A couple of questions

[Esch]

I just found your software and am loving what I see so far. The webcam software that came with my camera really sucked as far as motion detection went. I have a couple of questions I hope you can help me with.

1) I don't see a "recording" light that comes on and off when it's recording, is the program in passive mode (not accessing the HD or saving files) till the "rule" is detected?

2) I have a region set to trigger when a person walks inside it. When I look at the recorded video after someone has come and gone, it appears that the program pads the video and adds several seconds (sometimes minutes) to the front and back of the part that actually has a person walking through it. I do have "Include objects visible longer than" selected at 5 seconds, so I know I'm adding padding on that way, but it seems the program is adding a lot more than I need. This happens when just one person enters the region. Is there any way to have it only record to the file the movement within the region and not the padding after the person left the region and nothing else takes place?

3) Is there any way of saving files in a format other than MP4? (I'm using the free version)

4) Just to clarify: This region I set up is for outside shooting a side of a building with a door in it. I need to record the entire side of the building including the door, so my question is by having the region set to "inside", that means that even if the door opens and someone comes out and doesn't cross the boundary line of the region, the event will record because the body was detected inside the region right? (whereas setting the region to detect on entering or exiting the region would ignore someone who comes out of the door but goes back in as long as they stay within the region)

5) Is there any way to add a time stamp on the video itself with an overlay? Since the videos don't get saved to the HD till much later after the event happens, the time stamp on the file itself is inaccurate. I would love to see a time stamp to know exactly the minute someone moved in front of the camera.

That's all I can think of at the moment, thanks again for a great program!

E

[doug]

Esch,

The way that the recording works can be a little counter-intuitive. Whenever a camera has _any_ rules scheduled, the camera will be on and we'll be recording (and doing object tracking and recognition). Assuming that disk space is not limited, _all_ video will be kept for several days (the number of days is settable in preferences--the default is 2 days).

When you have a rule scheduled to save video on "my computer", that tells Vitamin D Video that you'd like to keep the video for a longer period of time. That is, after 2 days when Vitamin D Video is deleting the older video, it won't delete the video that was marked for saving (it will also keep a little buffer on both sides).

Hopefully this explains things well enough to answer the first questions. If not, let me know.


To answer other questions:

• The program only supports saving in mp4 format.
• I believe that your description of "inside" is correct. See http://www.vitamindinc.com/support/ref_guide_rules.html for details. Just remember that the center of the box is important. It may help to turn on "Show Region Zones" in the search view to help you figure out when/why certain events match a rule.
• No easy way to get a timestamp. Some IP cameras have a timestamp option. For USB cameras, you may be able to get one using http://www.manycam.com/, though I haven't tried that. It certainly is a common feature request that we'll have to add sometime.

Good luck!

-Doug

[Esch]

Thank you for your quick answers. You answered everything but the program padding extra "footage" before and after the event took place. I came home and found some files were 15 mins long when the only activity was someone walked in front of the camera for about 1 minute of that. The area I'm shooting does have trees, and shadows on the wall from the trees, so I know the wind may be at play here but I've sent the rule to only record people and not objects, so thought that would have taken care of that.

As far as the timestamp goes, all the other webcam software I found (including the one that came with the camera) embeds the time stamp, so not sure why it's not possible to add one to this program? I would think since the preview is real time that it would just add the timestamp at the very front before the footage is processed for object tracking and recognition and being saved, etc. In any event, thanks for the link to that other software, I will check it out.

[Esch]

Manycam does the trick in adding the time stamp but anyone else who installs be warned that it will install the ASK toolbar in your browsers without your permission and you'll have to remove that garbage manually. Also it seems you have to reinstate your settings manually each time you start the program, it doesn't save your settings. Ah well, can't complain since it's free, lol.

[doug]

Esch,

Are you looking at the actual video files on disk? Those aren't really intended to be viewed directly (though it is nice that you can if you really want to). The video files on disk are split up semi-arbitrarily--basically whenever it is convenient for the program to split them up. If you want more sensible video files, you'll need to do one of the following:

1. Use the search view of the program and look at the video there. That should have the right padding (a few seconds before and after). You can manually export clips you want.
   
2. Setup an FTP server and use the FTP response for a rule. This should simulate the result or exporting every clip in the search view as closely as possible. We definitely have it on our list to add an "export"-type rule so you don't need to have an FTP server.
   
3. Wait a few days for the disk cleaner to run. This will "trim" the extra stuff off files. Note that a given event may still be split among different files: the disk cleaner never joins files together--it only trims.

Glad ManyCam was useful. Adding a timestamp isn't impossible, but wasn't in original plans. At the moment, the program isn't architected to make it super easy, but that doesn't mean we can't do it eventually.

-Doug

[Esch]

Yeah I've been viewing the video files directly using Quicktime. I liked that I could just drag the time bar thing across and not have to watch them in real time. If your program only shows the exact clips where people walk in frame then I will switch over. Since I started viewing the files directly outside of your program from the very beginning, I just assumed the viewer in the program would show the exact same thing, which was the 15min files. That'll show me eh?

Thanks again!

[ryan]

I'd definitely suggest viewing in the app, we've designed it explicitly to make reviewing the day's footage quick and easy. If you want to watch clips quickly under the Play button you can set the playback speed up to 3x. I'd also suggest checking out the "Controls" menu to learn a lot of handy shortcuts, such as space to play/pause, up and down to go to the previous/next clip, etc.. You can also drag the time bar in our app just like you can in quicktime!