sundance-communications.com/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Security, Alarms and Paging Camera Distortions

I've tried changing ports to a port that appears perfect, it's still distorted.

Have you tried a different cable run? Maybe your cable got damaged.

The power will decrease on the longer runs. Can you place the power supplies closer to the cameras?

have you tested the camera with a moniter at the camera itself, disconnect the bnc and plug the camera direclty into in a local moniter basically bypassing your cable run (keep the power feed from your cable run connected). This will allow you to determine either a power issue or video issue. I am leaning towards a degraded video signal. I just had the same problem and had to add a video amplifier to two runs, they worked great, they cost a couple bucks but solved the problem.

Let us know how this turns out. good luck.

It could be a distance problem 12 vdc will only go 250 to 300 feet without problems or maybe 400' I can't remember, if they will take 24 vac switch them

First let me say this is my first time working with CATV. I was looking for a solution to my Netview CATV problem, and guess what-it's identical to what you have.

We extended the cameras out 100 feet and found out the connectors were making poor contact. After correcting this, and isolating the power cables from the camera cables to eliminate any induction noise, we still only got 50%-60% and in BW. My cable tech discovered that the DVRs needed to be on a single phase dedicated power -each one by itself on the AC plug. I refused to believe my him about this,and decided to test this.We pulled the other power plugs besides the DVR and it worked! Pictures were no longer distored or in BW. They were clear and in color. Hope this helps you.

I believe we are on the way to correcting this, but now the electrician needs to know-do both DVRs share the single phase (A and A) or does each one sit on a different phase (A and B). Does anyone know?

Second, let me apologise for getting excited and not seeing the 4 month old date on the post. Also, I meant CCTV, not CATV. whew!Hey I was just excited someone at least had the same problem I am trying to correct.

I've seen the same problem in mutliple jobs now. Most clear up by loose connections. I use APC Commerical Battery Backups (Up to 4 hrs or better) on a dedicated circuit (orange!). Doesn't seem to help much.

$0.02.

Interesting.

I don't know exactly what you are seeing on the monitor, but....

.... after I check terminations and power supply issues, I look for possible ground loops.

Just an idea?

If it is working at one point, you've got a "last known good". That narrows down what can change between then and when you begin seeing "waving lines and distortions".

Then again... cheap cams usually means cheap coax.

???

I'll add to this that we had two identical 4 port pc cards from video insight and we started getting wavy lines on one of them. We kept thinking it was what you are looking at (cable connections,interference, etc). We never ended up changing the setup because it was still viewable (and wasn't highest priority). Then we changed th computer out to a dvr and at the same time our other pc went down so we got a new computer and installed the pc card we had pulled from the computer where were having the "waviness".
Well, the new dvr worked flawlessly with no waviness (and no other equipment change) and the brand new pc with this card in a totally different location had the exact same problems. we switched cards from the computer that went down and everything fine again. So, I guess it could be the card itself. My feeling was that the card got damaged at some point when we were installing a camera, or got a surge in a storm or something. Anyway, I wouldn't rule out the pc card as well.