Question about Milestone XProtect's post-record feature

[JBlitzen 0]

I'm working with an animal shelter that would like a video record of

behavioral tests on dogs.

 

They'd like video recording software that can generate as close as possible

to one video per one or more dogs. What they don't want is 10 different

video files for each dog, due to short periods when the dog and tester are

out of the room or holding still. Their current software causes this

problem, as it only permits a 10 second wait after every motion event before

it closes a file.

 

It looks like we could use XProtect's post-recording delay period to

specify that a video file shouldn't be closed until there have been, say, 4

minutes of nonmotion, which perhaps the file could speed through at

accelerated time.

 

Do I understand that right?

 

In other words, rather than:

 

File 1:

5 seconds of nonmotion

20 seconds of motion

10 seconds of nonmotion

 

File 2 (same test):

5 seconds of nonmotion

47 seconds of motion

10 seconds of nonmotion

 

Could we use XProtect to automatically generate:

 

File 1:

X seconds of nonmotion

20 seconds of motion

36 seconds of nonmotion

47 seconds of motion

X seconds of nonmotion

 

If XProtect can't do it, is there other cheap software that could?

[SureVeillance 0]

Personally I would use the export feature instead. That would allow you to create a video with the exact start and end frames you want.

[JBlitzen 0]

Thanks. Exporting would help with the filenames, but it would place a large burden on the volunteer staff. If the video files are reasonably long, then it shouldn't be too difficult for volunteers to work back through them and find the right file if there's a problem several months down the line.

[Soundy 1]

What you're trying to do sounds better suited to a standard camcorder, maybe the type that records to mini-DVD or hard drive.

 

However... if you have enough storage on your DVR, staff could just search back through the recorded footage for incidents, rather than having to search through offline recordings. A good DVR makes searching easy enough.

[thewireguys 3]

Yea I would just let it record then export the video that you want.

[JBlitzen 0]

Hm. We want all the motion in the room to be recorded and stored permanently.

 

The problem is that Vitamin D breaks up videos after a 10 second pause in motion, which can produce ten different files that document the same test, causing problems in exporting a single video of that test.

 

I'm just wondering if XProtect's post-record delay feature can extend that 10 second trigger to, say, a minute or two, and thus limit the... file spread... of a single test. One file/video covering three tests is okay, but five files/videos covering one test is a problem, and not currently surmountable with Vitamin D.

 

Or, is there some other feature common in this type of software that will let us modify the file close triggers for a video, to accomplish the same thing?

[thewireguys 3]

Why not just record continuous and then export the video from the VMS?

 

You could also setup a trigger input to start and stop the recording.

[JBlitzen 0]

I don't understand how a continuous recording would help.

 

That would generate a single 24-hour (though compressed at times) file.

 

What we want is, in a day where there may be 5 temperament tests, for there to be somewhere between 1 and 5 (or maybe a few more) video files on disk, with timestamps roughly correlating to those tests.

 

I can define, to you guys, an ideal "file" as being a record of motion in that room which begins after more than 3 minutes of nonmotion since the prior file.

 

That would give us roughly the file breakdown that would be most useful to our volunteer staff and thus to the dogs and potential adopters. It wouldn't be precisely perfect, there might be one test broken up into two files, or two or three tests on the same file, but it'd be very close. Far closer than Vitamin D can get with its fixed 10-second delay rule.

 

What I'm wondering is whether such a definition can be made within XProtect, or maybe within any other software.

[Soundy 1]

I don't know about Milestone, but no DVR or NVR I've worked with will create a single continuous file anyway - it would become unwieldy for the system to work with for indexing and searching. The closest I've seen is VideoInsight, which in earlier versions at least, would let you set a maximum file size (don't know if current versions still do this). Vigil creates a new file for every minute, as does GeoVision, regardless of whether you use pre/post or constant recording. I wouldn't be surprised if Milestone is the same.

 

What you're trying to do, or rather, the way you're trying to do it, really isn't workable. Using the export option of any DVR will be far easier, as you could then export as much or as little video to a file with a specific name, say, with the dog's name and the date (for example, "Poochie's test April 10 2011.avi"), or burn each dog to his own CD/DVD, or whatever.

 

Using Vigil as an example, the process would be easy: click Search, set start time and end time, click Search, select the camera, then click Export, select the destination(s) (hard drive, CD/DVD, flash drive), give it a filename, and click OK. A few minutes later, it's done. It's fairly intuitive, and would be easy to create a "quick steps" card for the users. Doesn't get much easier, and doesn't require the staff to mess around with the filesystem of the machine or muddle their way through video-data folders.

[thewireguys 3]

You record all the time. Then you search for the time say yesterday between 9 -930 am. Then you export the file for your long term storage in a nice neat file.

[hardwired 0]

The closest thing I've seen to what you are asking for is a police interrogation room system, they are designed for a similar usage pattern to what you are asking for. One I worked with is FTR Interrogator, http://www.fortherecord.com/products/ftr-interrogator/, not sure about IP camera compatibility, I used it with analog cameras.

 

Milestone's export feature in the remote client is pretty easy to use, similar in operation to what Soundy mentions with Vigil.

 

Milestone does it's archiving in several steps, there is a "First Day" space that you need to set up on a (relatively) fast local drive, then it archives to another directory/drive (can be a slower media) for permanent storage once a day (it can be scheduled for multiple archives a day, but only in higher versions of the software, not in Go, or Essential).

 

The folders/files created in Milestone directly for storage are tagged by the camera MAC address, and some unique identifiers.... The export method is going to be your best bet, at least in Milestone.