Camera Setup

The Camera Setup screen enables you to define values for individual cameras such as contrast, text overlay ports, frame speed etc.

The picture below shows a sample setup screen for camera 1. Note that camera 1 may not be the camera which is being displayed in the first camera viewing box. It may have been set up to display in another box, either permanently or as part of a set of cameras which are set to switch sequentially after a defined number of seconds. It may also have been set not to show in any box at all.

A picture from the selected camera is displayed at the top of the setup window. The red squares show the user where motion is being detected. This helps you to mask areas such as windows, computer screens, fans, mobiles etc. which cause unnecessary recording to take place. The picture and movement detection is updated once a second.

Movement which occurs behind areas which are masked is ignored and thus does not trigger recording.

To create a mask on the image, left-click at the top left of where you want the box to start and drag to form the box. Release the left mouse key when the mask box is of the right size.You can create up to 100 masks.

The other settings which are possible from the camera setup window are as follows:

Clicking on the arrows to the right of the brightness bar will adjust the brightness of the current camera. The value of the setting is displayed on the graphic bar.

Clicking on the arrows to the right of the contrast bar will adjust the contrast of the current camera.

Clicking on the arrows to the right of the saturation bar will adjust the brightness of the current camera.

Hue relates to the amount of colour which is infused into the image. A brighter hue means more colour.

This sets the degree of motion sensitivity. 0 is the lowest setting and 6 is the highest. As you adjust the motion sensitivity upwards, you will see the number of red blocks on the camera image increase because the detection is becoming more sensitive and requires less pixel change to trigger.

This allows the installation to define the number of days, per camera, for which camera footage is to be kept. Thus you can define a lower number of days for a non-critical area and a higher number of days for a critical area.

When the number of keep days has been reached for a camera, then the oldest day of recording will be erased. The system does not consider the current day to be included, so the number of keep days refers to days previous to today.

If there is insufficient disk space to keep the number of days required, the oldest days of recording will be deleted as required. You can use the Information window to check how many days are being recorded versus the required number of days.

You can overlay text from a comm port (RS232) onto any camera. Select a comm port from the drop down list. Text overlay parameters such as font, size and colour are set from the general setup screen.

A more familiar identifying name for the camera can be typed in the gray box at the bottom of the window. This name will be displayed on the live screen as well as when playing back recorded files.

This button sets all the cameras to have the same settings (except text overlay) as the current camera.