The official Hikvision iVMS-4500 remote playback challenge

[cbt071]

Hi All,

I recently purchased four Chinese region Hikvision 2CD2332s from AliExpress, and then modified their firmware to 5.1.0 build 131202. I also did the NAS patch procedure by uploading a modified davinci file which now allows me record all four cameras to a single 2TB My Cloud NAS device. Woohoo!!

All is working well with regards to the camera’s live view feature, and each camera’s ability to record motion activated events to my single NAS device. The ONLY issue I now have with my set up is related to the Hikvision phone app (iVMS-4500). The phone app does allow me to monitor the live feed for all four cameras just as it’s supposed to do, but the problem is with the remote playback of recorded data for just one of my cameras. Interestingly, the other three cameras perform as expected when accessing recorded video through the phone's app. It’s this darn fourth camera that will NOT allow me to view recorded data from the app. In addition, the fourth camera does correctly serve up recorded data to a remote PC (PC outside my LAN) through the http web interface. GRRRRR. See my frustration?

Anyhow...... In my mind, the problematic camera is correctly configured. It has a static IP address, is port forwarded as it should be, and is set up EXACTLY as the other three properly working cams. Also, I’ve done significant trouble shooting around my PoE switch, the NAS, and my Ethernet wiring, and I don’t believe either of these to be the issue with this fourth cam’s ability to remotely serve up recorded video to my phone's app.

So now I am leaning on this forum to see if anyone can offer up any suggestions before I chalk this fourth cam up to being mildly defective.

Cheers,
Carl

 

[digger11]

I'd be tempted to export the configuration on a working and the non-working cameras and then on each of those cameras, import the other camera's config. Then see whether the problem follows the hardware, or the config.

 

[bp2008]

Yeah, swapping the configurations might indicate something!

You might also try swapping the IP addresses of the bad cam and a good cam and see if the bad cam stays bad, as this may help diagnose an error in your routing or port forwarding or your password or who knows what. Maybe it is a simple matter of the user account not having permission to view recordings?

 

[cbt071]

Swapping configuration files is an excellent idea guys! So many thanks to both digger11 and bp2008 for this suggestion as it is their idea that led me down a new troubleshooting path.

As suggested, I took a configuration file from a good camera, and placed it on my problem camera. When I did this I found that I was indeed able to remotely playback video through my phone's app. Woohoo! Problem solved (or nearly solved)!!

Now that the problem camera is working properly, it's time to tweak its settings for its specific location. Given that this camera is monitoring a narrow hallway, I wanted to digitally rotate the image on the cam to get a nice view down the length of the hallway (Advanced configuration/Image/video adjustment/rotate/on). As it turned out, rotating the image caused the remote playback feature on the phone app to fail again. GRRRR. So now I'm wondering if it's the video rotation option that's causing the problem with my phone app.

I confirmed my hunch by doing the following...... Set image rotation to 'off', reformat the camera's NAS folder, capture motion activated video on the cam, confirm that this video plays back on phone app, set cam's image rotation feature to 'on' again, record another motion activated video, attempt to playback in iVMS4500. What I observed when doing the second playback was that the first motion activated video (the video recorded with image rotation 'off') played all the way through without a hiccup, and when the next video attempted to play (the video recorded with the image rotation set to 'on'), the phone app crashed.

So it appears to me that the camera's image rotation needs to be set to 'off' for the cam's recorded video to playback on the Hikvision 4500 phone app.

Thanks again guys for helping me to get to the bottom of this issue!