Search a single camera over several weeks

[ptzguy]

Something disappeared from a place where I keep it under cover outside. I suspect a yard worker may have taken it.

Problem is, it could have happened any time over the last three months. Is there an efficient way to review long periods of activity from a single camera? The camera is triggered, so there's little or no "dead air" to deal with.

 

[DalmatianPlantation]

First, if you had setup BI motion detection, and tweaked the motion settings even a little would give you excellen alerts in the database to search thru. I hope you were only recording motion, and not continuous 24/7 recording. Either way, you need to use the half and double rule to get to it. Start 3 months back, object still there? Move forward to 1.5months back, still there? Move forward to .75months back, still there? no, now go other direction by half again, move to about 1.1months back. This is the fastest manual way of finding the event. Also, search thru your alerts, not clips, unless you set the alert storage duration way too short.
Keep in mind, BI records video to files called clips and depending how long the settings are that files can contain mere minutes or hours and hours of video. I never search thru clips, EVER. Use Alerts only, because that's the info stored in the database for every motion event that has occured inside the clip. Think of the clip as a spiral notebook where the alerts just note what pages in the file that motion happened.

 

[ptzguy]

Thanks for your response. What you described is a "binary search". That is the method that I used. As it turned out, I was the one who moved the object - inside to protect it from the winter weather.

 

[DalmatianPlantation]

Ahh! Over the years I have learned not to blame my family for moving things, as my memory of myself doing it fades quickly.

 

[Parley]

Thanks for your response. What you described is a "binary search". That is the method that I used. As it turned out, I was the one who moved the object - inside to protect it from the winter weather.

That is the method I use all the time.