Hi Scott and welcome to the forum.
Well, plug away, is not always that easy ;). Some camera manufacturers like D-link have a very good documentation how to connect to their cameras. You can get that info in the configuration of the camera. Some manufacturer could be much better on that. However, take a look in the configuration of the camera if there is some interesting information. If not I have some tips for you to test:
-When adding the camera in NCS go to the tab Custom URL.
-The camera deliver HD using h.264 so set Stream type to rtsp_tcp
-The million dollar question is the URL and here are some suggestions that you should test:
rtsp://username:password@ipnumber:554/h264_hd.sdp
rtsp://username:password@ipnumber:554/h264_vga.sdp
Good luck,
Henrik