Cheep Cheep Cheep CCTV Capture Cards..

["Ian Lowe" <ian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

There was some discussion of the super cheap capture cards being flogged
on=
ebay recently (typically for less than a tenner)

Well, I had one sitting on the shelf without really getting it going (the
s=
hipped 'Pico' software, *really* doesn't like Mini-itx boards!) My trusty
o=
ld Hauppage Card died, so I decided to give it a whirl - here's a mini
revi=
ew.

As expected, the capture speed is not great - it isn't going to compare
wit=
h the Geovision Cards by any stretch of the imagination. I also found
signi=
ficant problems on Windows 98 - the drivers that ship with the card are
hor=
rific, cause lockups, only let you access the first channel, you name it.

If you switch to Windows XP instead, everything becomes a whole lot
rosier.=
I'm using a virgin XP install, on an Epia C800 MiniITX board with 256Mb of=
memory.

The first thing I needed to do was get the Open Source generic Brooktree
dr=
ivers from http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/download.html=20

For these 4 port capture cards, I found an anomaly - v5.3.8 doesn't seem
to=
handle the separate inputs properly, whilst the v5.3.5-1 works absolutely =
perfectly. During install, you choose your card from a list: There's a
"Gen=
eric Brooktree Card with four Composite Inputs" that works just
nicely.

With these drivers in place, it's all plain sailing - I'm using
Supervision=
Cam, and it can happily open up multiple instances of the same capture
driv=
er (each one using a different physical input) - here's a screenie of it
wo=
rking:

http://www.wintermute-ltd.com/ukha/cams.jpg

SupervisionCam has the facility to launch an exe when motion is detected,
s=
o it's easily "xPLable" too. I reckon I get about 5fps or so per
camera cap=
tured without the PC breaking a sweat.

As with the Serious Discussion(tm) about C-Bus, there's bound to be an
elem=
ent of getting what you pay for - for an entry level system to see if you
a=
ctually want a PC based CCTV system... SupervisionCam costs 25USD to
regist=
er, and this no-name capture card was a grand total of =A39 including
shipp=
ing, I'd say this was a 100% success.

Ian.