Best IP Camera software

[buellwinkle]

I have an Arecont AV3100DN, doesn't work with Blue Iris. They offered to help if I can expose the camera to the internet for remote access. Unfortunately, the camera and my router are not cooperating with this request.

I did get it work fine with Milestone and a single camera license is free, can't beat that. That makes it $30 cheaper then Blue Iris single camera license.So for now, that's my choice and it's based solely on price.

[Dwayne]

Well true, but as soon you need a second cam (and I am sure you will soon) you should reconsider that. a 26 cam version of Blue Iris is US$49.95.

It does not neccessarily need to be your own cam, if you know of a demo camera that is all you need to inform blue iris support of.
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Blue Iris Support Forum

[buellwinkle]

Nah, giving up on this whole PC software thing, too much trouble. Going to put the Arecont on ebay this weekend. I liked the idea initially, mostly to run different brands of cameras on one software, but then gave up when I realized that it's not as easy as I thought.

For the Mobotix cameras, all the software I need is built into the cameras, one less thing to worry about. Heck, I can do more things with it's built in software than just about any PC software I looked at.

[tanmaysnv]

The best IP camera recording software we have come across is EyeSoft by BiKal IP CCTV.

It can record up to 64 cameras per server but best of all it supports multiple IP cameras from different manufacturers to USB webcams, IPTV streams to analog capture cards. You can even use megapixel HD cameras with up to 1920x1080p resolution.
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SPY Security Camera
hikvision cctv card

[tanmaysnv]

The best IP camera recording software we have come across is EyeSoft by BiKal IP CCTV.
It can record up to 64 cameras per server but best of all it supports multiple IP cameras from different manufacturers to USB webcams, IPTV streams to analog capture cards. You can even use megapixel HD cameras with up to 1920x1080p resolution.
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SPY Security Camera
hikvision cctv card

[TTL Security]

Try Security Monitor Pro - video surveillance software

This has been the easiest to use software I have found.

[sadik007]

blue iris +1

for home and small setup good solution and very easy to use..

[celem]

I serve on a committee of the community where I live that is working to improve the security gate monitoring. We have three vehicle gates, one is manned in the daytime only, a second is not manned and the third, the Main Gate, is manned 24 hours a day.

The partially manned and unmanned gates each have several video cameras each that multiplex in slow scan over a dial-up line. The pictures are horrible and basically useless except to advertise that we have video surveillance – basically only good for marketing. They are not recorded and alarmed in any way – useless!

We are conducting a trial to see if we can improve the effectiveness of surveillance for the Main Gate guards. We installed four new IP-Cameras at the partially manned gate – two Foscam Foscam FI8908W Pan/Tilt cameras, one Foscam Foscam FI8904W waterproof camera and one Axis 207.

The DSL at the partially manned gate being monitored is 7MBs Downlink/500kbs uplink. We quickly discovered that the uplink would only support one camera. It tanked as soon as a second camera was accessed by the main gate. This is because each camera uses between 200kbs to 300kbs – with 300kbs being quite typical. One 300kbs fit nicely into the uplink bandwidth but the 600kbs of two cameras brought the 500kbs uplink to crawl. Forget about three cameras!

The decision was made to trial putting the camera monitoring software at the remote gate being monitored, bring all of the cameras into it at that gate via its LAN and then have the Main Gate access the PC running the monitoring software at the remote gate over the VPN using RDP or radmin (http://www.radmin.com/). In this way the Main Gate would only be bringing over the uplink, the screen of the remote PC hosting the monitoring software. This would easily fit within the 500kbs uplink with room to spare.

We decided to try Vitamin-D (http://www.vitamindinc.com) due to its impressive rules based triggers. The trial version is cripple-ware, supporting only one camera, so we had to purchase a license in order to even test it in our trial environment. Immediately we had problems. Vitamin-D turned out to be a computing resource hog. With only one camera being monitored Vitamin-D maxed out the CPU at 100%. The PC is a single core 32-bit machine running Windows XP-Pro and has 4GB of RAM. Not state of the art but certainly adequate for most tasks. Vitamin-D Tech Support advised us that we would need a dual-core machine. Another problem was Vittamin-D's lack of support for still image capture – it only supports video capture. We gave up – Vitamin-D just was not going to work out.

Next we tried a trial copy of WebCam-7 Pro (http://www.webcamxp.com). It's trial version is fully functional for 60-days, permitting a real pre-purchase trial. WebCam-7 Pro directly supports both our Axis and Foscam cameras, as well as just about anything made – the drop-down list is huge. We very quickly added all four cameras and the PC was running at about 75% of capacity. This was more like it! While WebCam-7 Pro does not have the rules based alerting of Vitamin-D, its motion detection zone definition capability is more robust. It also supports many additional features including many not found in Vitamin-D.

I vote for WebCam-7 Pro (http://www.webcamxp.com) – an excellent Camera Minitoring system for $120.

[CamGuy]

[marekmt2]

An absolute novelty in the monitoring software is a 3D stereoscopic image service. SelCamNet software (www.selcamnet.pl) - available 3D camera live. The program supports several languages, with the possibility of their translation.
http://www.selcamnet.pl - camera IP 3D on-line.

[2cpus4me]

Add me into the Blue Iris happy campers. Used it for years. When I had trouble I emailed them and received quick response and they even modified the software for me after some email discussions (to do with time-based snapshot recording settings) and this improved the usability of the product greatly.

They update the software often and are constantly adding new camera support. I have no hesitation that if I contact them I will get a response within 48 hours or faster.

I believe Blue Iris is the best value on the market for people that use multiple cameras and have yet to discover something I needed to do that the software didn't support.

A number of friends of mine also use the software successfully, too. I can't imagine needing to use other software unless you have some amazingly complex operational requirements.

[twnana]

Our company have been in surveillance field for more than 10 years, our products have been applied to very large installations for than 2000 cameras in Taiwan and more than 6000 cameras in ShangHai. It has proven to be stable and reliable.

Recently we developed a small scale product to serve the international market, including user friendly interface and many powerful features. We offer free trial online download from our website: www.uniargusstore.com/trial

Software called “Hercules” is included in our trial version. You can easily convert a low cost USB cam into IP cam with just a few steps.

The trial version can support up to 4 channels of video source while the full version can support up to 32 channels.

Your feedback is very precious to us: unistore@unisvr.net

[buellwinkle]

Doesn't seem to support many cameras or camera brands, no support for Foscam, ACTi, Messoa, Mobotix. Also, it's pricy at $199 when many competing products are much less expensive and have support for hundreds of different cameras. Also, why Windows XP, is that still being sold? Why not Win 7 or Linux?
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For network camera articles and reviews, visit my blog at http://ipcamnetwork.wordpress.com

[twnana]

[quote=Also, why Windows XP, is that still being sold? Why not Win 7 or Linux?[/quote]
Our software supports Windows XP SP3 or later, including Win 7. Just for your reference.
If you compare our product with Milestone XProtect Essential which costs USD$197 for up to 26 cameras, I think our product is still competitive.
However, we do appreciate your comment. Maybe you are interested to try our free version?

[buellwinkle]

Can't try it, none of my cameras are supported by your software. Milestone supports over 900 difrerent cameras and does work with my cameras, but I use BlueIris Software. I like the software better than Milestone and costs $50 per server, but cost is secondary to functionality, performance and camera support.
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For network camera articles and reviews, visit my blog at http://ipcamnetwork.wordpress.com