What our experts say…
The unprecedented flood of cutting-edge video technology sloshing around the surveillance market makes it easy to overlook the more mundane, behind-the-scenes products, without which many systems simply couldn’t function, or work as well.
The VMS 32M8 definitely fits into that category. It is an advanced 32-channel matrix video switcher, one of two new switchers introduced by Vista (the other one is a 16-channel model). Until recently switchers of this type have had a fairly low profile but the growing prevalence of large scale systems has created a control and management problem that devices like the VMS 32M8 seek to address.
Its primary role is to act as a central hub, providing a means of organising up to 32 video input channels (or multiples thereof, by cascading up to four VMS units), using multiple keyboards (up to eight per unit) and routing the images through the switcher’s eight monitor outputs.
There’s really not much to see on the outside. From the front it’s just a very plain rack-mountable black box and the only distinguishing feature is a pair of tiny green LEDs labelled PAL and NTSC. It’s fairly pointless too, there’s no good reason why an operator would need to know which video standard the system is processing, though it does at least serve as a power on indicator. Presumably if the NTSC indicator comes on, and the system is only using PAL video sources, then that might indicate a fault…
All of the action is around the back where there is a veritable forest of BNC sockets. There are 72 of them in all, 64 for the 32 camera inputs and their associated loop-throughs, and two banks of four sockets for the monitor outputs. To the right of each group of 36 sockets are columns of screw-fit, plug-in terminals for alarm inputs (one for each input channel) and outputs.
Two of the terminals are RS485 terminals and these carry PTZ telemetry (Vista and Pelco D) for up to 32 daisy-chained cameras per switcher network. The only other feature of note is a power supply socket (12 volt DC, supplied by a mains adaptor), and a socket for the external keyboard(s), which in the case of our test setup was our old friend, the Vista NPX/KBD/J3De.
Inside the sturdy steel case there’s little to see, just a single PCB, rigidly mounted on metal pillars, directly coupled to the backpane connections. This arrangement eliminates the need for any cables or dangly bits so mechanical and electrical stability should be excellent.
Setup and operation
It’s an archetypical plug-and-play device and since there are no physical controls on the device everything revolves around a simple on-screen menu. This is called up from the keyboard and protected by a 4-digit PIN. The opening Supervisor screen has four menus: Time/Date, Camera, System and View. A further four options (Alarm, Installer, Expansion and Language) appears on the on the Installer menu, which requires a different PIN code.
Selecting the Time/Date menu leads to a sub menu with options for setting time format (12/24hr), date format, set time, set date, Daylight Saving Time (on/off), DST setup, and Baxnet clock, which sets the unit to be either be the system’s master timekeeper, or a slave to another device’s clock.
The Camera menu allows each input to be individually configured and the options are to change or create a title (1-line up to 15 characters), input enable/disable (for video loss alarm), telemetry (off, VST-485, FSK-VST, Pelco-D, FSK-old or FSK-new) and camera address (when using VST-485 protocol).
On the System menu the choices are to change the unit’s PIN codes, set up Partitioning, which controls keyboard access to cameras, monitors and control receivers; the Monitor Display sub menu determines where on-screen info (title, time/date, alarm, program preset etc) is positioned on the screen.
View is the last item on the Supervisor menu and this is where it all happens. This deals with camera positioning, setting up tours and linked tours. Up to 128 separate views can be programmed, and it will store up to 16 tours, each one comprising up to 16 steps (each step can be a camera position or a programmed view), with variable dwell times that determine how long the image from the tour is displayed on a particular monitor. Tours can also be linked together to create a single tour of up to 32 positions.
On the extended Installer menu selecting Alarm brings up five sub-menus for setting global and device-level alarm responses (Acknowledge – operator reset, Transparent – manual or automatic reset or Timeout – timer controlled reset), Event Response times, Alarm Monitors, Alarm Input (N/O or N/C) and Response setup.
The Installer menu deals with system info (software version, save defaults, reset factory defaults). Expansion Options covers Baxnet operation (on/off) and last but not least, the Language menu, with a euro-centric choice of English, French, German, Spanish or Italian.
Performance
Since this device is principally concerned with switching video signals, as opposed to processing, recording or otherwise fiddling around with them in any meaningful way, performance boils down to two simple criteria:
Does the device degrade the image in any way, and do the various switching and programming functions work as described?
The answer is equally simple. What goes in comes out, so there is no discernable change in image quality, and all of the functions on our test rig, which included a Vista PowerDome camera, worked perfectly. Any criticisms we have concern a couple of quirks in the menu system and setting up a camera title is a tedious business but these are so minor as to be borderline petty, so we’ll leave it at that.
Build quality is outstanding and a brief session with the SI rubber mallet revealed no intermittencies or instability.