How to record surveillance camera on my pc.

[imbiss]

I put a surveillance camera up and wanted to record the feed on my pc. I don't really want to get a 24hr lapse vcr or a stand alone dvr (pricey). Does anybody have any suggestions on what capture device and program would be good for this job. I will get a bigger harddrive because I want to capture at least 3 days worth probably breaken down into 8hr blocks. I tried capturing with my dazzle to windows movie maker because I had it handy, but after capturing it needs also an enormous amount of time to encode.
Hope somebody can help me here.
Thanks

[Chewy]

A friend of mine wanted to do the same thing, he finally ended up talking to a company about being a distributor trying to get the programs/hardware wholesale, after weeks of wasted time he gave up,
the cost was too much.

Go with a tape system

[imbiss]

I have seen a few sites online where people made their own dvr out of a pc. Couldn't I go that route somehow?

[Bay_wolf]

You could probably go with a Hauppauge Capture Card. It would record and playback it live.

Regards and search google for it. (and you could go to www.byopvr.com for help, forums are very helpful there)

[Budreaux]

You could probably go with a Hauppauge Capture Card. It would record and playback it live.

Regards and search google for it. (and you could go to www.byopvr.com for help, forums are very helpful there)

Yes, that card is a good card.. anything Hauppauge puts out is generally a safe bet to use.
There are also DVR cards taht range from $30-$800 and even higher.
It;s a matter of how much you want to invest and what kind of quality you are looking for.
The Hauppauge card will give you some flxibility.
A DVR card will do a more effecient job.

DO NOT waste your time and money on a tape system.... I'm totally suprised that advice was even given to you.

Be aware that some DVR cards are specced by your processor.. so be sure if you have an AMD or a Pent. that the card you get, if you go this route, is compatible with your processor.

Once you do get it set up, the software is tailored very nicely.
Motion sensoring built in, you can set specific areas of the field of view to be motion sensored.
The compression settings for saving your recordings.... there is a wealth of options to tailor it to your needs. Even setting it up to be able to view it remotely.

Budreaux

[imbiss]

I found a security program for a webcam and it works with camera connected through my dazzle usb capture device.
Does anybody know of any good programs like that. It seems to be another good option. Does the hauppage cards capture and encode at the same time because I really don't want to encode after recording a days worth of footage. The program that I tried saved it directly as a windows media file. A size of about 500Mb to 10Gb per day depending on the framerate. For a decent picture it was about 2Gb a day, which is not bad.