Local VMS solutions

Prof_Weaver · September 7, 2023

I recently started as an IT Director at a K-12 school. Currently, the only project I have an active disdain for is finding a video playback solution that is user friendly enough for our school administrators to use. Viewing video live isn't an issue, as we ran SDI from our camera wall in the help desk to the administrators office (its easy to tell them to simply switch to HDMI 2 on their TV instead of helping them set up Smart PSS every time their cameras go down [which was often considering their PCs are 3rd/4th generation Intel PCs with 8 gigs of RAM and no GPU]).

As of now, all of our cameras record to our NAS, but we have the following issues:

The drives frequently need to be remapped, which should be easy enough with a file we made for the admin to run, but it is needlessly adding a step that can cause the admin to panic/get frustrated.
While people confident working their way around the file explorer can drill down in file explorer (Camera location > date > time.mp4), this isn't the most user friendly UI
Our Dahua cameras record as .dav
Most of our admin do not use their PCs as their daily driver (they all have M1 MacBook Airs), so they're familiarity with Windows/file explorer becomes slimmer as the days go by

Currently, we are looking at Eagle Eye's local "cloud managed" VMS as an option. My main gripe is that we would be paying upwards of $20,000 for a device that essentially equates to a NAS and $6.50 per camera per month, which is a healthy chunk of change. From how I understand what we would be purchasing, we would be purchasing a redundant device (we have hardware that should be able to do what it does) and paying $6.50 a month for "cloud management," when all we need is simple software with user friendly UI to locate a camera, select time stamps, and download a clip.

Other solutions I have looked into (so far):

Agent DVR - I have been told it was used in the past and that it didn't work well. If you guys are raving about it, I can see what their gripe was.
BlueIris - doesn't support enough cameras, and the UI doesn't look friendly enough
In general, a lot of cloud based solutions - they are too expensive for the amount of cameras we have (about 120), especially once you consider all of the infrastructure we have already for local solutions

Overall, if Eagle Eye is the way we go, I am fine with it. I love their UI due to it's simplicity, but I feel like we are buying stuff we don't need (whatever "cloud management" entails and the redundant piece of hardware). Would you guys be able to point me towards any other VMS? I figure I would post here as every vendor I have found wants to set you up with a vendor before giving pricing details, and I have heard good things about this forum.

Edited September 7, 2023 by Prof_Weaver
added another solution I looked into - blueiris