Hi all,

I have several closed circuit cameras running composite video over
RG59.

The plan is to terminate these into a video sender so that I can
recieve them anywhere in the house with a reciever.

However, I would also like to feed them into a PC with grabber card.

Can I just split the cable with a phono splitter or something? Or will
this cause too much interferance and noise? If not, what do I need to
be able to do this?

Many thanks,
Lister

In article . com,
wrote:
Hi all,

I have several closed circuit cameras running composite video over
RG59.

The plan is to terminate these into a video sender so that I can
recieve them anywhere in the house with a reciever.

However, I would also like to feed them into a PC with grabber card.

Can I just split the cable with a phono splitter or something? Or will
this cause too much interferance and noise? If not, what do I need to
be able to do this?

What you probably need is a composite video distribution amplifier. Unlike
most audio, video signals need to be properly terminated and buffered
rather than a passive split.

However, they can be daisy chained if the termination is removed from
intermediate devices and just left on the end one, but this would probably
mean modifying the equipment.

This is one supplier of DAs - but there are many makes, types and
suppliers so you'll have to do the searching for best value.
http://www.avtoolbox.co.uk/distributionpage.html

You could also check Ebay for secondhand pro ones as composite isn't much
in use these days in broadcasting.

--
*Who are these kids and why are they calling me Mom?

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On 2 Jul 2006 04:01:27 -0700, wrote:

I have several closed circuit cameras running composite video over
RG59.

The plan is to terminate these into a video sender so that I can
recieve them anywhere in the house with a reciever.

I suspect there is a bit of infromation missing here. How do you display
each camera on a single display, sequentially with a switcher or
simultaneous with a quad split box (up to four...)

However, I would also like to feed them into a PC with grabber card.

Can I just split the cable with a phono splitter or something?

That isn't the best way to do it. You could try daisy chaining with a 75
ohm termination at the last device. But that relies on the intermediate
devices having high impedance inputs, they probably are. A video DA will
work but costs more.

--
Cheers
Dave. pam is missing e-mail

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
This is one supplier of DAs - but there are many makes, types and
suppliers so you'll have to do the searching for best value.
http://www.avtoolbox.co.uk/distributionpage.html

Checks prices and faints

You could also check Ebay for secondhand pro ones as composite isn't much
in use these days in broadcasting.

Many thanks for the info. I'll take a look on ebay

"DecaturTxCowboy" wrote in message
et...
wrote:
I have several closed circuit cameras running composite video over
RG59.

The plan is to terminate these into a video sender so that I can
recieve them anywhere in the house with a reciever.

However, I would also like to feed them into a PC with grabber card.

Can I just split the cable with a phono splitter or something? Or will
this cause too much interferance and noise? If not, what do I need to
be able to do this?

Phono splitters are evil.

As I understand it, you have several composite video cameras that are
cabled back to a common location and want to view the imagery from several
other locations in the house.

A possible solution is what I've done in a commercial environment where
there are computers all over the place, unlike a house where you have
simple television sets in different rooms. The composite video cams go in
to a switcher that has both a composite video and ethernet output. The
cams can be viewed on any computer on the network. Once you get the
composite video into an ethernet format, you have more possibilities for
distribution.

I run a pc in cellar for my cctv. Composite video signals run through cat5
cabling (via converters) to patch panel adj. The cctv software runs in full
screen mode with 4 cams on screen. TV out from the graphics card goes into
an RF Modulator from Maplins, this adds cctv to the main Arial input to the
TV distribution amplifier. Any TV in house put to channel 8 gets cameras

I will say the heresy ... you could try the Y cable approach and see what
you think.

It is not the best method, but it is really cheap and quick to try. You
might find that it works well enough for your taste.

The impedance of the circuit is not right and a lot depends on the input
amplifiers of the equipment.

The "proper" way is to use a distribution amplifier. This isolates the
output that you are distributing from the inputs you are feeding and gives
each input it's own good signal.
Here is an example of one: www.smarthome.com/8141.html

--
Bill Fuhrmann

listerofsmeg01 wrote ...
Hi all,

I have several closed circuit cameras running composite video over
RG59.

The plan is to terminate these into a video sender so that I can
recieve them anywhere in the house with a reciever.

However, I would also like to feed them into a PC with grabber card.

Can I just split the cable with a phono splitter or something? Or will
this cause too much interferance and noise? If not, what do I need to
be able to do this?

Many thanks,
Lister

DecaturTxCowboy wrote:
The composite video cams go
in to a switcher that has both a composite video and ethernet output.
The cams can be viewed on any computer on the network. Once you get the
composite video into an ethernet format, you have more possibilities for
distribution.

Can you expand on this a bit? What do you mean by "switcher"? Is this a
device that cycles through the various inputs on a timed basis?
In what format is the video put on the wire? Is it some standard like
MPEG-4?

The whole point of the split is to get imagery to my PC network too
(and to the Internet), but the quality is not brilliant, and I really
wanted to have an easy to access good quality source on my telly -
hence the two seperate systems.

In my previous house I used to have the grabber PC use my telly as the
console. This worked ok, but it meant your had to chose camera sources
via a wireless mouse and keyboard which was a bit clunky.

Tim Morley wrote:
I run a pc in cellar for my cctv. Composite video signals run through cat5
cabling (via converters) to patch panel adj. The cctv software runs in full
screen mode with 4 cams on screen. TV out from the graphics card goes into
an RF Modulator from Maplins, this adds cctv to the main Arial input to the
TV distribution amplifier. Any TV in house put to channel 8 gets cameras

Hmm. This is interesting, but I take it all your TV's are hardwired to
the DA with coax?

Wiring is not an option in my case, but your use of an RF modulator is
intriging. Can you get video senders that send RF signals do you know?
With this I could have each camera with its own RF mod putting it on a
different frequency. This way I could in theory transmit as many
cameras as I wanted on the channel. The 4 channel limit has been
bugging me a bit :-/

On 2 Jul 2006 15:25:06 -0700, wrote:


DecaturTxCowboy wrote:
The composite video cams go
in to a switcher that has both a composite video and ethernet output.
The cams can be viewed on any computer on the network. Once you get the
composite video into an ethernet format, you have more possibilities for
distribution.

Can you expand on this a bit? What do you mean by "switcher"? Is this a
device that cycles through the various inputs on a timed basis?
In what format is the video put on the wire? Is it some standard like
MPEG-4?

The whole point of the split is to get imagery to my PC network too
(and to the Internet), but the quality is not brilliant, and I really
wanted to have an easy to access good quality source on my telly -
hence the two seperate systems.

Any video card with RF input can fit in your PC and you can modulate
the cameras with an RF modulator. We use the Channel Master units in
bars, but the little 3 channel unit that shows up on eBay will do in a
pinch and modulate 10-15 TV's. Here we give it UHF channels 65,67 and
72 and all tv's can tune it.

Try
http://www.merchantamerica.com/utahs...&category=3535
for a source of RF modulators.

Carl Navarro