Not recording when people are not moving

[sightbeagle]

Last week a group of kids got into my wife's car. The system recorded the motion of them entering the vehicle and leaving, but once they were partially inside and all you could see is their feet and butts hanging out while they went through the contents of the car it stopped recording. It missed about 40 seconds. Is there a way to adjust the system so that it covers and event like that?

My current rules look for motion in areas, and I don't have the default rule any longer.

[Semper Vaporo]

You might try the following to view the "missed" video.

In "Search" mode, select just that one camera from the drop down list at the top. Then select the rule saved video nearest to the time you want to view the previous or later video (or click in the timeline below the video window to get closer if there is no rule saved video close enough). To view any video that occurred before that time, click the "-:02" button on the video controls to back-up past the beginning of the video. Or to view video after the end of the saved video, click ">" (run) to view the video and when it reached the end (or use the "+:02" button to fast forward to the end) then click the "+:02" button to proceed to the video after the section. (You may have to widen the window to see these controls, because they are deleted from the screen if the window is not wide enough for everything.)

This works as long as the intermediate video still exists in the video folders. The length of time it is saved, by default, is 2 days (24 hours) unless you have changed that setting (Select "Options" from the "Tools" menu and then "Storage" tab on the Options dialog box).

If you wish to save that video permanently, you can right-click on the view window and select "Export clip" from the context menu that will appear, and the system will copy the video from 1 minute before the present time to one minute after (a two minute video). I have exported long videos this way by advancing the video 2 minutes and selecting export again and again, then I piece them back together using Windows Movie Maker (comes with Windows).

I hope this is not too late to capture the video of interest!

[sightbeagle]

Thanks for your help. I didn't realize that the program had a +:02 and -:02 to extend the video. I wasn't able to recover the lost footage, but that's okay. Correct me if I'm wrong, but my solution to this will be to get a bigger hard drive. Then extent the "Temporarily keep all video" from 24hr to 200hrs.

[Semper Vaporo]

Yes, 200 hours (8.33 days) will work. I set mine to 720 hours (30 days) and that may be a bit excessive. I am not sure what happens when the allocated space is filled and 30 days have not elapsed yet. I assume that it just deletes the oldest files regardless of whether they are saved by rule or not.

I review my files nearly every day and don't really need to save anything that long (I export files to a USB memory stick to transport them to a different computer system for archival storage if I see something of interest to keep). But on occasion, I am gone for a week or two (or more) and then I'd be in your position where I could lose some of the raw "unsaved" video that I might want from the day after I left.

[sightbeagle]

How big of a hard drive did you have to use to keep 30 days of video?

How did you know how to allocate the two settings for clips and temp video, and for temporarily keep all video?

I have a 160gb drive, so I set it to around 130gb for clips and video storage space and 14 hours for temporarily keep all video.

[sightbeagle]

Missing footage partly solved:

I just figured out something about recovering lost video. In order for the +:02 and -:02 to work I had to make a change. When I tried adding seconds to the footage on any custom or non deletable rule like "people" the +.02 just jumped to the next video.

What I did to fix this. I added the rule I deleted, this was what I believe is the "Default Rule" To do this I added a rule with this criteria:

Video source: (Selected one of my cameras)
Look for: Any object
That are: Anywhere
If seen: I left all boxes unchecked

Now when I went back to the video footage and hit the +:02 in the "default rule" it didn't just jump to the next video a thin blue line showed up between the two videos. I could then move forward +:02 to recover the missing footage.

I don't know why I had to do this to get the video. It caught the person going up to my porch, but not leaving. Once someone is on my porch they are out of sight. The system missed them walking back down from my porch and out of my driveway. During this time, another person was walking down the street and a car drove by. Maybe the system got confused by multiple objects.

[Devin]

Hi sightbeagle,

I've responded to the email you sent to [email protected] in regards to these questions.

Best,

-Devin