Recording of sound??

[tracik]

Wow, I can't believe this won't record sound! I finally found a great product, but I'm just so upset that there is no sound!! Please add the sound recording inclusive with this program and I will definitely purchase the upgrade. Until then I may have to find one that has sound.

[tracik]

Don't hold your breath... I (and MANY MANY others) have been asking for this most basic feature for YEARS. I believe it has more to do with the developers not wanting to wade into the waters of recording audio being illegal in some jurisdictions - which is absolutely ridiculous and akin to gun/ammunition manufacturers not wanting to make bullets because they could be used to commit murder.

The ONLY reason I spent $200 on a full license is because Vitamin D works so well. If I could find something better that recorded audio, I'd switch in a heartbeat (there are plenty of others that DO record audio as well - but VItaminD trumps most of them).

"VitaminD does not currently support audio recording" - pathetic... As in ALL of your posted answers to this, you NEVER elaborate.

Do you need instantly indexed sound to go along with your VDV playbacks of the day, or just sound available if an incident ever occurs? If the latter, why not use a separate sound recording application to always record? Sound is fairly small to store as mp3 encodes, and if there ever was an incident, you could find the sound index based on the time that the video was recorded and still have your evidence?

I'd rather have a program that had not great video, but includes sound than one with just video. Especially for surveillance. Sometimes an intruder would hide their identity, but you could record voice, then you may catch something that would give them away.

[webloader]

Don't hold your breath... I (and MANY MANY others) have been asking for this most basic feature for YEARS. I believe it has more to do with the developers not wanting to wade into the waters of recording audio being illegal in some jurisdictions - which is absolutely ridiculous and akin to gun/ammunition manufacturers not wanting to make bullets because they could be used to commit murder.

The ONLY reason I spent $200 on a full license is because Vitamin D works so well. If I could find something better that recorded audio, I'd switch in a heartbeat (there are plenty of others that DO record audio as well - but VItaminD trumps most of them).

"VitaminD does not currently support audio recording" - pathetic... As in ALL of your posted answers to this, you NEVER elaborate.

Do you need instantly indexed sound to go along with your VDV playbacks of the day, or just sound available if an incident ever occurs? If the latter, why not use a separate sound recording application to always record? Sound is fairly small to store as mp3 encodes, and if there ever was an incident, you could find the sound index based on the time that the video was recorded and still have your evidence?

I too would like audio recording - I had it on my list of 'things i must fix' as I assumed that it was a feature of the product and wasn't recording just down to a config issue.
Anyway, as was mentioned above, another option would be to use the run command option to run a command line script to pull in a stream for the camera in question and save that, in which case there would be no need to do any indexing, you would instead just be using Sighthound for its excellent video analytics, and then a simple command line (like VideoLan) to capture the clip with audio. I have not tried this yet BTW but it should work

[Jonney]

It would be nice If you would get it up, because that should be pirody... When could I expect to see sound recording in a future update???

[CodeSmoke]

Is this even in development yet? Any time line on this request being implemented?

I am currently using BlueIris and would love to switch but I need audio.

Thanks,
Chris H.

[armyturtle]

FYI - I wrote about this back in 2006/2007-ish and it has fallen on deaf ears. You'll get nothing more than a half-hearted "we're working toward that." Since then they have rebranded and supposedly have more plans. Apparently there were more people wanting "remote access" than audio. I find that hard to believe since Remote PC control is already an easy possibility for anyone, yet I can't personally make this software record audio.

My guess is that they wanted to get people to buy into the new licensing & support scheme with a few bait features, then continue to drip release further upgrades. I'm betting that by the time an audio recording version of this software comes out I'll have to fork over yet another $250 for the damn software.

The kicker to all of this? They've changed the software so you have to "login" to their system in order to activate the program. What a pain in the butt. My main computer didn't have access to internet where it was located. Also, for $250 damn dollars I should be able to use it on a couple of my own personal computers. TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY - - DOLLARS -- for a single program, SINGLE USE. That's just greedy.

[ryan]

Hi armyturtle,

Thanks for the message. I'll do my best to respond to the issues you've raised in your post.

I'm sorry if you're unsatisfied with the features we have chosen to implement over the past several releases. We've had a lot of positive feedback, though I absolutely recognize that we can't tackle everyone's wish list simultaneously. As much as we'd like to be able to put everything into the product at once, we must pick what to allocate resources on.

I take personal cuts at accusations that we do anything to manipulate or take advantage of people. We care for our customers a great deal, and do what we can to ensure that they are taken care of. I actually responded to support emails from you on Thanksgiving last year - not to imply any guarantees of our support response outside of normal business hours to anyone reading this post, but I think it is hard to argue that is the action of anyone out to simply extract money from whomever they can.

I am not a marketing person. I have never attempted to mislead anyone about our product, and I would not. I enjoy being able to sleep at night too much. We get numerous inquiries from potential customers about features that might make it into the app one day and my de facto response is that they should only purchase the product if the application meets their needs as it stands today. Though of course not everyone will agree, I feel that we have a fantastic product with a competitive pricing structure (there is software which charges in the range of our Pro license cost for every single camera).

Similarly to my never recommending that anyone purchase the software if it doesn't currently meet their needs, you are absolutely never required to give us any more money. Every purchased license includes a 12 month subscription to priority support and free major version upgrades. Your license never expires, and you indefinitely receive free updates to the major version you purchased, or any major version released within that 12 months. You would only ever pay again if a major version was released you wished to upgrade to. More details can be found here.

We chose this model and are very clear about it to remove any guesswork or feeling of doubt about future upgrades from users. If I purchase a Sighthound Video Basic license today for $60 and 18 months from now version 5.0 comes out, if I want it I can choose to upgrade for only $12. You frame it as if we're trying to extract money from people, but just today I upgraded the virtualization software I purchased 8 months ago for $70 and it cost me another $50 to do so, and I'm sure the same will happen next year.

I recognize that the introduction of accounts is not the most buzzworthy feature for the average user, but they were not implemented on a whim. One example of why we chose that path, our number one support issue involved people having trouble with the old file-based licensing system. Now most people never even see the licensing dialog, as soon as they complete a purchase their software has already updated itself. Accounts also let us introduce the free Pro license trial, which to my earlier points about transparency. Everybody can now live with the full featured version of the software to ensure that it has all the features they require, it works well for them, their hardware can handle the load of the cameras they'd like to run, and so on. This is something we had wanted to do for a long time and I'm thrilled that it is now a reality. There was also a *lot* of engineering work and scaffolding that had to go in to making the account system which we'll be able to leverage for even more user requested features in the future.

Again, I'm sorry if our recent releases haven't lined up with your wish list. We've accomplished a lot since the first release of Sighthound Video last September, and we're certainly not stopping anytime soon. I'm glad for what we've been able to introduce, and even more excited for what we'll do in the years to come.

Best,
- ryan

[gizmotoy]

Agreed. I was surprisingly excited to find a Mac OS-native IP Camera controller with a usable UI. I downloaded the trial, and within a few minutes I had decided to purchase it. After checking the recorded video, I was even more surprised to find no audio. I spent 20 minutes verifying settings and trying to figure out what was wrong with my camera. Then I found this thread after finding nothing in the FAQ or Help.

Unfortunately, it's a huge deal-breaker. I really like what you're doing with the program, but the lack of such a basic feature is a glaring shortcoming, IMHO.

I know in the past you mentioned this feature was on the radar, but was a very low priority. Is that still a fair assessment?

Edit: And as a note, I hadn't just assumed out of nowhere audio support was included. Your Open Source credits page notes PyAudio and PortAudio, which could lead one to believe the software has audio features.

[tesla8er]

@gizmotoy

First of all, thanks for pointing out that the FAQs don't mention that Sighthound Video doesn't support audio. We have changed that this morning. There is no intention on our part for people to think that it does have audio, one of the things that the free Pro trial helps with.

While we are aware that some people want audio, I thought it may help to explain why we don't.

Sighthound Video is mainly used by people with full security systems at their home or business. Compared to high end systems that cost thousands, need calibration, and have poor or no analytics, Sighthound brings true computer vision, better than anything else on the market, for $250. Often users have 4, 6, 8 cameras covering parking areas, the four exterior sides of the house, the yard, the fence line, the garage as well as interior cameras, looking for intruders. Audio isn't useful to people with cameras mounted high in the eaves of a house or office. All you would hear is wind noise and sirens.

For interior *security* applications, audio isn't much use either. People robbing houses don't say much.

Above all, Sighthound's main purpose is to provide automated monitoring of a video feed to alert you when something or someone enters a scene so that you don't have to monitor the cameras yourself. Because the computer is doing the monitoring, it doesn't need sound. And detection of individual sounds is not useful as a trigger. So the only benefit of sound is for humans to hear voices or noises from interior cameras when viewing clip playback. This is clearly useful for nanny cam type uses, and is why we do have audio on the future features list.

The fact that is not useful for most professional security applications is why the product doesn't have audio yet.

If you can share why audio is such a deal breaker for you we'd like to hear it. We've implemented over a dozen of the top customer requests in the last year, and continue to improve the product, and so we do listen.

Stephen

[armyturtle]

This is clearly useful for nanny cam type uses, and is why we do have audio on the future features list.

This is exactly what you told me back in 2007. It's been 7 YEARS. The reason no audio is a "deal breaker" for a lot of people is because Sighthound is not a complete package. YOU may believe that audio "isn't useful" in most situations, but the mere fact that you're deciding that on behalf of everyone rather than just giving the option of turning it on or off is what's aggravating. It was a deal breaker for me for quite a long time and so I didn't buy the pro license. Eventually after posting and getting your response that it was indeed on the roadmap of features I decided my buying the pro license would help support the development - so I did. Then many years later still no audio, still people asking for it, still same response. Then you changed companies and we had to pay a fee to "upgrade" the license from VDV to Sighthound. Yes, there was a discount, thank you for not overcharging me for being a very early supporter. Then a few versions later this "online activation" scheme comes into play. Yah ok, so you give me free upgrades - in between major releases. But as soon as you move from 5.0 to 6.0, I've got to chip in again. You're not Microsoft and it's not like a dramatic change going from Windows XP to Windows 7.

I convinced my boss to purchase a license for yet a 2nd property here in the SF bay area - at the cost of $250. I reassured him it was worth it and that he should consider his other properties he's having dumping issues at. When someone leaves a couch, fridge, dining set, etc. and you have over 180 residents it's not all that easy to tell exactly which person it was on the sometimes grainy video (yes, even with HD it's not clear enough to be sure when they're 20 ft or more from the camera). Audio would help immensely with this as we've seen sets of people dropping stuff off and conversing. Hearing their voices would make identification easier.

Now that I read the same "it's coming, someday..." post from you about audio features I deeply regret convincing my boss to spend yet another $250 on this. Again, to sum it up - include audio abilities. Leave them off by default if you even like to save processes and recording space - but for god's sake give us the OPTION.