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Greetings Video Spiceheads,
I’d like to get your input on a problem a client of mine is facing issues with.

A client of mine has eight locations. Three of these locations have their own video surveillance system. Each consisting of about ten cameras. The camera systems are the same brand at each location - They are a no-name brand that has a lot to be desired. That being said, it does what it is intended for (surveillance and recording).

BUT - since the system has been installed about five years ago, the client has since started using it so staff members at all locations can view some of the cameras. Some have a second monitor that’s streaming the video and they also have a couple computers hooked up to TV’s to monitor some cameras.
Each location is connected by a site-to-site VPN.
To view cameras, you can either use a web browser, or the manufacturer offers an APP that is horrible. Using the APP makes the CPU on your computer go to 90%. That is somewhat the case using the web browser when you start viewing more than three cameras.
I have recommended they use the sub stream only but then they complain the video quality is poor.
The performance is horrible. Probably from too many people/devices trying to stream the cameras not to mention using a lot of bandwidth.

I realize the existing camera systems are junk. I’d like to know how you would go about coming up with a solution that would allow users at all locations to view cameras without choking the system. I realize many factors are involved. (The actual camera system, network bandwidth, etc)

Recommendations needed! Thanks

4 Spice ups
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Are the cameras all IP cameras? If they are analog, are they your standard barrel BNC connection or something proprietary looking? And now that I read it more, is it many people at different locations looking at cameras at different locations, or mostly people looking at the cameras that are at their own location?

As a side question, you say the system app kills the CPU on the computers. What models are these CPU’s (ie. Core i3, i5, etc) and typically how much ram in them?

Tell you now though, it’s gonna be one of those [ cost | performance | usability ] you have to pick 2 scenarios.

2 Spice ups
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Probably a cloud offering would be your best bet here if it involves viewing cameras at other sites. This way viewers are pulling data from the cloud and not across the wan link.

How are you set up now? Are they recording to local servers on each site? How much internet bandwidth do you have at each site?

2 Spice ups
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I manage video camera solutions for four locations and have a similar scenario - users who benefit from the video feeds and management wanting them to have access. Here are a few notes from my experience with these cameras:

  • The software that is used to view the cameras can only be run as admin, so for some users I have created desktop shortcuts for users that use the camera software to view the cameras.
  • I originally set up a separate VLAN for the cameras, but since we don’t have layer 3 switches, the camera traffic between the VLANs was being routed by our firewall. This was causing our firewwall to hit max usage, (95% plus,) and stay there during our open hours while users access those camera feeds. I ended up moving the cameras back to our primary VLAN to prevent that traffic from going through the firewall and reduced the usage by nearly half.
  • Some users have been set up to use a browser directly to the camera. This doesn’t work for all our users that use multiple cameras, but for the ones that it does work for, I believe that a separate login can be made for those users to limit the access on those cameras. (This was set up before I started managing the cameras.)

I am sure I need to completely review our camera setup and make changes. We have been relying on a local security company to install the cameras for us and have been using what they recommend. I am not convinced that the systems that they have installed are our best solution, but it is what we have currently.

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LuisC,
They are all IP cameras.
The staff members looking at the cameras could be at any location, not just the ones where they are.
The computers they are using are just standard Dell OptiPlex. Mostly i7’s with 8-16GB RAM. Integrated graphics card. Nothing special.

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PatrickFarrell,
Surveillance footage just gets saved to the system’s NVR. That doesn’t seem to be the issue. It’s staff members wanting to watch live video as it occurs.
The site-to-site link speed is about 500 to 600mbps. nothing earth shattering. They would probably be open to fiber if it’s available.

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Well one, those computers don’t sound like slouches. We usually recommend view stations with our software have Core i7 and 8GB RAM if you are viewing 12 or more high res cameras and it works just fine, as long as they have the Intel GPU which we use for video decoding.

But different manufacturers will do video decoding different ways. You may want to check if you haven’t already with the manufacturer on what they require for optimal video decoding that is compatible with their software. It may be specific models of Nvidia cards or the Intel GPU. But cheaper systems always have issues with video decoding. It seems their software is just not built well for efficiency in that respect.

You mention they complain about the lower resolution of the substreams (which was a nice idea). If they don’t like the lower resolution of the substream, see if they’ll be happy with a full resolution Live stream that is just a lower FPS, like maybe 5 FPS. People always want and start with a higher FPS than what they really need, as a lower FPS can still give you pretty good situational awareness. Also, if they are set to h265, try using h264 codec if that is an option. h265 requires much more computational decoding on the viewing side than h264, even though h264 is still intensive. Counter-intuitively, MJPEG is the least decoding stress on the viewing side, but the bandwidth would probably kill your WAN connections.

What people (mostly customers) don’t understand is security video viewing is always intensive on a viewing station. They think because they watch YouTube or Hulu on their computers and it works that it’s the same thing, but it’s not. They’re gonna have to make a tradeoff somewhere. Lower resolution live streams, or lower framerates. Or investment into better equipment and network/Internet speeds. Or dedicated viewstations rather then trying to use their regular work computers as full time view stations, or watching cameras only intermittently and closing camera viewing when not needed.

1 Spice up
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Are those site-to-site links synchronous or asynchronous? You mention they’d be open to fiber, which is usually synchronous, so I am assuming then they are currently asynchronous, meaning the upload speed is a lot slower than download speed. If that is the case, your real bandwidth in this application is the upload speed, not the download speed.

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LuisC, you’re right. It’s regular cable internet. The upload speed is way less than the download speed.

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do the cameras or the NVR support RSTP streams? If they do you can enable that an get rid of the crappy software and use anything you want that supports RSTP, there are lots of choices for RSTP streaming from VLC to many 3rd party camera software solutions.

However the multiple people streaming at the same time is going to be your big issue. at some point the camera \ NVR \ internet location is just going to be overloaded.

Assuming you have RSTP support you may want to look at setting up a central system at each site that can import the RSTP streams of your remote locations (so there is only one stream per site) then rebroadcast that stream locally to whomever \ whatever needs it at that site. This would reduce the load on your camera \ NVR \ internet drastically.

If you do end up searching for a replacement camera system I would suggest Unifi Protect. Its hard to beat, has great cameras, some really neat options (AI) is reliable and it supports RSTP streaming at the camera and the NVR level.

1 Spice up
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Another caveat to be aware of, if these are cheap systems like you say, the bandwidth they are able to record and serve viewing clients may be very limited. Again, you should check with the manufacturer to see if they list the specs. I’ve seen small systems say they’re limited to as little as 150 mbs combined (cameras and viewing clients) bandwidth. So for this example if the NVR is recording 100 mbs of total camera data, but you have 3 people trying to view the cameras and the ones they are looking at require 25 mbs of data for each viewer, then you’ve exceeded the capacity of the NVR to perform by 25 mbs. Just so you are aware before you start throwing money at higher bandwidth but then don’t see better performance.

1 Spice up
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Molan,
Yes, I’m very familiar with Unifi Protect. In fact, my client has a UDM Pro at each location. My client does not want to replace the current camera system as they paid a fortune for it before the UDM Pro’s were implemented. However, I am considering adding Unifi cameras in the locations where they want to view live steams. And regarding your question about rstp, yes, the current cameras do support it and I did experiment with one camera using VLC Media Player.

1 Spice up
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Perhaps if you can observe live bandwidth (at the firewall or something) of a particular site while a number of users are streaming that camera’s video, you can rule out/address the upload bandwith bottleneck. Once you’re sure that’s not the issue, you can investigate the video players, think about different cameras, etc.

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A little over a year ago, we upgraded all of our cameras, installed more, and are to expand over a few more locations. We had a local security company (Per Mar local?) because the one man band we had before just wasn’t cutting it. He had gotten so busy that we were falling on his priority list. The cameras he was using had a security issue, and being connected to a hospital network is a big no. They came in, installed their system, we use an application from them called Command Station that also has an app. The ER has a few cameras up constantly, and we will eventually be adding a couple of remote sites to the same system. There is a wide array of cameras, resolutions, indoor or outdoor, and they monitor them just to make sure all is up and running. Onsite DVR keeps almost a month of history which was expensive, but necessary. Camera technology has gotten much better in the past 5 years. I think it was the Verkata brand that had issues, which may be resolved by now. Since nthe new runs on their own segment - which I had built into the quote, there is nothing on ours that will bog it down. Also, if they are vandalized, the company replaces them with the same model.

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Unifi Protect now has support for 3rd party cameras
Third-Party Cameras in UniFi Protect – Ubiquiti Help Center
you may be able to migrate your existing cameras over into the Protect system.

3 Spice ups
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Beat me to it molan. Was about to suggest the same.
If the camera can be supported you may be able to use Unifi Vantage Point service.
https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/27719500615959-UniFi-Vantage-Point-Multi-NVR-Camera-Management

2 Spice ups
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Molan and Great and Powerful Admin

Thank you! I’ve been playing around with Vantage Point. I am able to adopt the third-party cameras. It works. I am able to create a Vantage Point with cameras from different sites. Will have to do further testing. You have to create a vantage point and then open it from Site Manager. Therefore, no direct connections like Unfi Protect can do from your current location.

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Have you looked into Lumana AI ?

It can help centralize those disjointed systems without having to replace the cameras as well as real-time customizable alerts

Check it out
www.lumana.ai

I work at Lumana happy to discuss further