A camera is a camera, a BNC line is more stable than an ethernet one, and you don't need a microprocessor you have no control over powerful enough to do IP translation within cameras.  I prefer the philosophy of "a toaster should make toast," not "a toaster should be an IoT device connected to the cloud et al," an IP camera is a very short hop from that.  Sure, you can set up packet filters, you can set up a separate LAN just for cameras, but why even run the risk?  It's not smart to over-engineer devices in any security context using things you don't control, and regardless of how well you set up your filters, there WILL BE bugs or outright backdoors discovered publicly eventually, just as has been the case for literally every device made in the last several decades.  Why take on the attitude of "just do the easiest thing, because it works for now" when you can build a system that will work for life and you never have to worry about the security of even once?



I agree with your "philosophy" in "over engineering" with today's IP cams. Many people doesn't know this but there are analog cameras which goes up to 4K, I find that the analog cameras give much better picture quality and FPS than the IP cams when price comes into play. These analog cameras are using digital communication protocols than runs on coaxial BNC. I use a CCTV multi protocol analog signal converter to HDMI and a HDMI to USB 3.0 capture card hooked to my PC, Jesus Christ I get ultimate freedom and can use any CCTV camera brands up to 8MP and record it effortlessly to my desktop PC at 60FPS, works great and costs about $80 for everything (without the camera). Records 24/7 without a hitch. I use the open source DVR software called "iSPY" (only for windows OS) which has AMD GPU hardware acceleration H.264 encoding. I hope theres something similar for freeBSD.


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## astyle (Jul 3, 2022)

Yeah, if you're into it, and have a handle on how to connect different ends together, then yeah, IP cams are over-engineered. But sometimes, you gotta think about the tradeoffs... like keeping it simple vs keeping it flexible.


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## First_Law_of_Unix (Jul 4, 2022)

astyle said:


> Yeah, if you're into it, and have a handle on how to connect different ends together, then yeah, IP cams are over-engineered. But sometimes, you gotta think about the tradeoffs... like keeping it simple vs keeping it flexible.



That is true. I actually prefer IP cam technology, much simpler to implement and fully digital, I like how quality IP cams actually provides a good live stream at H.265 encoding, so the PC doesn't need to do any of the heavy lifting in encoding. In 5 years or so IP cam technology will be much more affordable for hi-res at 60 FPS and would be able to provide lower prices than analog cameras of the same specs.


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