Problem changing camera name.

[Cam_curious]

I had my BI system working great with 5 cameras. BI is the latest version 4.7.3.2 x64. I thought that I would change the cameras names to put the IP address at the end: "Garage cam" to "Garage cam 23". The 23 it the IP address on my subnet. This is camera "Name" not "Short name". This is in: Camera properties->General->Name. With previous versions I have made such changes before with no problems.

When I make the change I get "Camera: No signal" and "Missing address or device". If I do "Find/inspect" the camera is found and correctly identified properly but the problem is not fixed. If I do "Restart camera" the problem is not fixed. Curiously, the popup boxes take unusually long to popup and take unusually long to fully populate their fields. My system, Win10, Intel i7-6700K 4GHz, is running at under 50% load.

If I point a browser to the camera everything looks OK. I have tried this on my Dahua HDW5803RP-Z and a cheap no name PTZ camera. These cameras had worked OK on previous versions of BI and worked OK on the new version until I attempted to change the name. The other 3 cameras continue to work OK because I have not dared to make any changes.

What happened?

 

[TonyR]

Actually, your version 4.7.3.2 is not the latest...try update to 4.7.4.1 (latest as of 5/13/18 0742 CT).

 

[Cam_curious]

Thanks, updating the version brought the "Camera: No signal" camera back to working OK. So I figured that I would try to change the name again, same problem! The camera came back as a duplicate of another setup for the same camera, same IP address. One setup works and the other does not.

With lots of changing of the setup and "Find/inspect" I can get the camera to come back, but sometimes without my IP address inserted in the camera name other times my edit is there.

 

[TonyR]

Have you tried deleting all cams, then adding each cam from scratch, one by one, with the corresponding IP, config and name you want?

I know that sounds like a pain, but.....

 

[fenderman]

The name change will not affect the stream...more than likely you made another change which only surfaced when you changed the name and BI started a new stream.
What happens when you change the name back?

 

[Cam_curious]

If I restart the server and the client then the change to the name is lost, but the camera still does not work.
With much trial and error I will get two configurations for the same camera and one will have the name change that I want and is working.
I then delete the other non-working configuration. This seems to result in what I want but I have to go through a lot of fiddling before I get there. I still cannot describe the process that produces a working camera with the name change that I want.

I did not make any change other than to the name.

 

[fenderman]

If I restart the server and the client then the change to the name is lost, but the camera still does not work.
With much trial and error I will get two configurations for the same camera and one will have the name change that I want and is working.
I then delete the other non-working configuration. This seems to result in what I want but I have to go through a lot of fiddling before I get there. I still cannot describe the process that produces a working camera with the name change that I want.

I did not make any change other than to the name.

I would reinstall the software

 

[Cam_curious]

With BI version changes do the configuration file formats change? That is, can BI get confused with old versions of the configuration files?

 

[fenderman]

With BI version changes do the configuration file formats change? That is, can BI get confused with old versions of the configuration files?

anything is possible, there are new features added all the time..but you have a recent version..so backup and reinstall.

 

[skiocink]

I had a similar problem some days ago renaming 2 cameras.
You have simple to wait few minutes (about 4). The modify will result more fast if you have not recorded video in NEW or STORED directory

 

[Cam_curious]

anything is possible, there are new features added all the time..but you have a recent version..so backup and reinstall.

I tried the newest version 4.7.4.3 and now it really seems hosed. It did work until I tried to change the name of another camera.

Do I have to "deactivate" the old version before uninstall and re-activate the new version? With the new version can
I "import" the settings or they likely to be messed up too?

 

[TonyR]

Do I have to "deactivate" the old version before uninstall and re-activate the new version?

I would; maybe @fenderman can elaborate on the process, I've never had to uninstall/re-install.

I With the new version can
I "import" the settings or they likely to be messed up too?

Unless 5 cams have LOTS of parameters to dial in for BI, I'd skip the import and add one at a time.

 

[Cam_curious]

After some more futile fooling around I gave up and did a re-install.
I also did an import v4.reg which restored my cameras. Oddly some settings
unrelated to the cameras did not restore like the "Solo selected camera display".
I must have changed it when I first installed BI but I don't remember doing it.

Anyway, all seems to be OK now.