Is my NVR really 4K capable?

[PopsIsNumberOne]

Hi

I’ve only just found this forum, but have had my Hikvision gear for two years now and have not been able to resolve my problem.

I bought four 8MP 4K Hikvision cameras and a DS-7608NI-I2 / 8P as its spec said it supports 4 channels at 4K resolution.

However, I can’t get it to work at 4K properly even with just one camera set to 4K and the rest to HD.

The nvr was on firmware 3.4.96 build 170921 but I’ve recently upgraded to 4.22.005 build 191208 without much improvement. I’ve upgraded the cameras too, to 5.6.4 build 191224.

I have an HD standard tv attached to the nvr via HDMI which does show the live view of the camera but only reluctantly, and playback stutters and misses out chunks of video.

My laptop is no slouch – it’s a Dell XPS 15 9570 with 4K UHD screen and Nvidia GTX 1050 graphics, core i9 processor, 32GB memory connected to my router via Ethernet cable, but that won’t show live view video reliably for the four cameras when one is set to 4K. And playback has the same problem.

Likewise for my Home Theatre PC with i7 processor, Nvidia GTX 1060 UHD HDR capable graphics card connected by HDMI to my UHD OLED HDR TV Ethernet cabled to my router.

Surely it’s got to be the nvr which is not capable. Does 4K mean something different to a CCTV manufacturer than it does to a TV manufacturer? Or am I doing something wrong?

I’d be grateful for any help, advice or explanation.

 

[macman]

Just to be clear, are you using a tested (and not over-long) premium high speed HDMI cable to connect your NVR directly to your 4K viewing device?

Is your 4K viewing rig up to the task? Can it play 4K Youtube videos at full resolution?

Are your CCTV ethernet cables Cat6 and capable of delivering 4K video when a camera is wired directly to your 4K viewing device via a POE switch, ie by-passing the NVR? And is there sufficient bandwidth on your LAN to deliver 4K CCTV streams as well as all the other concurrent calls on it which may be made by your other network devices?

What bitrate have you allocated to your cameras?

If your cameras are using the H.264 codec, have you tried switching them to H.265?

 

[PopsIsNumberOne]

Many thanks for your reply, Macman.

Neither of my 4K viewing devices is connected to the nvr via HDMI but by cat6 Ethernet cable since they are computers.
My laptop is a self-contained 4K device as previously described and physically next to my router as is my nvr, and my HTPC is certainly connected to my 4K TV by a decent HDMI cable - the C-view Ultra-slim High Speed HDMI from the Chord Company. Otherwise they are as previously described and fully capable of displaying my 4K content.

Where you might well have hit the nail on the head is that I think the cameras are only connected to the nvr by cat5 Ethernet cable, not cat6. The camera with the shortest cable at 10metres being the one I’m trying at 4K. As I don’t possess a POE switch I’m not able to test by bypassing the nvr.

That may well be my problem as the nvr doesn’t record the 4K video properly when the scene gets busy and that’s when the playback stutters and misses chunks of video. I’ve tested that by exporting clips to a usb stick and then uploading them to my PCs and playing them with Hikvision's VSPlayer, VLC and JRiver Media Centre.

In reply to your last points, I’m using H.265 and H.265+ is enabled, and the max bitrate allocated (greyed out) is 16384 Kbps.

 

[macman]

I'm no expert and I don't know the DS-7608NI-I2 but when I last researched NVRs I was struck by how silent most of their data sheets were on UHD output to ethernet. They can obviously receive and record UHD video but outputting them is a different kettle of fish.

I suspect that the only way to get UHD video out of your NVR to view remotely is via a direct HDMI connection. The data sheet for your NVR only mentions 4K output via HDMI and they don't sell themselves short.

Even if your laptop is connected to a 4K TV via HDMI, I doubt it will deliver that resolution if the source is coming out of the NVR via ethernet.

You can connect cameras directly to a viewing device to get the full 4K or use the HDMI route out of the NVR.

I'm happy to be proven wrong but there seems to be a bit of a conspiracy of silence across the industry on this subject.

 

[macman]

Based on my one and only NVR purchase (I won't name it), I decided to eliminate any such device from my future CCTV system. Like many, it claimed to record and deliver 4MP video but when I examined the "4MP" live video I was watching on my PC over the LAN, I discovered that it was actually an upscaled 2MP video. I now record to SD cards and the cameras connect to my LAN via standalone POE switches. This gives me real 4MP video on my PC monitor over my gigabit fibre LAN.

No doubt I sacrifice a lot of bells and whistles by not using an NVR but none that I seem to need. And since I only want to record motion events, the SD cards are comfortably able to cope.

 

[fullboogie]

You need to figure out whether this is a recording problem or a viewing problem. Not sure how you're going to do that without having a monitor connected to your NVR with an HDMI cable.