Recording

This option allows deactivating the recording functions of the camera (default: Enable) or to use the signal input (SI) to control recording.

The REC action symbol in the lower right corner is displayed in yellow (see Recording (REC) further below): REC. During event-controlled recording of snap shot images and events, this symbol will be displayed in turquoise (REC) and will turn yellow again once recording has been finished (REC). During continuous recording, the action symbol is always green: REC.

If Arm Recording has been switched off or deactivated temporarily, the camera will not record any events (alarms) during this time. No images will be recorded, the event number is not incremented, and the action symbol REC is gray: REC.

If the event control is completely disabled in the General Event Settings dialog (Off), the bottom part of the live image does not contain any event or action symbols.

In order to arm the camera in a time-controlled manner, you need to select a Time Table Profile.

Arm Recording in this dialog (see above) has to be set to Enable or can be set to work with the camera's signal input (e.g. with a key switch) using the SI Closed (low) or SI Open (high) options.

The camera signs the recorded data using the X.509 certificate of the camera's web server.

The camera shows a recording icon in the top right corner of the image; its color reflects the current state of the recording:

• Red: The camera is recording continuously.
• Red blinking: The camera is recording an event.
• Yellow: The camera is armed, but does not record an event at the moment.
• Green: Recording is disabled and no images or clips are recorded in the internal image storage or on the file server.

If this option is activated, the camera records the entire sensor image. If not, it records only the visible section of the live image. This means that you can record the entire sensor image, while the live image shows a zoomed and panned image section. This also allows examining the parts of an image or video that had not been visible in the live image section on display at the time of the recording.

Note: Depending on your camera model, this feature may not be available!

The function will automatically stop the recording of images or video clips if one of the selected events occur once the Time Before Terminate has been used up. Use this option if you would like freeze the stored images or image sequences and to prevent them from being overwritten.

• Set Activate Terminate Recording to On.
• Select the event in Termination Condition upon which you would like to stop recording.
  

  Note:	The selected event(s) must have been activated in the Event Settings dialog; deactivated events are shown accordingly.

• Set the delay between the occurrence of the event and stopping all actions in Time Before Stop.
• By clicking on the Restart Actions softbutton or the link in this dialog, you can reactivate recording. (For additional information on softbuttons, see the Defining softbuttons help page.)

If the recording has been terminated, the action symbol TR will be displayed in yellow: TR.

While the Time Before Terminate is still running, the camera displays the remaining seconds before recording is terminated in the live image and the TR action symbol is turquoise.

After that time, the camera displays a corresponding message in the live image, stops recording and the TR action symbol turns gray.

Snap Shot Recording saves single JPEG images without audio data while the Snap Shot Interval can be set between 0 milliseconds and one image every ten minutes. The advantages of this recording mode are the low storage space requirements for the single image and the long interval that can be set between images.

The factory default setting of the camera is to save event stories which can consist of a maximum number (depending on the camera model) of pre- and post-alarm images for every event:

In order to obtain higher file server performance, activate the Pack Event Story checkbox. The event image and all pre- and post-alarm images are combined in one clip file, resulting in a drastically reduced number of file operations on the file server.

In order to cover a longer period of time (up to ten minutes) with the event story, you need to define a Snap Shot Interval that is long enough.

Notes:

• The event image of a detected event (alarm image) is always stored.

• Because of the storage space required by the pre- and post-alarm images (e.g. resolution set to 1280x960), the number of images set here may not be reached. If this happens, take one or more measures described in the following:

  • Reduce the JPEG Quality in the JPEG Settings dialog.
  • Reduce the Resolution in the General Image Settings dialog in order to reduce the amount of data that is stored for the pre-alarm images.
  • Increase the Recording Dead Time when too many alarm follow in a short period of time, since a new alarm will overwrite the pre-alarm images of the previous alarm.
  • Set Retrigger Recording to All in order to combine all events in one event folder with the one event number.
  • Reduce the number of pre- and post-alarm images and increase the value for the Snap Shot Interval.

Event recording stores MxPEG Clips (M00001.jpg, M00002.jpg, ...; max. ten seconds recording time each) that can also contain audio data. One of the advantages of this recording method is the efficient recording method that results in a high increase in server performance (e.g. up to 100 cameras can record on a single standard PC (P4, 3 GHz)). On the other hand, this method also allows storing lip-synchronous audio (sound) data of the camera.

The Recording Time Before Event is limited to five seconds. Additional events during the recording are saved as JPEG images (E00001.jpg, E00002.jpg, ...).

Frame rate: The MxPEG clips can be recorded with the maximum Event Frame Rate available from the Live image, but not with a frame rate lower than one image every five seconds. Audio data from the camera is always recorded with the same quality, regardless of the frame rate.

Multiple Events: If the recording of one event exceeds five minutes or if the storage space for one event exceeds 40% of the internal image storage, the camera will split the event. The recording will then be resumed with a new event number.

Notes:

• In Event Recording mode, the camera will trigger the Recording Begin (RB) event when starting a new recording.
• The Recording End (RE) event is triggered once the recording has been finished (including retriggered —i.e. prolonged—recording).

Continuous recording continuously stores MxPEG Clips (M00001.jpg, M00002.jpg, ...) that can also contain audio data. The advantage of this recording mode is a continuous recording with reduced frame rate and permanent audio recording where the camera automatically increases the frame rate if it detects an event.

The event number is incremented every minute and thus stores 60 seconds of video and audio data in one event folder. The first event image is E00000.jpg is usually an image that is stored every minute. If the camera detects an event in Continuous Recording mode, it will not increment the event number. The camera will only store an additional event image and will optionally increase the frame rate (up to the max. frame rate).

Frame rate: The MOBOTIX camera can use two different frame rates for recording. In order to avoid huge amounts of video data when nothing is happening, the camera can record with a lower frame rate (Continuous Recording Frame Rate). In case of an event (alarm), the camera will use the Event Frame Rate to store the event with a highest quality. Similar to Event Recording, audio data from the camera be recorded with the same quality, regardless of the frame rate.

Notes:

• In Continuous Recording mode, the camera will trigger the Recording Begin (RB) event only if one of the events selected in Start Recording is detected.
• Similar to Event Recording, the Recording End (RE) event is triggered once the recording has been finished (including retriggered—i.e. prolonged—recording).

This feature allows recording history images at individual frame rates besides the event-controlled recording mechanism. The history images are saved as JPEG images (E00000.jpg) with their own event number.

A history image is stored without interrupting or stopping an ongoing recording.

Image Profile: History images can use a different image format. Open the Image Profiles to define new image formats or to edit existing ones.