Browser 4.0

PRBob

The new browser seems to be missing the option to play all the motion capture files one after the other. I used to do this with the cmd option P keys. I would set the playback to about 4 times normal speed and watch them all for something of interest. Now I have to select a recording, press the play key, then press the L key a few times to get to faster playback. At the end of that recording, I need to repeat all these steps with the next recording. I hope that there is a better way because this takes way to long to view about 50 recordings.

Ben

Yes that's a good point, we'll find a way to make playing through the files one-by-one much easier in the next update.

Ben

In the new release of SecuritySpy (4.0.5), the Browser will skip empty sections. So all you have to do now is press L a few times to get the playback speed you want, and the Browser will proceed to play back each file sequentially.

PRBob

Thanks for addressing my problem but it doesn't work for me. The video keeps on playing and doesn't go to the next motion detection time. Perhaps it is because I have Continous recording enabled. I am using 4.0.5.

Ben

If you have continuous-capture recording enabled then there will be video for the Browser to play all the time, so it won't skip. What we'll do for the next update is add an additional filter to the Browser to display only motion-capture movie files, then it will do what you want.

PRBob

Thanks, that should work.

PRBob

Thanks for adding the 'Motion Capture Movies Only' filter to the browser. I am now able to view all the motion captures quickly. It works great.

Ben

Great to hear that!

bcc4497

When playing files at increased speeds, frames seem to be dropped. I would prefer for the frames to be retained and played more quickly. I've looked in the Preferences, but can't seem to find a way to accomplish this. Is there a setting I'm missing, or something I can change with my camera settings to accomplish this?

Ben

Hi @bcc4497 I'm afraid there is no way to do this. Upon playback, the video stream has to be decoded, and there is going to be a limit to how fast this can be done by your Mac's CPU (while it is also doing other tasks such as decompressing and recording the incoming streams). If frames are being dropped, it simply means that your Mac cannot keep up with the amount of processing that is demanded of it. This is going to be an even greater problem at high playback rates.

bcc4497

Thanks Ben. Just for clarification... For example, at 4x speed I'll see the video timestamp go from 15:02, 15:04, 15:06, 15:08, 15:10 in the span of 2 seconds changing every .5 seconds instead of 15:02, 15:03, 15:04, 15:05 ... 15:09, 15:10 in the span of 2 seconds changing every 0.25 seconds. Is the expected behavior, assuming my CPU is up to the task, the former or the latter? My video framerate is 10fps if that makes a difference.

bcc4497

Just another data point. I increased the fps from 10 to 20 on my camera, and now I can see every second of the timestamp, but movement appears slightly jerky starting at 4x speed. I believe I'm still not seeing every frame, but allowing more frames per second allows a shorter time period between the frames I am seeing. I believe if the camera was at 40 fps, I would experience 4x speed as fluid as I experience 10fps in real time.

Ben

I suspect that at a certain playback rate, the amount of work that the Mac's CPU has to do to decompress every frame exceeds it capacity, so it will start to skip frames, and eventually start to decompress and play only key frames. The actual video playback is handled by Apple's code; SecuritySpy is just providing the video files and the playback parameters. To get better performance at higher playback rates I think you'll have to reduce the capture frame rate.

BrianM

I think this is actually a bug with H.264 videos (.m4v) - just did some testing and 1x, 2x, 8x, 32x and 64x all work usually, but 4x freezes the video display - sometimes after a while it will jump and start working. Sometimes 64x has the same effect.
I tested 2 H.264 cameras I have continuous recording one is at 8fps, and the other at 10fps - same results for both.

I had Activity Monitor running on my other screen and at all but 4x, the data read/sec increased as expected with each multiple - and my system can keep up with 64x playback. my system has an idle read of 16-64 KB/s (sometimes does dip to 0) - 1x shows a read from 116 to 244 or so on average, 2x that goes up to 288-300 or so on average, going to 4x might get a burst of data into a few MB/s for a couple of seconds then drops to 80-160 KB/s - the counter at the bottom keeps updating, but no video change. going to 8x the video starts updating again, and after a quick burst of more data, it settles into 480-800 KB/s or so on average (fluctuates more). 16x video works reliably, and data rate is about 1 MB/s, 32x video continues to work reliably, and data rate has climbed to about 1.4 MB/s on average. 64x sometimes works, sometimes has the same behaviour as 4x with a quick burst of data, video stops updating, counter at the bottom continues to update but the data rate drops to 0 with occasional reads in the 192 KB/s range.
Also went through with CPU loads, and Security Spy didn't exceed about 40% CPU even at 64x on quad 2.3 Ghz i7 Mac mini

I could not reproduce on capture from one of my Foscam JPEG camera (.mov files) - all speeds worked fine.

BrianM

There are also glitches with playback through the browser, that don't happen playing the same video file(s) through quickview or in quicktime.
it will change from showing video to "No Video" sometimes randomly in a long capture (1hr) or won't show entire captures, but always shows .jpg files in the browser without error.