Can't save hour-long video captures
I think this started when I moved from MacOS 10.6.8 to 10.9.2 but I'm not entirely sure.
I want to save a 60-minute continuous capture every hour..... but I end up with a few that are 60 minutes and the rest are random lengths, usually short. Was working fine for many months previously.
I've been through the settings many times and don't see what could be causing this randomness-- any clues appreciated.
I was on 2.2 and I just updated to 3x but back to teh same behavior.
Also, is there a way to get e-mail alerts when there are responses? <10% chance I'm going to remember yet another forum.
Thanks.
I want to save a 60-minute continuous capture every hour..... but I end up with a few that are 60 minutes and the rest are random lengths, usually short. Was working fine for many months previously.
I've been through the settings many times and don't see what could be causing this randomness-- any clues appreciated.
I was on 2.2 and I just updated to 3x but back to teh same behavior.
Also, is there a way to get e-mail alerts when there are responses? <10% chance I'm going to remember yet another forum.
Thanks.
Comments
As for the movies, the only way this could be happening is if the camera is going to Passive mode from time to time. If it's in Active mode all the time then it will record all the time. It may be going to Passive mode based on a schedule or due to some problem with the connection to the camera (e.g. if there is a networking error and the camera goes offline then this will stop the current recording - when the camera subsequently comes back online the recording will continue).
Maybe it's best if you email us SecuritySpy's log file (which you will find in the SecuritySpy folder within your Documents folder) and we'll take a closer look.
This may not be related to the specific problem you're having, which will probably be identified through your log file as Ben suggests.
I had no trouble with hour-long files in 10.6.8/ SS 2.2, for well over a year (maybe 2) and I like the length.
Seems like this should be an easy fix...
I tried disabling indexing i.e. removing that drive from Spotlight but apparently that wasn't it. I also set the capture rate back to 2 fps from 10 on both of the feeds being saved but that apparently wasn't it either. I haven't really seen a pattern to the hammering--- sometimes 11 after the hour, sometimes 22 after the hour....
The drive is a 1 TB on external USB with close to 600 GB free that "appears to be OK" in the usual 2-3 minute Disk Utility repair. At this rate it won't be fine for long.....
I don't think the drive is going bad. Definitely not "click of death"-- just kind of a loud drive that happens to be not too far from my head..... it's just something about the capture process that seems to be overwhelming it for whatever reason.
My setup is a Mini booted from an external SSD via USB3. I've moved the capture destination to the Mini's internal (HDD) drive for now-- will see what that does. I don't normally keep a backup of the external I use for captures (I have redundant backups for everything else) so I guess the next step is to try zeroing and restoring it when I find something to put its contents on temporarily.
If you reset the capture destinations to the defaults in SecuritySpy (so that it captures to your internal drive) then you should see that these problems go away.
SecuritySpy doesn't do anything special in terms of writing files that could cause such behaviour. One thing you could check though is that you have configured the compression settings so that the data rate being written is reasonably low, in order to relieve pressure on the drive. I would suggest you set SecuritySpy to use MPEG-4 compression, with a 50-60 quality setting, and a key frame rate of 15 (these are the default settings so if you haven't changed them don't worry).
For any cameras that are sending MPEG-4 or H.264 video to SecuritySpy, make sure you have selected the "No recompression of video data" option in the Video Device Settings window for that camera.
But if it were me I would change this drive
Hope this helps!