Please excuse the lag, if I got email notifying me of the replies I missed it.
Upgrading the hardware helped a lot, & I'm planning to try it with the very best 32-bit machine I can build. I'm expecting it to be much better at that point. The 600MHz PIII with ½ a gig of RAM just wasn’t getting it done.
The camera does still "stall" a bit between files, but now it's just a second or two as it finishes writing the old file & starts the new file. I record 15-minute clips so that the files of interest won't be big huge files.
Along that line ... if the program can be set to start the new file on schedule, & finish writing the old one as resources permit, that oughta do it. I'm not a programmer, I'm a hardware guy (I run a non-profit computer recycling op), so if this is impossibly stupid please just try to overlook my ignorance.
I don't use any of the transmit features, here's the process that I do use ...
1) I let the camera run & when things of interest happen I note the time stamps for "keeper" files on index cards ... I'm also occasionally asked by the police if I have anything for a given date & time. In that case we'll check it out as they stand here in my office, & as often as not they leave with a CD or a flash drive & a couple of files. I always access the DVR box from another machine on the LAN. This way the DVR box's resources are largely reserved for the camera.
2) When I get up in the morning I reach out across the LAN from a "processing" box & pack all of the previous day's files into a winrar archive file. This preserves the file creation date & time for each file, & that archiving process runs while I'm at work.
3) When I get home in the evening I move the individual "keepers" to a Keepers folder & delete the rest (keeping the winrar archive & the "keepers".
4) Every other day, & still working from across the LAN with the "processing" box, I burn 2 days (2 packed-up day files) to a DVD blank, then delete the day files that've been burned.
5) Still reaching out to the DVR box from the "processing" box, I burn the Keepers folder when it's close to, but still less than 4.3 GB. This occurs more or less weekly.
6) I do occasionally show the results to the police upon request, or when I feel that they (police/prosecutor/mayor/etc) need to be reminded of what the world will see if they fail to control the knuckleheads that are inspiring all of this to begin with.
And FYI ... it's working ... for the most part the knuckleheads are at least trying to keep said heads down low & seem to be taking their worst elsewhere.
I'll try the beta ASAP.
Thanks