I'm designing a hardware-only screen recording setup for my company that involves 50 PCs, each connected to 4 extended monitors, totaling 200 monitors. The goal is to capture the output without installing any software on the PCs. Here's the plan:
- Each monitor will connect to a 1x2 HDMI splitter (one output to the monitor, the other to a PCIe capture card in a server).
- Each capture card will handle 4 HDMI inputs, requiring a total of 50 capture cards.
- To accommodate these, I'll use 7 servers, with each server having 8 PCIe slots (resulting in 32 inputs per server).
- The server storage will be a NAS capable of holding around 50-80 TB for two months, using H.265 compression at 1 Mbps per screen.
- I'll be using Milestone as the VMS.
I have a few concerns:
- Are there any issues with using HDMI splitters on this scale?
- Is 7 servers a realistic approach for managing 200 monitor feeds?
- Are there better options available for handling 200+ HDMI channels?
Thanks in advance for your insights! I've heard setups like this are common in banking, but this is my first time attempting anything like it.
5 Answers
You need to really think about the storage requirements. Depending on the display resolutions and frame rates, the storage capacity might not be enough. Consider using hardware encoders and check your bandwidth since 1 Mbps seems really low for most monitor resolutions.
Why not just install cameras above each monitor? Or maybe hire painters to capture the screens? 😂
Court sketch artists could be an interesting alternative!
Just a heads up, many companies in regulated industries use sophisticated appliances for this kind of task. You might want to consider consulting a vendor experienced in such setups to avoid pitfalls.
I'm seeing potential pitfalls here. Are you sure there's a real need to review all 200 monitors? Perhaps you could clarify the actual objective because that might help streamline your approach.
Maybe AI can handle watching the feeds?
This setup sounds pretty complicated! Have you considered using a centralized system that captures all the feeds to storage rather than managing each monitor's output? It might simplify things dramatically.
Yeah, I wonder if there are compliance reasons behind this method. It sounds a bit extreme otherwise.
Hardware encoders, especially NDI encoders, could be the key to optimizing network streaming without compromising quality.