Feature Request in Playback.
As someone who used ZoneMinder for a while before jumping to SS, I feel I've made the right choice.
SS is SO much easier to get set up and running.
However...
Viewing captured footage is a clunky experience compared to ZM, to the point that is is painful.
As an example, somebody tampered with my car's wingmirror today (folded it in). I live on a fairly busy street, and so in ZM I could tell it to replay all events for today, one after the other, without gaps, and just watch for where it was moved.
In SecuritySpy, I have to pick a random event, play it, check if the mirror is in or out, then come back out of the video, choose another, look at that and so on. It's not nice.
It would even be better if, in the playback screen, there was a prev / next link to move between video clips without going back to the list every time.
SS is SO much easier to get set up and running.
However...
Viewing captured footage is a clunky experience compared to ZM, to the point that is is painful.
As an example, somebody tampered with my car's wingmirror today (folded it in). I live on a fairly busy street, and so in ZM I could tell it to replay all events for today, one after the other, without gaps, and just watch for where it was moved.
In SecuritySpy, I have to pick a random event, play it, check if the mirror is in or out, then come back out of the video, choose another, look at that and so on. It's not nice.
It would even be better if, in the playback screen, there was a prev / next link to move between video clips without going back to the list every time.
Comments
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Hi - there are two ways to achieve what you describe:
1. It sounds like you are using SecuritySpy's web interface to view the files. Instead, using SecuritySpy's built-in Browser feature (available from the Browser menu in the software) will give you a much better viewing experience. There is an option to play all files in a row, just as you describe.
2. Alternatively, if you use the "One movie per day" option for motion-detection capture (under the Motion capture tab in the Camera Settings window), you will get a single movie file for each day that contains all the motion events. So this can be viewed as one long video file in either the Browser or via the web interface.
Hope this helps. -
OK.
Like many people, I run SS on a headless server. Is there a way to run SS in a client / server mode to view the footage as you described from my macbook for example? -
Use the built-in screen sharing. On your SS server, go into "System Preferences" then select "Sharing". Click the "Screen Sharing" checkbox. From your macbook, go to the Finder. Go to "Go" then "Connect to Server" and either put in "vnc://1.2.3.4" (where 1.2.3.4 is the IP of your SS) or use the "Browse" button to find your machine.
Secondly, for a hack to create a movie of all a day's events, use this:
http://www.bensoftware.com/forum/discussion/908/feature-request-time-lapse-of-motion-detection-events#Item_4
JT
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Screen Sharing is a good solution.
Alternatively you can use a second copy of SecuritySpy running on a different Mac, like this:
- On the server Mac, enable File Sharing via the Sharing system preference.
- On the client Mac, mount the server's drive via the Shared section on the left of Finder windows.
- Locate the capture destination folder(s) for the camera on the shared drive, and drag them to the "Cameras" box in the Browser in SecuritySpy running on the client Mac. If you are capturing to the default location, simply drag the whole "Captured files" folder over (you'll find it in the SecuritySpy folder within the user's Documents folder).
The Browser on the client Mac will scan the folders and display all the files. -
Thanks Ben.
And Thanks JT, the only reason I avoided that is that the frame rate over vnc is a bit poor for viewing video.
