Smart PSS - Playback IPC IVS Events from NVR

If you don't see events on the nvr's timeline, my hopefully logical conclusion is that smartPss has absolutely nothing to do with the events not being noted. The problem has to be in the camera configuration, or the nvr configuration. You could look through the nvr log and see if there are any events that were picked up. On my cameras, the camera log doesn't record IVS events, so that's no help. It looks like the camera log should note motion events. I'm going to check that out and I'll report back when I figure it out.
 
In the beginning when I was dealing with the first batch of these smart cameras, the IVS events didn't used to tagged in playback, however, I did used to see the events being saved into the NVR log. However, the IVS markers never wanted to show. The outcome may vary for each individual, but for more, performing the factory reset works. Also, better to use a dedicated PoE switch than depending on the rear of the NVR. Sometimes bandwidth issues / bottle-necking may also play some role.

tigerwillow1 said:
If you don't see events on the nvr's timeline, my hopefully logical conclusion is that smartPss has absolutely nothing to do with the events not being noted. The problem has to be in the camera configuration, or the nvr configuration. You could look through the nvr log and see if there are any events that were picked up. On my cameras, the camera log doesn't record IVS events, so that's no help. It looks like the camera log should note motion events. I'm going to check that out and I'll report back when I figure it out.
Click to expand...
 
It is possible that the events is in the timeline but you need to zoom in the timeline to make the event lines thicker and more noticeable.

Try hovering your mouse cursor over the timeline and use scroll wheel to zoom in the timeline.
 
  • Like
Reactions: toolazyforalogin and Arjun
Yeah, sometimes those lines are as thin as air :lol:
It takes a little bit of trying, don't give up @Jtpowell

TechBill said:
It is possible that the events is in the timeline but you need to zoom in the timeline to make the event lines thicker and more noticeable.

Try hovering your mouse cursor over the timeline and use scroll wheel to zoom in the timeline.
Click to expand...
 
Attempting to help I did some experimenting. In the nvr configuration for the test camera, I shut off "record channel", and removed ivs events from the channel's storage schedule. As expected, ivs events stopped appearing on the timeline, They do, however, still appear in the nvr's log as "tripwire" events. So seeing if the events are recorded in the log might help isolate where the problem is.

I first tried the same thing with motion detection because these events also record in the camera's log. What I found is that the nvr doesn't handle motion detect setup correctly. Lucky for me I don't need to use this.
 
TechBill said:
It is possible that the events is in the timeline but you need to zoom in the timeline to make the event lines thicker and more noticeable.

Try hovering your mouse cursor over the timeline and use scroll wheel to zoom in the timeline.
Click to expand...

I actually ruled this out by removing the general record type from the query--no results, unfortunately.
 
tigerwillow1 said:
Attempting to help I did some experimenting. In the nvr configuration for the test camera, I shut off "record channel", and removed ivs events from the channel's storage schedule. As expected, ivs events stopped appearing on the timeline, They do, however, still appear in the nvr's log as "tripwire" events. So seeing if the events are recorded in the log might help isolate where the problem is.

I first tried the same thing with motion detection because these events also record in the camera's log. What I found is that the nvr doesn't handle motion detect setup correctly. Lucky for me I don't need to use this.
Click to expand...

I hadn't thought about the log file until you posted this--I think this might be the best clue yet as to what's happening with my system. I do not see tripwire events in my system log for the NVR *nor* on the camera itself. The tripwires are there, they flash when things cross them, but there's no log entry made corresponding to it. I turned on motion detection and confirmed those will show up in the log.

I did a factory reset on one camera, but the tripwire events still don't appear in the log. I also spent a lot of time poking around the camera and NVR APIs--this really helped me start to get a better mental model of how the functionality is structured. For now, I'm going to focus on getting the tripwire events to appear in the logs on a single camera. Perhaps the issue is further upstream than the NVR.

While the tripwire events don't appear in my system logs, I am able to build working alarms that use them in Smart PSS. So the rules are there and are registering as events in some fashion. I'm going to put an SD card in the camera later today to see if I can get it to save locally when the tripwire is triggered.

I really appreciate the help from you all!
 
  • Like
Reactions: Arjun
Also make sure that the IVS and motion detection settings are enabled in NVR and disable Face Detection (cannot enable both at same time). Make sure schedule is same in NVR as well as camera.
Also make sure that Smart Plan is set as IVS not as Face Detection.

Sometimes when switching out cameras or changing port or channel number or even adding additional cameras, the NVR will create a tangled mess with the IVS settings. This is a bug that Dahua has yet to figure out (similar to time synchronization, lol)

The issue is very similar to Microsoft Windows 10 Mess (they have hidden the good old control panel within the operating system, and they want users to transition and use the settings option instead for making changes to device configuration, lol)
 
Jtpowell said:
I hadn't thought about the log file until you posted this--I think this might be the best clue yet as to what's happening with my system. I do not see tripwire events in my system log for the NVR *nor* on the camera itself. The tripwires are there, they flash when things cross them, but there's no log entry made corresponding to it. I turned on motion detection and confirmed those will show up in the log.

I did a factory reset on one camera, but the tripwire events still don't appear in the log. I also spent a lot of time poking around the camera and NVR APIs--this really helped me start to get a better mental model of how the functionality is structured. For now, I'm going to focus on getting the tripwire events to appear in the logs on a single camera. Perhaps the issue is further upstream than the NVR.

While the tripwire events don't appear in my system logs, I am able to build working alarms that use them in Smart PSS. So the rules are there and are registering as events in some fashion. I'm going to put an SD card in the camera later today to see if I can get it to save locally when the tripwire is triggered.

I really appreciate the help from you all!
Click to expand...


There is something amiss on your setup somewhere since IVS have worked for me in all firmware version since day 1.

One last thing to check is make sure Smart Codec isn't enabled (if it was enabled you shouldn't been able to set up IVS anyway but double check it.)
 
  • Like
Reactions: Arjun
TechBill said:
There is something amiss on your setup somewhere since IVS have worked for me in all firmware version since day 1.

One last thing to check is make sure Smart Codec isn't enabled (if it was enabled you shouldn't been able to set up IVS anyway but double check it.)
Click to expand...

It's off.

I've taken this down to just a single camera and added a micro SD card to it for local storage. Leaving the NVR and other camera out of the equation for now--I can't get this to work on just one camera by itself.

The tripwires are getting triggered, and I can create an alarm on the camera that logs the event (though it logs it only within the Alarm tab--the event still doesn't appear on the camera's main log for all record types). However, the tripwire does not cause a corresponding recording or snapshot to occur (and they're set up).
 
Jtpowell said:
It's off.

I've taken this down to just a single camera and added a micro SD card to it for local storage. Leaving the NVR and other camera out of the equation for now--I can't get this to work on just one camera by itself.

The tripwires are getting triggered, and I can create an alarm on the camera that logs the event (though it logs it only within the Alarm tab--the event still doesn't appear on the camera's main log for all record types). However, the tripwire does not cause a corresponding recording or snapshot to occur (and they're set up).
Click to expand...

Might as well just upgrade to the latest firmware (recently posted here) and follow up from there
 
IVS events do not show up in the camera logs. Too bad, because that would help a lot with the debugging. Since they aren't in the nvr log, it could mean the camera isn't sending the event. That at least leads me to think the problem isn't with the nvr's recording schedule. Echoing the prior post, ivs events work just fine for a lot of us. Hopefully somebody will mention the magic setting to make it work. Just for completeness, these are some of my camera settings:

smart plan - ivs
face detection - not enabled
ivs screen - record enabled
ivs screen - working period set up to 24x7
 
Just a summary update of some more interesting points. I've gotten the tripwire events to show up in the log for the camera using the API. It's off by default and not exposed in any of the UIs (web/Smart PSS/etc.), but it's there in the API. I've also managed to get the tripwire triggered events to generate recordings on the local micro SD card in the camera.

I've noticed the various UIs have enormous differences in their implementations, and I just happened to notice in the Smart PSS app for OSX on my iMac a record type value for the recording schedule that doesn't appear for me in Windows, the web UI, or in the local NVR UI: "Smart." This is the guy I'm looking for, I suspect.

I can manipulate that using the API, and that's what I'm working on now...I've just got a couple of syntax issues I'm stumbling over at the moment (this isn't totally clear in the API documentation), but I should have it figured out shortly.

2018-05-18_21-37-51.png
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: looney2ns
I'm at a loss as to what to do next with this--the issue isn't resolved. I've factory reset each device after updating to the latest firmware, prayed, tried working with the API to tease out some clue as to there things are jammed up, prayed to darker things, and spent hours searching the web and this forum for any more random sequences, troubleshooting steps, or newer firmware.

There are two things (other than a direct solution) that I'm hoping to find:
  1. An explanation of how the the NVR should receive and then model an IVS rule that is supposed to trigger the creation of a record--using the API (CGI, really) as the model.
    • My thought is that if I can understand how that info is represented in the camera and then obtained and stored by the NVR, I can look at the API to see where the values are off. Maybe I can even fix it by directly modifying parameters via the API.
  2. For someone with the "IVS" record type enabled on the Schedule (ideally as the only enabled type), open the address below (with your camera's IP address) copy one line out of the page that is returned, and reply with it here.
    • address to open:
      http://<your_cameras_ip_address>/cgi-bin/configManager.cgi?action=getConfig&name=VideoAnalyseRule

    • line to obtain:
      table.VideoAnalyseRule[0][0].EventHandler.TimeSection[0][0]=1 00:00:00-23:59:59
I'm really just looking for whatever number value you have immediately to the right of the equals sign (the "1" in the example above). That bit identifies the record type you have enabled, which should be "IVS." I simply do not have the IVS record type in any UI I've tried (web UI, Smart PSS on Windows, Smart PSS on OSX, various versions of each of those, etc.). I do have a type called "Smart" in the OSX UI, and its corresponding bit value is one that doesn't appear in the Dahua API documentation. I've forced that to be used via the API and it caused crashes when I tried to query records for playback.

Here are the documented values, plus the one for Smart that I found:

  • 1 - Regular
  • 2 - Motion Detection
  • 4 - Alarm
  • 8 - Card (I don't know what this means, but perhaps it's referencing the micro SD card in the camera).
  • 16 - unknown
  • 32 - Smart
The values above are added together if you have more than one type enabled at a time. E.g., if you enable Motion Detection and Alarm, you'd see a value of 6, and if you also enabled Smart with those, you'd see a value of 38.
 
Argh, IVS shouldn't be a trivial setting, it should work out of the box. @Jtpowell definitely forward your analysis to Dahua so they can patch this in future firmware :)
 
Arjun, I think you're right.

I've found several discussions around this as well as documentation about the NVR4XXX series that seems to explain what's happening. IVS is not enabled on the NVR by default, and I have to enable it. None of the solutions in those discussions have worked for me (the check box to enable IVS isn't present in any UI on mine), so I've contacted both my seller and Dahua support direction just now to see if they can help.
 
address to open:
http://<your_cameras_ip_address>/cgi-bin/configManager.cgi?action=getConfig&name=VideoAnalyseRule

I need more guidance on this. I paste this into the Pale Moon locator bar and there's no response from the camera. Doesn't matter if I'm logged in or not. In the nvr, did you try the silly sounding heat map workaround I mentioned a while ago?
 
Jtpowell said:
Arjun, I think you're right.

I've found several discussions around this as well as documentation about the NVR4XXX series that seems to explain what's happening. IVS is not enabled on the NVR by default, and I have to enable it. None of the solutions in those discussions have worked for me (the check box to enable IVS isn't present in any UI on mine), so I've contacted both my seller and Dahua support direction just now to see if they can help.
Click to expand...


The NVR4XXXX had it's IVS stripped from the firmware about 2 years ago and no longer will support IVS if I recalled correctly. But you should still be able to see IVS trigger in the playback if you are using storage card in the camera.

Bill
 
TechBill said:
The NVR4XXXX had it's IVS stripped from the firmware about 2 years ago and no longer will support IVS if I recalled correctly. But you should still be able to see IVS trigger in the playback if you are using storage card in the camera.

Bill
Click to expand...
According to the 2018 catalog Andy recently made available, all of the 4xxx nvrs support ivs.
New Dahua Catalog for 2th Season
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom