3 cams have "video was being recorded" icon from over an hour ago

natinadaka

Young grasshopper
Oct 3, 2022
34
6
USA
BI release 5.6.3.1

A vehicle drove across the field of view of 3 cams. I see 1 clip from one of the cams in the Clips side bar. Those 3 cams all have the gray circle icon on their camera title bars. The manual indicates this means: "Video was being recorded; the file is still open to receive more video"

My expectation is that I see clips in the side bar for the vehicle moving across all 3 cams.

My questions/confusion is:
a) why are the cams still in "video was being recorded; the file is still open..." mode so long after the motion?
b) why don't the clips for each of the 3 cameras appear in the clips sidebar menu?

I realize (b) may be a result of (a).

The camera in question all have the same config (which is whatever the default is) in the "Record" tab of the Camera settings.
 
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Sometime between posting the original thread and now, the gray circle icons on all 3 cameras went away. But still only one entry in the clips side-bar.
 
Just noticed something else, which probably helps explain why I didnt see new clips for 2 of the cameras (but that is still very counter-intuitive to me). So, 2 hours prior (around 11:30) to the motion that I originally mentioned there was OTHER motion that was picked up on 2 of the cameras. If I look at the timeline view in BI, I see a blue bar starting around 11:30 and ending some time after the second motion. The clips that originally appeared around 11:30 seem to include all the time between the first motion and the second motion. Is that default behavior?
 
What are your recoding parameters in BI for those cams? If you are recording continuous then the file is still open as it is still being recorded, not just on motion. Chances are that the other two cams just did not pick up the motion.

1667258244334.png
 
The cameras are currently all configured for recording video "When Triggered". The config for each is shown below.

I think I probably confused things by posting multiple times. Let me try to explain again.

At 11:30, 2 cams caught vehicle (Vehicle 1) motion: "Front Yard", and "Back Door". 2 clips were created at that time (Clips A and B). I believe the vehicle only passed in front of those two cameras. So at this point behavior is as I expect.

Later, at 13:50, another vehicle (Vehicle 2) passed in front of 3 cams: "Front Yard", "Back Door", and "Driveway". A clip for "Driveway" was created (Clip C). No new clip was created for "Front Door" or "Back Door". I thought this was strange because the I know the vehicle passed in front of those 3 cameras.

I too thought 2 cams could have missed the Vehicle 2 motion, but it didn't make sense as to why. Later, I noticed the gray "video was being recorded" icon on the 3 cams in question. At some point later than that, the gray "video was being recorded" went away. No new clips appeared. However, when I watched both Clips A and B (the ones that were started at 11:30), they both start with the motion that happened around 11:30 and then "jumps" to the motion that happened around 13:50. So I was correct in that Vehicle 2's motion was caught by all 3 cams I expected to catch it, but what does not make sense to me is why Vehicle 2 ended up in Clips A and B (the ones started when Vehicle 1 triggered recording for the "Front Yard" and "Backdoor" cams.) No other motion occurred on those cams between Vehicle 1 and Vehicle 2. Since Vehicle 1 did not pass in front of Driveway, but Vehicle 2 did, the creation of Clip C capturing only the motion of Vehicle 2 makes sense.

The timeline looks like this:

1667264610581.png

Front Yard

1667264309090.png

Back Door

1667264330329.png

Driveway

1667264355779.png
 
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I'd lower the "combine and cut" time down to one hour. Makes it easier when looking for a specific event.
 
I'd lower the "combine and cut" time down to one hour. Makes it easier when looking for a specific event.

Will try that. Once you mentioned that option, Iooked it up and saw the following about the option in the manual: "For when triggered, un-check this option in order to have one file recorded for each event." This actually seems desirable to me (one file/clip per event). I'm a bit surprised the "combine" behavior I saw is the default. It seems quite counter-intuitive for the benefit of producing fewer files (which I don't consider to be a significant benefit, unless I am misunderstanding something).
 
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Will try that. Once you mentioned that option, Iooked it up and saw the following about the option in the manual: "For when triggered, un-check this option in order to have one file recorded for each event." This actually seems desirable to me (one file/clip per event). I'm a bit surprised the "combine" behavior I saw is the default. It seems quite counter-intuitive for the benefit of producing fewer files (which I don't consider to be a significant benefit, unless I am misunderstanding something).

Since you are not recording continuously, you will definitely want cut and combine. BI can get unstable after 200,000 clips, which sounds like a lot, but it can easily and quickly get there is cameras are triggered frequently.

You get each alert thumnail on the left and that is sufficient for most. Simply click it and it opens the combined BVR file at the appropriate place.
 
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