New IP Cam Configuration--Recommended

[MacFun]

I'm back from my travels and I purchased a new UNFI POE switch that I like very much so far. Now, that I can see the camera (via external POE switch) and can make changes to the camera settings, what camera setting changes would you recommend? Obviously, I would change the IP address to one of my actual networks. But, what other settings would be important to do now that I'm logged into the camera? I realize that some features in the camera might be ignored because the Blue Iris feature might be superior.

My first camera viewing success was using the NACL Web Service Plugin via Google Chrome via macOS. I can also seemingly locate the camera via the macOS tools thoughtfully provided by @nayr (?). The tools are: SmartPSS, Smart Player, FileConvert and ConfigTool (v3/v4). So, I now have at least three ways to discover a new camera and edit the IP address (and other settings) of that new camera: Chrome with NACL Plugin; SmartPSS and ConfigTool.

What can we do with the substreams?

Do you use H.265 encoding?

What's the highest quality audio setting, the least compressed?

Adjust other Camera Network settings like: DDNS; SMTP; Bonjour Multicast or others...?

Special storage settings? I plan to have an SD card in the camera and to use BI too. My understanding is that the SD card would be a backup to BI and that any disconnect form the NVR that the cam would copy footage to the SD card and would later populate the NVT when it's back online. Any special settings to make this happen?

Do you update to the latest firmware when installing a new camera?

My cam is showing as PAL only right now. I know the sentiment here but if I wanted to have NTSC could I simply update with the NTSC version of the firmware?

FTP setup on camera? I see we have this option to setup FTP. So, I was thinking that BI would record 24/7 and that motion events (or other triggers) would record a clip that would be immediately FTP's to a server off-site. Is this done just on BI or via the camera. I'm assuming that a number of these cam features are better handled via the computer running BI.

Thanks for your input!

Robert

 

[Terk]

Use H.264 encoding if you are going to enable Hardware acceleration within BI via the onboard Intel Video card. If your not using hardware acceleration for some reason then H.265 should provide smaller file sizes.

Use direct-to-disk in each cameras BI setup which will save a lot of CPU resources but will require you do any overlays like time at the camera level

Sub-streams are really only useful if you want to use the main connection fro BI and a lower bandwidth connection to another system like IPCamViewer or something like that

You may need to play around with audio settings a bit on most of mine turning off the noise filter produces the best sound however on one of them I had to leave it enabled to get better sound

Most suggestions are to disable DDNS, Bonjour, MultiCast, and UPNP settings on the cameras and disable UPNP on your router too then use OpenVPN to connect to the BI server

Most people suggest not updating camera firmware unless there is a new feature/security fix or you are currently having an issue with the camera

PAL/NTSC shouldn't make any difference for an IP camera it just affects the top FPS and usually you don't want the cameras supplying the top FPS they can anyway since it will just mean you can store less recordings since each recording will be that much larger

SMTP if setup correctly can allow the cameras to notify you of issues when BI may but it can be challenging to get setup correctly

 

[MacFun]

Thanks Terk, one benefit of updating firmware immediately is that it might expose a problem. It would verify that this cam is English and/or firmware upgradeable. And since all video monitors are expecting NTSC I wonder if any difference can be detected on the low frame rates. Also, I might want to run a couple of cams at 30fps... I’m sure at some point PAL does not work well on NTSC equipment.

Thanks for your reply.

R

 

[looney2ns]

Most of this is discussed in the cliff notes, in the wiki above.

 

[MacFun]

Hi @looney2ns I looked for just such a wiki or sticky before posting my new cam setup questions.... please direct me to that post.

Thanks,

Rob

 

[looney2ns]

Top of the screen, in the blue bar, 4th word from the left "Wiki".
IPCamTalk WiKi | IP Cam Talk

 

[MacFun]

@looney2ns thank you so much--that was super helpful. I looked for a wiki or sticky before but did not see it. I'll be happy to soak up every word of this 43(?) page document.

R