Digital…

[Gina McLauchlan]

This is one carried over from the old forum

Have you used any digital recording systems, as a replacement to video? Which system did you use? How did you like it? Any better, or worse?

[Gina McLauchlan]

This is one carried over from the old forum
I’ve used the VisualSoft System, a few times over the past couple of years. I prefer the digital system to the analogue system now 😀 .

Online it’s great, clear pictures and no messing to change tapes’ or fighting over who forgot to press the record butting on one of the VCRs. Offline it’s even better, instant playback, can send video clips/still images back to the beach via email within seconds, not got to worry about getting three VCR’s to synchronise so you can review the data. You can’t lose the Port tape through the moon pool 😳 !!…(seen it done).

If you get the chance, I would say work with a digital recording system, it’s the way of the future. 8)

Regards
Gina

[Gina McLauchlan]

This is one carried over from the old forum

Stand alone DVD recorders are brilliant – plug in and operate just like a VCR, but you get 4 hours at SVHS quality, or about 2.5 hours at digital broadcast quality (or 6 hours VHS quality) on a disk that you can index.
I use Philips DVDR890 (list price BGP 599, though you can get them a lot cheaper on the net) This one might not meet your needs as it does not have a ‘nudge wheel’ for editing (some models do).

PC based systems are not so hot:
I. They use quite a lot of compression, and video quality is noticably degraded.

2. They won’t record to DVD in real time, you record to hard disk, then have to transfer to DVD for distribution.

3. There is about 1 sec delay in the capture cards, this makes it impossible to operate an ROV from the monitor display, and if what you are doing is accurately time dependent you need to overlay time onto the video before it hits the PC rather than using the PC clock.

[Gina McLauchlan]

This is one carried over from the old forum

The quality of the digitally recorded image depends on the hardware you use, whether it be PC based (software counts in this system too) or direct to DVD.

Both systems have thier pros and cons…depends what your looking for in a system. And what you want to do with the data once collected.

The speed technology is being developed at the moment I really can’t understand why anyone is still using SVHS stsyems!

[Gina McLauchlan]

This is one carried over from the old forum

I did an evaluation on this for a client just before Christmas, tested video capture cards from Hauppauge, Pinnacle and GeForce, all in a very high spec PC. All suffered from the time lag and compression degradation.
(Admittedly all were sub 500 GBP boards, there may be more expensive solutions)

Certainly editing and overlaying is a doddle on a PC, but I would of thought that for inspection work video quality would be a higher priority?

In my particular situation there was also an issue of trust – the client wanted a non-editable, ‘black box’ recording, which counts out PC hard disk.

[Gina McLauchlan]

This is one carried over from the old forum

The CCTV security sector has been using DVR’s for a while now, I never see VCR’s on a new installation nowadays. Quality is essential, as recordings are used for evidential purposes in court cases, many cases foundered in the past due to crap quality images. ROV sector is very slow taking up this new technology, but I guess if good old VCR tapes are doing the job ok, why pay for something new for little measurable gain, apart from ease of operator use. e.g. I’ve still got some vinyl records, even though used CD’s for years, and most of my music stuff on MP3 now

For ease of use, speed of image retrieval, indexing, no degradation on copies, it can’t be beaten. Compression rate and hard disk size is an issue, and could be a problem given the sheer volume of continuous image data produced from a typical inspection job (as opposed to the more event-driven storage now used in CCTV sector – pointless storing hours of footage whilst nothing is happening). Mind you, most of the VCR tape footage from inspection jobs is rarely looked at, apart from anomalies etc., or e.g. for comparison from previous years before damage found etc. I guess digital storage of video will catch on offshore eventually, when the price is right and clear cost/benefit advantages.

For anyone interested in the technical details, it’s worth checking out websites of various CCTV DVR manufacturers, but bear in mind slightly different requirements of that sector (i.e. don’t necessarily need hours of footage of nothing storing, time-lapse not applicable to our needs for inspection etc). I think its good for people in one industry not to be blinkered and miss out on technical devlopments happening elsewhere.

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[Gina McLauchlan]

This is one carried over from the old forum

Digital recording systems are catching on in the offshore industry. The drive at the moment is from the oil companies, ie the final client. Which is good for them, makes the reviewing of any critical data much easier.

It has to be the way forward, whether it be direct on to a HD or a disc.

[Gina McLauchlan]

This is one carried over from the old forum

another example of digital recording technology http://www.adyoron.com/intro.htm

[Gina McLauchlan]

This is one carried over from the old forum

All our survey on the Skandi Inspector and Skandi Carla is now all ecorded digitally. It ties in all survey data with the pictures so its all one neat package.

Even our Client on a drilling rig is asking for his video on CD now!

[Gina McLauchlan]

This is one carried over from the old forum

It ties in all survey data with the pictures so its all one neat package.

That’s the advantage of recording to HD, you can have the images, survey data, nav data and events as one package. Easy to work with, and when the client wants his highlights all you have to do is select the events they want and watch them transfer to DVD (or go away and get a cuppa tea) 😀 . Well, this is true of the VisulaWorks system…not sure about any others.

[Gina McLauchlan]

This is one carried over from the old forum

Good to hear some companies keeping up with the times, must just be I have not been lucky enough to be sent on a system that has DVR’s, the only digital video recording stuff I’ve seen used are frame grabbers for stills and short video clips. I’ve used DVR’s in some onshore work, so would be really interested to make a comparison of the kit used offshore.

If anyone who has used DVR’s offshore has technical info (manufacturers, model numbers, specs etc) on systems they have worked with, and how effective they are, please give details. (More interested in details of the hardware side than the particular inspection software packages used, although this of interest too).

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[Gina McLauchlan]

This is one carried over from the old forum

In my particular situation there was also an issue of trust – the client wanted a non-editable, ‘black box’ recording, which counts out PC hard disk.

Technically wouldn’t that exclude all digital recording methods?

[Gina McLauchlan]

This is one carried over from the old forum

If anyone who has used DVR’s offshore has technical info (manufacturers, model numbers, specs etc) on systems they have worked with, and how effective they are, please give details. (More interested in details of the hardware side than the particular inspection software packages used, although this of interest too).
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I’ve only used the VisualSoft System offshore, and a very good system it is too. Too much to write down all the specs, easier if you look at thier website. http://www.vsl.org.uk

They seem to be the market leader of DVR’s in the offshore industry at the moment.

[Gina McLauchlan]

This is one carried over from the old forum

Bearing in mind that a PC (hard disk) based recording system in this case is being used as a Digital Video Recorder…. The data is stored digitally on a disk.

[Gina McLauchlan]

This is one carried over from the old forum

Technically wouldn’t that exclude all digital recording methods?

No, by feeding live video straight into a standalone DVDR using non-rewritable disks, you have a real time recording that cannot be tampered with.

Don’t get me wrong, from the point of view of ease of use, data integration, indexing etc. I would agree 100% with Gina that the PC is the only sensible way to go. It is mainly the loss of quality that concerns me – this appears to be caused by the current generation video capture card (a modern PC and hard drive can stream data fast enough to cope with uncompressed video). I would guess that mass market video cards will improve over the next couple of years.

Someone mentioned security recording systems – if you are going that route tread with caution. They perform thier intended role very well, but have some features which might not be suitable for other jobs – like having to enter a pin number every time you want to stop or pause recording, that would soon drive you nuts!

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