NVR Setup 6 - Camera Menu

In this episode of In the Trenches, SCW’s expert discusses accessing the NVR Camera Menu.

Our speaker today is:

Andrew

Andrew:

Now we're going to take a look at the camera menu under setup. Once this has been selected, we're going to see our table that has all of our connected online and offline cameras. This is going to list the model, the IP address of the camera. We're also going to get some other information about its setup and configuration. So also a good spot to determine if you've got an offline camera and what error message we're getting from that offline camera. Green is going to indicate that it's connected. Next option down ENC Coding. This is going to be our setup for mainstream substream and third stream, which are available options on the live view. We're also going to get a controller to select which camera we're working with here.

Storage mode is what gets physically recorded to the hard drive. So in this situation we're recording the full quality and the third quality stream to the hard disk. We also get our capture mode. Some resolutions will only support certain frame rates, so you'll have some options in there. We also get our video compression resolution for each stream type, and then we have the ability to copy particular settings to other cameras in the system. Like our frame rate, we can copy to all Next option down audio. This is going to be for any cameras with available audio features. We're able to control the input and output of that camera. We've got some other options for noise suppression as well, and we're just going to select our camera in which we want to edit our settings.

Next option down OSD. This is going to be where we're naming our camera, controlling the time, the name, and how large all of that gets displayed on the screen. So let's choose our front door camera. We can edit this field to update the name of the camera. We also get options to show the time, show the name, or we can be disabling that date format. This is going to be the date format that gets displayed. It's going to be in a 24 hour format. If you'd like to see this in a 12 hour format, you just select the option with TTT at the end. That'll display as a 12 hour format on the camera. So get font color control for that overlay, and we can copy settings to other cameras from here as well. Next option down image. This is going to be a very helpful spot for us. Based on where the camera's installed, we'll get some different image presets that we can select to best optimize the image. So for this situation, we've got an indoor filter on it. Some cameras are going to have more options available than others depending on the model. Indoor is great for obviously indoor environments. General is kind of middle of the road. We've also got road highlight compensation and park highlight compensation. Those

Are special use cases for parking areas or cameras that happen to be pointed out at the street. They're going to help filter out some of that glare coming from the road lights. Smart illumination on some of our cameras with a dual light mode, we're going to get the option to leave it on infrared or switch it to dual light. You're also going to get some options for brightness, contrast saturation, all your standard video controls image can also be rotated from here if needed. We always prefer to aim the actual camera correctly, but if needed we can switch it from here, 90 degrees or 180 degrees. We're also going to get some exposure settings in here. It's going to be useful for adjusting for indoor lighting if you're getting some flicker or if you've got an area with very bright areas and very dark areas. We can control this with WDR. That'll really help our image quality.

Alright, let's take a look at schedule. Now. This is instructions for the MVR on what to record. So for each camera, we're able to tell it record all day, which is considered a normal record or 24 7 recording. Or we can record on motion some of these other options like event alarm, motion and alarm, motion or alarm. Those have very specific use cases. 99% of the time we're using normal and motion in everyday applications. So by default it's going to be 24 hours a day. We get some options to store the audio, have that schedule on or off, or if we're doing a redundant recording, we can save this to a secondary disc. If we want to switch this particular camera over to motion only recording, we can do that by clicking motion and click and drag into our field here, which will paint in our entire day.

Additionally, you can set certain days to record on full-time and other days to record motion like so. And just make sure you save before you leave the screen, the pre and the post record at the top. This is in regard to the motion detection. Since the system is always pseudo recording in the background when it's been told to only record motion, we're able to tell it the prerecord and the post record time. So that's 10 seconds before your person walks on screen. And then after the person walks off screen, you'll get an additional 10 seconds. But this is able to be configured to extend that amount of time.

So if we wanted that for all cameras, we would just want to make sure to copy this out. Copy to all and safe. Next option down is motion. This is a very important part. If we have set the camera to record on motion, we want to make sure that this is configured well. So for this particular camera out of the box, these sensitivities are going to be very high, 98, 90 9% in most applications. You're going to want to bump this down somewhat depending on what they're pointed at. Trees will set off your motion, shadows will set it off. 75 is

Generally a good spot to start and make further adjustment. Additionally, we get a draw area and a clear area. We're able to tell the camera what areas are of importance to us. So if we only wanted a particular corner of the room, we would select draw area and draw in our motion detection grid. Everything under the grid gets detected everywhere. There was no grid, no detection, so this is a good way to rule out busy road areas. Lots of moving trees, bushes blowing in the breeze, and this will help isolate everything really well for us. Now, army schedule. This is going to be globally controlled by the schedule section, but you can get very granular in here to determine what days this motion detection on this particular camera is active for. We're going to skip over this. All this is wide open by default, and that's okay.

Trigger actions by default, if the camera detects motion, it's going to record on the channel it's tagged to, which is normal. You're also able to tell other cameras to record. So if you had a compound and a front gate camera, if that camera detects motion, you could force the others to start recording by selecting these other channels. We also get some options to issue an email. We've got a pazo buzzer on the NBR that we can chime. We've got an alarm output column, which I will cover in some more detail. But basically if you have an alarm wired output on the NVR to a device like a light or a gate sensor, you could trigger these outputs. You're also able to determine which cameras you're getting a snapshot from, if that's being automatically loaded to an FTP. We're also going to get it go to preset options here. So if you have a PTZ camera in your system, you're actually able to trigger a particular preset on the other PTZ camera to look at a particular area. So like we said before, this was a gate camera. We could tell our PTZ on the side of our building to look at the gate. When that gate camera detects motion. We also get options to copy these out. You'll see this quite a bit.

We just want to make sure all this is calibrated well and safe. Next option down. Video loss. Most of these will trigger an alert warning anyway, but you're able to get very granular about which cameras get triggered when video loss happens. Tampering, that's going to also be related. This is for a ream of a camera or for the camera senses that it's been tampered with or a case cover removed. It's able to trigger. Similar to the video loss, privacy mask, pretty specific use case, but if you have an indoor camera and it's pointed at a computer screen and we don't want to necessarily see what's on that screen, we're able to black out a certain area and this will push all the way down to the recording. So when the recording's reviewed, that particular privacy area will still show snapshot. We're going to get some options to define

Which cameras are doing the snapshots and what resolution they're doing when they're being sent to the FTP at any time. From live view, you can snapshot any clips. Same thing with playback. This is related to the FTP export or storage of the snapshots on the hard drive as well. Audio detection, pretty specific use case, but you're able to detect a certain rise in audio warnings or audio levels and trigger a camera to react because of that human body detection, not all cameras are going to support this, but you're able to select a particular area to detect human body. And then the trigger actions are going to be related to, its similar to motion detection. And then on some series you'll see this thermal imaging. This is for our thermal equipment, a pretty specific use case. You have to have that particular style of camera to have that active. So we're going to skip over that.