Upgrading a camera system. How much improvement will I see?

[ericbanner]

Hi all,

We have a bunch of Synology boxes: a central camera server (DS1513+) at our office, with 17 cameras on it, and 5 remote camera servers at remote locations, each with either a DS713+ or DS216+II. We have about 40 cameras total. (We also have a RS3614RPxs but that strictly does backups)

Ignore the remote cameras for now - our connections to the remote camera servers are not adequate for the cameras we have, and I know that. So let's concentrate on the central office cameras.

Before I started working here, all the cameras were about 20+ years old and only 704x480 resolution. I've been working to upgrade them to 4K UHD (3840x2160), and only have a few to go.

When I first started upgrading, the camera system was "passable". The Timeline app for local cameras was a little slow, but not unbearably so. But as I've been upgrading, it has become a lot slower, close to unusable, even with local cameras, on a nice fast 100Mb & 1Gb network. So clearly the DS1513+ needs an upgrade.

The question is:
If we invest in a another rackmount behemoth like the RS3621RPxs, will that solve our problem? Does anyone out there have, say, 20+ cameras on one of the rackmount beasts and is Timeline nice and responsive? Before I go to the boss and ask for $3500, I'd just like to know that it will make a substantial improvement.

 

[WST16]

Hi,

According to the RS3621RPxs specs, the maximum IP cameras supported are 75, for a total of 2,250 FPS at 720p (H.264). Note that you’ll need to purchase Synology’s approved drives and memory only, if I’m not mistaken.

I wanted to compare the above to your current NAS and to what it can handle (to see where are you hitting the threshold) but the specs didn’t include that information (total FPS).

You can also try Synology’s NVR selector and see what do you get.

But if I were you, I’d take this case to Synology and discuss it with them (there’s a contact us option on the selector page referenced above). I don’t think any one on this forum is dealing with that many cameras.

Good luck

 

[Jan Janowski]

I’ve been using H264 1920x1080 at 30fps, and 3K at 20fps (3K not much improvement over 1920x1080, by the way), but only for a couple cameras on each NAS. I can see a difference between 720 & 1080.. (1080 better). 480 to 1080 is a no brainer: Go For It!
On each camera I’m capturing both video and still pictures in different folders. Your contacting Support should be considered. Make certain you give them the format, bandwidth, and expected FPS of your amount of cameras, as well as your NAS and it’s ram amount. I’m certain more ram will support more cameras.

Please note that after DSM 6.4 was installed on my 215J, I had to downshift from two to one cameras at less bandwidth & FPS to get it to work without dropped frames and green or purple lines in images. I had NO PROBLEMS doing 2x 1920x1080 cameras at 30 FPS at high bandwidth on DSM6.3…. so, your DSM Version very well may affect your amount of camera’s results. I did not expect DSM to affect workload. But it did

 

[fredbert]

DSM 6.2.4
DSM 6.2.3

 

[Jan Janowski]

Yes… you are right. I’m away from them

 

[Jan Janowski]

At a computer store where I was getting a power supply for daughters system, I overheard someone indicating a reduction of cameras after an ‘upgrade’. I wasn’t able to discern who’s hardware or cameras, but I thought about this thread.

Please post what Support replies with.

 

[ericbanner]

Hi,

According to the RS3621RPxs specs, the maximum IP cameras supported are 75, for a total of 2,250 FPS at 720p (H.264). Note that you’ll need to purchase Synology’s approved drives and memory only, if I’m not mistaken.

I wanted to compare the above to your current NAS and to what it can handle (to see where are you hitting the threshold) but the specs didn’t include that information (total FPS).

You can also try Synology’s NVR selector and see what do you get.

But if I were you, I’d take this case to Synology and discuss it with them (there’s a contact us option on the selector page referenced above). I don’t think any one on this forum is dealing with that many cameras.

Good luck

Thanks for the reply WST16. The NVR selector said that the RS3621RPxs was the cheapest model that could handle 40 cams. I will be contacting Synology about it, but I was really hoping to get the opinion of someone running 20+ cameras on a high-end rackmount unit, someone who didn't have an interest in selling me a product

-- post merged: 29. Oct 2021 --

I’ve been using H264 1920x1080 at 30fps, and 3K at 20fps (3K not much improvement over 1920x1080, by the way), but only for a couple cameras on each NAS. I can see a difference between 720 & 1080.. (1080 better). 480 to 1080 is a no brainer: Go For It!
On each camera I’m capturing both video and still pictures in different folders. Your contacting Support should be considered. Make certain you give them the format, bandwidth, and expected FPS of your amount of cameras, as well as your NAS and it’s ram amount. I’m certain more ram will support more cameras.

Please note that after DSM 6.4 was installed on my 215J, I had to downshift from two to one cameras at less bandwidth & FPS to get it to work without dropped frames and green or purple lines in images. I had NO PROBLEMS doing 2x 1920x1080 cameras at 30 FPS at high bandwidth on DSM6.3…. so, your DSM Version very well may affect your amount of camera’s results. I did not expect DSM to affect workload. But it did

The UHD resolution really helps with camera coverage. You can buy cams with very angle lenses (2.8mm), then use the extra resolution to zoom in on the parts you want to see, while still maintaining overlapping coverage. If I could buy 8K cams or higher without breaking the bank, I absolutely would.

In our case we also have stationary things of interest that we want to cover - payment kiosks. So I use zoomed-in long-lens cams to get nice clear pics of faces. Resolution isn't so important on those.

 

[WST16]

I will be contacting Synology about it, but I was really hoping to get the opinion of someone running 20+ cameras on a high-end rackmount unit, someone who didn't have an interest in selling me a product

I understand where you're coming from. But for such a big solution that's vital to the business, I might involve a professional company. Unfortunately, most of them will push camera manufacturers’ NVR servers (that might be your reason not to).

I'm only running 4 cams and they were on two DiskStations and wanted to consolidate them on one. Of course this means paying for an extra two licenses (not cheap, as you know), so I thought for that price let me look at Hikvision's NVR offering and I started looking at YouTube videos and realized how crappy the interface and the navigation logic is, not as polished as Synology's. So I bit the bullet and bought the licenses.

I'm happy but I don't want to support Hikvision in the future. Might try Axis, although they’re more expensive.