Analog cameras
When do I need an analog camera?
Under certain conditions analog cameras will serve you better than digital cameras. If cables longer than 5 m are needed between the camera and recording equipment, for most digital cameras, you need an amplifier. Industrial analog cameras may be more suitable in these cases. Cable lengths of 30-50 meters are generally no problem.
An additional advantage of analog cameras is that their signals can easily be splitted by simply splitting the cable. To split a signal from a digital camera a video splitter or video splitting software is needed.
Install and setup
To convert the output of analog cameras into a digital format, a video capture card is needed. If you bought a complete solution from Noldus IT, the video capture card is present in the computer. If you bought your cameras, video capture card and MediaRecorder separately, you must do the installation and setup yourself.
Supported analog cameras
In theory, MediaRecorder works with output of every analog camera that is used with the Euresys Picolo Alert PCIe Video Capture Board. We specifically tested MediaRecorder with output of the following cameras with the Euresys Picolo Alert PCIe Video Capture Board with Multicam driver 6.15.13573:
- Ikegami B/W ICD-49 PAL
- Panasonic WV-CP504 NTSC
- Ikegami Analog PAL/CCIR
- Ikegami Analog NTSC/EIA
Maximum supported number of cameras
- Euresys Picolo Alert PCIe Video Capture Board - Four cameras or PhenoTyper Top Units.
Tested setups with EthoVision XT
The table below shows the maximum supported (1) resolution, (2) frame rate (fps), (3) color space, (4) number of devices and (5) recording time (hours). Tests were done on a Dell 3640 PC
|
|
Device |
Resolution |
Frame rate |
Color space |
No of devices |
Recording time |
|
|
Ikegami B/W ICD-49 PAL- Analog CCIR Euresys Picolo Alert PCIe |
768 x 576 |
25 |
YUY2 RGB32 |
1 |
0.5 |
|
|
Panasonic WV-CP504 NTSC - Analog EIA Euresys Picolo Alert PCIe |
640 x 480 |
30 |
YUY2 |
1 |
0.5 18 60 |
|
|
Analog PAL/CCIR |
768 x 576 |
25 |
RGB24 |
4 |
24 |
|
|
Analog NTSC/EIA |
640 x 480 |
30 |
RGB24 |
4 |
24 |
IMPORTANT The file size of a 18, 24 and 60 hours recording is very large.
Note CCIR is the monochrome version of PAL and EIA is the monochrome version of NTSC.
Cable length
In theory, a length of 250 m should be possible, however we did not test that. We know that a length of 100 m can be used without problems.
Notes
PAL or NTSC
MediaRecorder automatically identifies the analog cameras as PAL / CCIR (=monochrome PAL), or NTSC / EIA (=monochrome NTSC). It selects the correct frame rate and resolution automatically.
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