Live Security Camera Stream

[Quinntun]

Good day guys,

 

I have a quick question, at our company we currently have roughly 128 cameras on site (with plans to add more) and the computer we have at the security station is vastly under powered to watch it, as watching all at one time makes the video very choppy or even show mins of footage behind (like i could walk to the station be in there for several mins and i would see my self on the camera walking to the station).

 

I am currently wondering if there is a site or a tool that i can plug in pc specs and it will tell me the max number of streams i can watch simultaneously.

 

We currently have intel i7 12700 with 16GB RAM no GPU.

 

I am considering adding more RAM since its usually at 85-90% full and adding a GPU, thinking RTX 5050 but not sure if its powerful enough or should i go with a older GPU with more uhmp like a RTX 2080. 
But if i can get a site or a tool I can play around with to see which GPU combo that will work best will be good to.

[OddOod]

I'm not super familiar with the hardware requirements to watch that number of streams. Is it limited by cpu cores? Vram? CUDA cores? Ram? 

[Quinntun]

That i am not sure I do know if using software decoding it dependent on CPU cores and RAM or there is an option for hardware decoding which will push it on to the GPU for decoding but as to what is really needed i am not sure.

Right now we are using hardware decoding system utiliaztion is as follows:

intel integrated GPU is at 75-90%

RAM is at 80%

CPU is at 35-45%

 

If using software decoding CPU jumps to 90% while GPU will jump to 1-5%

In both cases the results is the same. 

[voyager_]

What software are you using to record and monitor the cameras?

[Omon_Ra]

3 hours ago, voyager_ said:

What software are you using to record and monitor the cameras?

The other part of this is what resolution/bitrate are the camera streams? If it's a stand-alone NVR/server (which I'm assuming it is with 128+ cams), you should be able to set different encoding/resolution streams. One higher res/frame rate for actual recording, and a lower res/lower frame rate for live view. If they're 2K or greater resolution cameras, there is no need to be trying to live view 128+ cameras in full resolution.

[Quinntun]

16 hours ago, voyager_ said:

What software are you using to record and monitor the cameras?

 

12 hours ago, Omon_Ra said:

The other part of this is what resolution/bitrate are the camera streams? If it's a stand-alone NVR/server (which I'm assuming it is with 128+ cams), you should be able to set different encoding/resolution streams. One higher res/frame rate for actual recording, and a lower res/lower frame rate for live view. If they're 2K or greater resolution cameras, there is no need to be trying to live view 128+ cameras in full resolution.

We are currently using 3 NVR 2x32 ch and 1 64ch. The software we are using is the recommended one by the manufacture of the NVR ivms-4200. To add the more cameras we will be adding a fourth NVR.

 

With the live view in mini mode (where you can see all cams at the same time) it defaults to sub stream which is 640*360 @128kbps. Only goes to main stream which is 1080p or 2k (depends on camera) if viewing a single cam.

 

For kicks and giggles i did try and run all at main stream ya well EVERYTHING got peg to 100%  n instantly froze up.

[Omon_Ra]

On 9/26/2025 at 9:29 AM, Quinntun said:

 

We are currently using 3 NVR 2x32 ch and 1 64ch. The software we are using is the recommended one by the manufacture of the NVR ivms-4200. To add the more cameras we will be adding a fourth NVR.

 

With the live view in mini mode (where you can see all cams at the same time) it defaults to sub stream which is 640*360 @128kbps. Only goes to main stream which is 1080p or 2k (depends on camera) if viewing a single cam.

 

For kicks and giggles i did try and run all at main stream ya well EVERYTHING got peg to 100%  n instantly froze up.

Probably need a discrete GPU, and more RAM wouldn't hurt either. I've seen this with several clients where staff are running NVR software (not the same software as yours, but same kinda thing) for live viewing on their primary work PC. We've either had to install a separate PC/NUC just for camera duties or install a discrete GPU. You shouldn't need anything too crazy, but around 12-14 cams seems to be the limit of iGPU decoding from what I've seen. I'd probably go with a 2070/80 versus a current gen lower tier card. What codec is the NVR using for the streams? H.264, 265, or something else?

[Quinntun]

19 hours ago, Omon_Ra said:

Probably need a discrete GPU, and more RAM wouldn't hurt either. I've seen this with several clients where staff are running NVR software (not the same software as yours, but same kinda thing) for live viewing on their primary work PC. We've either had to install a separate PC/NUC just for camera duties or install a discrete GPU. You shouldn't need anything too crazy, but around 12-14 cams seems to be the limit of iGPU decoding from what I've seen. I'd probably go with a 2070/80 versus a current gen lower tier card. What codec is the NVR using for the streams? H.264, 265, or something else?

Thanks for the info, Sub stream is using H264, while main stream is using 265.

Sub stream is where we watch all cams at a time main stream is usually just one, two max (as we have two monitors so one per monitor)

[Omon_Ra]

2 hours ago, Quinntun said:

Thanks for the info, Sub stream is using H264, while main stream is using 265.

Sub stream is where we watch all cams at a time main stream is usually just one, two max (as we have two monitors so one per monitor)

You could try using h265 for the sub stream as well for the time being. It's a bit more efficient than 264 so could give you some more overhead. But take a look at the resource monitor on your viewing PC and see how much GPU utilization is used. 128 individual camera streams is just a lot of decoding regardless.

[Quinntun]

On 9/28/2025 at 12:13 PM, Omon_Ra said:

You could try using h265 for the sub stream as well for the time being. It's a bit more efficient than 264 so could give you some more overhead. But take a look at the resource monitor on your viewing PC and see how much GPU utilization is used. 128 individual camera streams is just a lot of decoding regardless.

OK thanks i will take a look into it.