Record Stream 1, Snapshot from Stream 2

[Tony W. Robinson]

I have an ACTi E73. It serves up two video streams. I have the first configured to use H.264. I have the second set to use MJPEG. Because there is no camera profile specifically created for the E73 in Sighthound, I use ACTi(Other)...

Using this profile, Sighthound records the first video stream. I'm happy with this because, in my experience, the video is smoother (and I use less disk) recording the H.264. However, the snapshots I get out of this process make faces look ghoulish and unidentifiable.

I changed the first stream to use MJPEG and though the images are much more crisp, the video becomes choppier.

So, best of both worlds, I'd like to be able to record the first stream and, when an event is detected, take the snapshot from the second stream.

A precursor to this might be to have a profile specifically designed to support a specific stream from an ACTi camera. The primary stream on the E73 is capable of a higher resolution than the secondary stream. But if I had a way to point Sighthound at the second stream, I could force it to use that one. I've looked at the "URL Commands" for the camera and have tried some of them but to no avail. I only seem to be able to access the primary stream using the profile that is available.

[ryan]

Hi Tony,

Sighthound Video can record from any URL you'd like. In the camera configuration screen where you enter the username and password simply select "Other IP camera" rather than a specific model. This will expose a URL field that you can populate as desired. If you need help finding the correct URL to meet your needs let us know and we'll do our best to help.

[Tony W. Robinson]

Thanks for this suggestion, Ryan. It was exactly what I needed.

ACTi has a ton of documentation on its web site. But some of it is pretty stale. I still could not find current documentation on the STREAM parameter in this URL, but with a little trial and error, based upon some prior reading, I came up with this. And it works.

For clarity, I've entered full URL's here even though only the path is required in the Sighthound UI:

To use the generic ip camera profile and access stream 1 on my ACTi E73:

http://ip:port/cgi-bin/system?USER=camUser&PWD=camPassword&GET_STREAM

To use the generic ip camera profile and access stream 2 on my ACTi E73:

http://ip:port/cgi-bin/system?USER=camUser&PWD=camPassword&STREAM=2&GET_STREAM


Working through all this also lead me to consider that maybe I could continue to have Sighthound consume the main stream and, when an event occurs, execute a small command line utility of some sort that would use the /encoder path on the camera to grab the snapshot from stream 2. Maybe someday when I've got nothing better to do...

In any case, hopefully this discussion will be helpful to other folks with ACTi cameras. Thanks again.

[ryan]

Glad that helped, and thanks for sharing your settings!