Business Grade Versus Professional Grade
From EZWatch Wiki
At this time, EZ Watch Pro offers 3 different 'Grades' of systems. This page will compare the three to identify major and minor differences in each, to better assist you in choosing the grade that's right for you.
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What does Each Grade Offer?
Home Grade
Home grade kits are the lowest level of surveillance. They are the most economical of all of our kits, costing only $299 for a 2-camera kit and $399 for a 4-camera kit, however they have some drawbacks compared to the other kits we offer. The Home Grade systems have a maximum camera limit of 4 cameras, and cannot be expanded to add more cameras in the future. If you plan on using more than 4 cameras or wish to have the flexibility to add more, then the Home Grade kit may not work for you. The system does not offer dual monitor support, but can still record while playing back video clips. Because the Home Grade systems are running EZ Watch Pro version 3.1 and not version 4.0, the kit cannot support any IP cameras. That feature is only available for Business Grade and Professional Grade systems. The Home Grade kit allows you to view and record your cameras at 320 x 240 resolution and 7.5 frames per second per camera. Only a single audio channel can be used with the home grade kit. The systems can record using MJPEG or MPEG4 video recording.Home Grade Security Kits
The home grade system is currently only compatible with Windows 2000 and Windows XP. It is not compatible with Windows Vista.
Business Grade
Business Grade Kits are the standard level of surveillance. They offer far more flexibility and features than the home grade, but are a more economical choice than the Professional Grade systems. The Business Grade kits can offer a huge range of camera options, from 4-camera kits all the way up to 32-camera kits. The system can also support additional IP cameras, up to 32 maximum (Granting a total camera capability of 64 cameras). The system has dual and triple monitor support, allowing for the ability to view analog cameras on one monitor, IP cameras on a separate monitor, and camera playback on a third (Or Live Viewing/Playback on a dual monitor system). The Business Grade system offers 640x480 resolution recording, and 7.5 frames per second per camera. The Business Grade system offers a single audio channel for every 4 video channels (So a 16-channel unit will have 4 audio inputs). The systems record using MPEG4 video recording.Business Security DVRs
The business grade system is currently only compatible with Windows 2000 and Windows XP. It is not compatible with Windows Vista.
Professional Grade
Professional grade kits offer the highest quality of any offering. They tend to be more expensive but for the extra cost they offer superior recording and features. The Professional Grade kits can offer a maximum of 64 cameras, Analog or IP-Based. The system supports dual or triple monitor display, allowing live view, IP cameras, and Playback to each appear individually on their own screens. The system has unique resolution support, allowing half of its analog cameras to record at 704x480 resolution while the other half are recorded at 528x340 resolution. The Professional grade offers a full 30 frames per second per camera, and offers one audio channel for every single video channel present. The system uses a new compression type called H.264 recording which offers superior quality recording without requiring larger amounts of storage space.Professional Security DVRs
The professional grade system is fully compatible with Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Vista*.
* Windows Vista Support requires Vista's User Account Control to be disabled to function
What do each of these features do?
Framerates
The Framerate of a camera system is how often the screen refreshes. A very fast refresh rate will result in a very smooth, very fluid motion. A slow refresh rate will look jerky or jumpy, with small 'gaps' in motion. Framerates can vary wildly, with 30 FPS (Frames Per Second) being as smooth and as fluid as a Television Program, down to 1 frame per 10 seconds which looks more like a time-lapse video. Whenever you are trying to capture an image of an object in motion (such as a license plate or a person moving quickly through an area), a higher framerate provides superior coverage of the movement.
High framerates record more images every second; this means that recording at a higher framerate can make your recordings bigger. The bigger the recordings are, the faster your DVR will fill up. If you wish to record longer periods of time without adding more storage space, you can lower the framerate to make your recordings smaller.
Viewing cameras remotely tends to have a slower framerate, because of the time it takes to send/receive the video over the internet. This is normal, and the effect can be minimized by providing a faster connection.
EZ Watch Pro has examples of various framerates (5 FPS, 10 FPS, 15 FPS, and 30 FPS) located on our Video Samples page.
Resolution
The resolution of a camera is how much detail that camera has. The higher your resolution is, the more detailed the pictures end up being. Most analog surveillance systems offer resolutions ranging from 240 lines to 480 lines; many IP cameras can surpass that, recording at 600 lines or even all the way up to 1024 lines. This means that pictures from IP cameras tend to be much, much more detailed than analog systems.
Higher detail, however, also results in more information present on each frame. This means that the higher the resolution is set to, the larger the video files are, and at very high resolution you can fill up a DVR's storage very very quickly. If you find your DVR is filling up too fast, you may wish to lower your framerate or resolution to extend your recording time.
Higher resolution can also slow down the framerate of your camera when you view it remotely over the internet. A faster connection can often help mitigate this issue, but at very high resolutions (such as 800x600 and 1280x1024) you may still experience a lower framerate when viewing the cameras remotely. Please keep this in mind when setting a camera's resolution.
EZ Watch Pro has examples of 240-line resolution and 480-line resolution on our Video Samples page.
Encoding
Raw, uncompressed video is HUGE. It takes up VAST amounts of space. Normally, a picture of an image at 640x480 resolution can take approximately 150kb. A business Grade system takes 7.5 pictures every second (which would be 67.5 mb every minute), a professional grade system takes 30 pictures every second (270 Mb every minute). This is the size of uncompressed video. Uncompressed video could fill up an 80-gigabyte hard drive in 5 hours with a business grade system; a professional grade system could fill the same space in about an hour and 20 minutes.
To combat this issue, the videos are compressed with a 'codec' (Which stands for 'Coder/Decoder'). A codec lowers quality slightly, but lowers file sizes dramatically. This allows you to fit days or weeks of recording onto a drive that would be filled up in hours with uncompressed video. The quality does decrease slightly, but the loss in quality is marginal and is easily offset by the added storage time.
Compression is normally done by your computer's main CPU. Lower compression will not tax the processor as much, but can result in larger sizes OR poorer quality. Likewise, if your processor has many other tasks and cannot spare as much power on compression, you will experience lower quality or larger sizes. This is why dedicating a PC to video surveillance is always recommended. Higher compression is a much more difficult task and requires far more work from your computer's processor, requiring more power and a faster processor to keep up. The advantage is lower file sizes and not as much reduction in quality.
EZ Watch has supported four major types of compression :
- MJPEG (Motion JPEG) - OUTDATED - A lower compression that is easy on the processor. This has typically resulted in higher quality but results in very big file sizes. This was an option (not default) in EZ Watch Pro 3.0.
- Wavelet - OUTDATED - Another type of compression used by EZ Watch Pro 3.0, this was also a higher quality recording that resulted in fairly large files. It was especially useful for improving the quality of video streaming over the internet, but it was much slower to watch.
- MPEG4 - The current standard for video surveillance. Quality is a bit lower than MJPEG or Wavelet, but the file sizes are drastically smaller allowing for MUCH more recording time. This is a slightly older codec, but because of the small file sizes it is probably the most commonly used compression today. EZ Watch Pro 3.0, the Armor Pro Hardware DVR's, and EZ Watch Pro 4.0 Business Grade all use this compression.
- H.264 - This is an extremely high quality codec used only by newer systems. It provides superior quality without having the large file sizes of MJPEG and Wavelet recording, but it is very demanding on the processor. EZ Watch Pro 4.0 Professional Grade cards get around this by using special processors on the capture cards that perform the compression, so that your computer's CPU does not need to. Because those processors are required, ONLY EZ Watch Pro 4.0 Professional Grade cards offer this compression.
