Can't capture
Hi,
I am in the process of evaluating the SecuritySpy software; I've set-up my cameras (4 pcs) and all is well, except I can't capture. I've read the manual and for the best of me I can't see why I cannot get any recorded material.
I've setup the cameras to record only on motion detection, without special patterns or masks. I can see that that the cameras' status change (to the red R circle and MD), but using the SS browser I can't locate any recording. I've setup the capture type to "Separate movie per event". All cameras are switched to active mode. What also makes me wonder, is that once the R-MD status is reached, it never turns back to idle (should it?), even though there is no motion any more. The "R" should indicate that the system is recording, but where are the recordings?
My understanding is that in evaluation mode the software should still be able to record, but with the "Demo" watermark on the image. Am I wrong?
Regards,
Lix
I am in the process of evaluating the SecuritySpy software; I've set-up my cameras (4 pcs) and all is well, except I can't capture. I've read the manual and for the best of me I can't see why I cannot get any recorded material.
I've setup the cameras to record only on motion detection, without special patterns or masks. I can see that that the cameras' status change (to the red R circle and MD), but using the SS browser I can't locate any recording. I've setup the capture type to "Separate movie per event". All cameras are switched to active mode. What also makes me wonder, is that once the R-MD status is reached, it never turns back to idle (should it?), even though there is no motion any more. The "R" should indicate that the system is recording, but where are the recordings?
My understanding is that in evaluation mode the software should still be able to record, but with the "Demo" watermark on the image. Am I wrong?
Regards,
Lix
Comments
Then, simply set the camera to Active mode and SecuritySpy will capture video whenever motion is detected.
Meanwhile I found the problem: If the parameter "pre-capture" time is set to 0 (null), then there will be no captures. Seems to me a bug (except if it's not a feature I don't understand ;-). After setting it to 5 it started capturing. Set it back to 0 and there will be no capture.
The first thing you should do is check you are using the latest version of SecuritySpy. If you are still having problems, please email us to open a support ticket and we'll look into it further.
Another quirk that bothers me is that some captured files cannot be manually deleted using the web interface. In fact, I can't delete those files not even from the browser: selecting the file and pressing backspace, I get the question (are you sure...?); after answering yes, the file is gone from the listing in the browser, but after closing and reopening the browser, the file is still there.
There is another thing that I can't understand: most cameras have preset positions that can be named. It is a pain in the ass to rename all these presets again in SecuritySpy. It is my understanding that there are APIs (i.e. commands) to retrieve all these presets +including+ their original names from the cameras, at least for the Axis models (don't know about others). We have an Axis PTZ camera for which we set 14 presets. Not only that there are not enough positions in SS to assign (btw, why are they limited to 8?), but we had to compare original image with SS image to assign the 8 presets in the same way.
In regards to the preset names: you are correct that some cameras have an API to get the preset names. But we don't implement this because it is quite rare, and of course will vary between camera models. It would take a significant development effort to implement this across many different camera models, and we have to prioritise our development time on more important features. The idea here is that you don't need to set up any preset names in the camera itself: SecuritySpy is the software that you use to view/manage/control the camera, so typically, customers only need to set up the preset position and names via SecuritySpy.
As for the file deletion, that error does indicate that the file cannot be deleted because it is open. This may be because it is open in some application other than SecuritySpy. But I will test this in SecuritySpy thoroughly before the next release to make sure there is no bug in this regard.
Regarding the files open in other application, I can't imagine what application this might be, especially as I can delete the files without any trouble using the command line (Terminal).