Blue Iris 4 and Night Owl DVR8

[KizerAir]

... and crazy props to KizerAir. I have no idea how he even came across the dev tools idea to find that option.

Ha ha Thank you! I have no idea how I came up with it either, trust me.

...he changed my life forever.

Awe, bro.... It's good to know I've made such and impact, but i guess you arent THAT grateful......

...ill fly to wherever you are, and buy you a beer. No, two beers.

^^^empty promises^^^

 

[Gamekiller]

Old thread I know but I've been fighting for hours trying to get my old DVR to get picked up by Blue Iris after it stopped working after an IP change. The DVR is a Night Owl FS-500, very old.
I just want to share my solution here since this is one of the first google search results.
After many hours of pulling my hair out the solution was very simple: I had to actually type the number for the camera in the main stream box. It auto populates with {CAMNO} which to my understanding is supposed to get automatically replaced by your camera number selection. Well, apparently that wasn't working and just typing in the camera number in the box solved my issue.

 

[TonyR]

Thanks for sharing your solution and welcome to IPCT !

 

[km_fish_3]

thanks to KizerAir for the dev tools idea. the instructions are slightly different for my Night Owl DVR-AHD10B-81-RS. wanted to share this as it took me awhile to figure out, maybe it'll help someone:

1. Go to the web config page in IE11 & install the plugin
2. Open the F12 Developer Tools
3. Run $("#RTSP_Set").show() and lan("RTSP_Set") in the console tab. This un-hides and fills in the RTSP settings.
4. You should see the RTSP option under Network now. Disable and then re-enable RTSP.
5. RTSP should work now with the format mentioned on the page (ex. rtsp:/192.168.0.1:554/ch01/0)

As a side note, IE11 is now very hard to get. I used a VM for an old version of Windows that had IE11 installed.

 

[kancho]

Hey there!

I know this thread is just about dead, but I wanted to share with yall a summarized version of my long , and very painful journey getting this DVR to communicate with Blue Iris.

First off, it can be done!

Secondly, I am not a computer person at all so before anyone says anything im sure I did some stuff wrong or didn't do some stuff i should have but hey, I got it working lol.

Night owl f6-DVR8

Ok! So, same as most of you I got the RTSP PORT OPEN! Message. But could not for the life of me figure anything past that. I tried every single thread in here relating to the topic (there are a few) I did every solution that was suggested to no avail. I was thinking the same thing last, its just a matter of getting the correct parameters. I spent endless hours researching and inputting different params and nothing.

BI tech support wasn't all that helpful, they basically said if I can't ensure that the RTSP port is open, they can't do anything. Which ok, fine, they were right BUT I just felt they didn't really give my problem much effort. (I found out later that it was only 1 person handling their tech support, so I had to cut him some slack)

NO Tech support said yes the DVR is RTSP compatible! Awesome! So what would be the default address and port? She didn't know.... Said she would have to raise my problem to level 2 support.
Level 2 calls me within HOURS (sweet). He says the option to ENABLE rtsp is built into the router it is only accessible through the internet browser viewer though (weird). But couldn't find it.
With that said, there is a solution there though for SOME. You may have it and not know it.

Open internet explorer and type in the IP and port to your DVR. Login, and up at the top you should see a button that says remote settings click that on the left hand side you will see networking under the networking tab, below DDNS you should see RTSP. In there you can enable and set your RTSP options and it will tell you the proper params for your DVR!
If you do not see it, however, it means yours didn't get the update in time. Apparently they did make a firmware update that enable the RTSP menu option. BUT me and the tech guy found out, that not all the DVRs actually upgraded. And unfortunately, they don't even have the firmware upgrade file anymore? He told me he was going to have to call some retired Dev out in Florida to see if he had it and he would call me back!

... That was like 2 weeks ago lol

I didn't give up. And a few nights ago, as I sat there at my computer, hours of trying random things in hopes of lucking out, I did just that.

So, I was in the developer options on IE just trying to read through random JavaScript and networking stuff that I don't understand AT ALL (lol) and I happened upon something.

Ready?
SOLUTION:
1. OPEN Internet explorer and log into your DVR.
2. Open developer options (f12)
3. At the top click on remote settings.
4. On the left hand menu click Networking
5. In the developer options click DOM explorer, then the little cursor thingy and boxes in the top left of THAT pane.
6. Click on any of the menu options under the networking.
7. You'll notice that the DOM explorer popped up a bunch of JavaScript stuff that correlate to paths within a the networking menu.
8. On of them says RTSPenable or something like that and next to it says style: display: none;
9. Where it says display none click on it and replace it with cursor: pointer; (I think, I'm not in front of my computer look above or below it and whatever the menu options that ARE showing up say next to style, just copy and paste that to it that's all i did.)
10. And BOOM the rtsp menu option shows up!
11. Click it and enable and set your port up, I set mine to 10554 because I had already forwarded that port. and below that, it will give you the rtsp:/ address!
Enter it as a GENERIC rtsp address in BI and that should be it! Make sure the media port says 9000 though or whatever yours is set to.

I can post screen shots or answer any other questions y'all may have if anyone is still trying this. Just let me know and I will spend as long as it takes to get you up and running because believe me, I know how frustrating it is to do it alone!

thanks to KizerAir for the dev tools idea. the instructions are slightly different for my Night Owl DVR-AHD10B-81-RS. wanted to share this as it took me awhile to figure out, maybe it'll help someone:

1. Go to the web config page in IE11 & install the plugin
2. Open the F12 Developer Tools
3. Run $("#RTSP_Set").show() and lan("RTSP_Set") in the console tab. This un-hides and fills in the RTSP settings.
4. You should see the RTSP option under Network now. Disable and then re-enable RTSP.
5. RTSP should work now with the format mentioned on the page (ex. rtsp:/192.168.0.1:554/ch01/0)

As a side note, IE11 is now very hard to get. I used a VM for an old version of Windows that had IE11 installed.

I apologize in advance for replying to such an old thread, but I had created an account on ipcamtalk to specifically thank KizerAir and km_fish_3 for discovering this workaround/solution. Shame on Nightowl for hiding the RTSP settings in a development menu.

I have an old Nightowl "DVR8-HDA7" which I believe is the same as the Night Owl "DVR-AHD10B" series - maybe a regional variant? Anyways, the steps outlined by KizerAir and km_fish_3 worked for me.



A few things I want to add as my steps were slightly different as well. I have also added a bunch of photos to help anyone who comes across this thread in the future. I expect this should work on any Nightowl analog DVR since KizerAir, km_fish_3, and myself all have different DVR models. The similarity between all of us is that all our DVR models use the ActiveX web config IE11 plugin.

The steps I took were:
1. Go to the DVR web config page using Internet Explorer. The URL is XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX:2049, where the XXX is replaced with your DVR local IP address. Install the ActiveX web plugin. I used Windows 10 using Microsoft Edge in Internet Explorer 11 compatibility mode.


3. In order to open DevTools, I had to follow a guide by Microsoft here as Internet Explorer 11 has since been deprecated as of 2022. Open a run command (WIN + R) and paste in "%systemroot%\system32\f12\IEChooser.exe" without the quotations to open IEChooser. Select the DVR web config tab and it should open the DevTools interface with the website's HTML code. Click on "Select Element" on the upper left and select one of the sub-menus under "Network". I selected the "Main" sub-menu in the screenshot.






4. In the DevTools interface, there should now be an item with id "RTSP_Set". Manually change the style from "display: none" to "cursor: pointer" to match the other sub-menus that are visible. Press enter after changing and the RTSP sub-menu should appear immediately.





5. Disable "RTSPEnable", click save, and then re-enable "RTSPEnable", change the password, and then click save again. This should get the RTSP settings to apply and RTSP should now be active.

6. I tested RTSP using BlueIris, and here are my settings to view channel 1, main stream, using the default RTSP ports. The stream took a few seconds to display, but it worked without issues.


Hopefully this write-up helps anyone who stumbles upon this thread in the future. Once again I'd like to thank both KizerAir and km_fish_3 for the hours of trial and error required to discover this workaround.