Confused, Need Some Help Please...

meegwell

I just setup a new camera and the security spy demo all with no problems. Primarily, I am confused as to what (software or hardware) should be doing what (activating the recording, motion detection settings, scheduling). Both the camera and security spy have many overlapping features.

Here is what I've been able to do:

Connect to the camera (Dahua PoE 1080p bullet) directly in browsers no problem.
Connect to the camera in SecuritySpy no problem (just made a new connection and put in the ip address).
Manually record footage direct from the camera user screens, saved at the destination I set in the camera user screens (.dav file)

To get SecuritySpy to record, Under Camera Settings>Setup I choose Enable Camera and Motion detection enabled. Then, under >motion capture tab I select to Capture Movie when Motion is Detected.

Is this correct for using SecurtySpy as the "control"? I end up with a .mov file in the destination.

Why does it ask me for a frame rate isn't that set by the camera?

Under Video Device settings I have No Recompression checked, I don't want the CPU compressing...is this what I'm getting with the above scenario?

Now, what if I want my camera to dictate motion detection, and not security spy? I can't seem to get this to work. Do I have to set anything special in security spy to basically say "look for data sent by the camera and store it"?

When I manually recorded with the camera user interface a .dav file was saved and security spy didn't know it existed. i.e. when I choose View Captured Footage it wasn't there (although the file was in the same destination).

When would I use passive mode?

Basically Im confused as to how the overlapping features of hardware and software interplay with each other, and which/why I should use one over the other.

Thanks for any input...its been fun tinkering with all this tonight but its time for bed now...

Ben

Hello again Mike,

Basically, you should ignore the camera's motion detection and capture features and use SecuritySpy's features - this is going to give you the best user experience. SecuritySpy will always do its own motion detection (there are too many cameras with too many APIs for us to implement camera-side motion detection, but fortunately SecuritySpy's motion detection is effective and efficient). As you have seen, SecuritySpy captures footage as standard QuickTime Movie (.mov) files, which can be played back within SecuritySpy itself, or via the web interface in a browser on Mac, PC or iOS.

If you have the "No recompression" option checked then your CPU will not be doing any work to actually compress the video stream - this is ideal. But for this to work you can't use SecuritySpy's text overlay feature (see the Optimising Performance section of the user manual). In this situation, with SecuritySpy capturing H.264 video from the camera directly with no recompression, SecuritySpy cannot change the frame rate of the stream, so any frame rate for the video captures you enter in SecuritySpy will be ignored. So you should set a reasonable frame rate in the camera itself: 5-10fps is good for general purpose usage; with a high frame rate you would be wasting CPU time and disk space for little further benefit.

Passive mode is basically viewing-only; Active mode turns on all the capture/action features you have set in the Camera Settings window. A schedule can switch between Passive and Active at certain times, or you can set this manually based on whether you are home or away - see the Getting Started section of the user manual.

Let me know if you have any further questions!

meegwell

Thanks again. So as I see it, I can remove the "path" designation in the camera setting, assuring it wont be recording anywhere and maybe disable motion detection.

Thanks a lot. I have been very pleased with this whole setup so far...fromt the hardware setup to the software and particularly the support here.

Mike