Hi, I want to install CCTV, 2 routes, dedicated NVR Or PC / Pi alternatives.
Reading other post the benefits of a dedicated NVR are good, built in POE supply and 24Hr recording with no hassle. But the cameras are not on your network.
Can you get a stream out of the NVR. Looking at either the Hikvision DS-7608NI-K2-8P or the more expensive DS-7608NI-I2-8P.
Will they both supply a streamed image from any camera that can be used in HA to display a live view.
Regards Dave
hi dave - did you ever solve this? I’m getting the same NVR soon. I’m trying to think whether it’s best to try and get a stream from the NVR, or go direct to the cameras and take one of the streams of each cam.
Hi, still not bought a NVR yet, so no progress. Still looking at cameras, feel I need to buy one with People detection. What NVR are you looking to get?
Re Dave
Might seem a little counterintuitive but with most hik NVRs if you don’t use the on board PoE ports you can have the cameras on your network. You loose the benefit on the on board PoE but mean you can access the cameras…
Thinking about it I think our NVRs have a RSTP feed… if I get a chance I’ll take a look tomorrow at the NVR
I’m getting the DS-7608NI-I2/8P with DS-2CD2H45FWD-IZS(2.8-12mm) cameras.
Yes, am thinking of connecting the cameras to my main LAN, then the NVR becomes another client of the cameras, as well has HA.
Yes of course you can pull the streams off the NVR. Wouldn’t make much sense if you couldn’t 
You have two options:
Pull the rtsp stream of any connected camera over the NVR IP. This works for any camera known to the NVR, regardless of how it’s physically connected (ie over the built-in PoE ports or over an external switch). You can also pull a realtime transcoded stream or the virtual stream 0 (a composite image of multiple camera streams as a mosaic, this is created by the NVR).
You can pull the stream from each camera individually. This works with cameras connected to the same subnet as the NVR host IP. There are virtual port mappings for accessing the cameras connected to the PoE ports individually, they work for things like getting still images, the camera web interface, etc. But they might not work for rtsp streams, as port 554 isn’t NAT’ed, as far as I know. Or at least it isn’t documented.
The first option, going over the NVR is preferred. If you pull the stream from each camera individually, the cameras MCU will have to server two rtsp streams, one for you and one for the NVR. On highres streams this can lead to frame loss.
In addition to realtime streams, you can also pull recorded footage from the NVR as rtsp streams.
I have a DS-7608NI-I2 / 8P.
You can access all cameras connected to the internal PoE over virtual port mappings. The NVR NATs port 80 of every camera connected to the PoE NIC to virtual ports 65001, 65002, etc, one for each physical PoE port. You can use that to access each camera (still images, web interface, ISAPI, etc).
Thanks a lot! Really useful.
Hardware wise, will a Pi4 manage with six camera streams? (Assuming I’m only presenting them as a mosaic for now)
nudge to the top, got the cameras setup today so keen to buy my hardware for HA. Do we think a Pi 4 will be ok with the RTSP streams and hosting some mosaic views of them?
If you want to stream 6 high resolution camera streams simultaneously and continuously, then no, a Pi4 will not be enough (well, technically it would, but the way HA handles RTSP streams is anything but performance optimized).
But if you have your NVR generate channel zero and stream that one instead, then that will work fine with a Pi4 even if streamed continuously. You could also open each full resolution stream one by one as needed, just not all at the same time.
Thank you, really handy.
How I can ?
How can you what ? Being a little bit more precise about what your question is would be helpful…