The Timeline View is not easy to grasp for me ...

Buttan Butt

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Please forgive me for being such a noob but I can't seem to understand how the Timeline View works.

Here is what my Timeline View looks like.

timeline.jpg


I have 7 cameras set up, each with a different color. First I thought that each colored rectangle represents a recording using a specific camera and that the color used on the Timeline was the same as that cameras event color. (Each clip on the right pane (the Clip List) has a color that corresponds to what I've set up on the camera)

As you see there is a grayish rectangle that is almost always present, only with a few gaps. There is also an orange rectangle. I don't have any cameras now using those colors (I had before but I've changed the cameras clip color)

I tried to read the documentation but it's still not clear to me ...
The purpose of this view is to graphically represent the contents of you clip list as a function of time. Using the slider you will find 12 levels of zoom that allow for viewing an hour of time or several days at once. Clips are grouped into colored rectangles in one or more tracks. Each color used by a camera will be given its own track. Alerts and Flagged clips will be illustrated with appropriate icons. The "focus time" is shown with a red line.
Can someone please explain what those rectangles represent? Why are they not broken when there are no recordings? What does the colors of those rectangles mean?

Cheers!
 

fenderman

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Please forgive me for being such a noob but I can't seem to understand how the Timeline View works.

Here is what my Timeline View looks like.

View attachment 19476

I have 7 cameras set up, each with a different color. First I thought that each colored rectangle represents a recording using a specific camera and that the color used on the Timeline was the same as that cameras event color. (Each clip on the right pane (the Clip List) has a color that corresponds to what I've set up on the camera)

As you see there is a grayish rectangle that is almost always present, only with a few gaps. There is also an orange rectangle. I don't have any cameras now using those colors (I had before but I've changed the cameras clip color)

I tried to read the documentation but it's still not clear to me ...


Can someone please explain what those rectangles represent? Why are they not broken when there are no recordings? What does the colors of those rectangles mean?

Cheers!
When you change colors it only affects future recordings...
The timeline will not properly reflect gaps in recordings when you have combine and cut selected in the cameras record tab.
 

Buttan Butt

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When you change colors it only affects future recordings...
The timeline will not properly reflect gaps in recordings when you have combine and cut selected in the cameras record tab.
Thanks @fenderman for your kind help. I appreciate it a lot. Well, that explains things indeed.

yeah.jpg


This is the way I prefer to see it.

But what would you say are the benefits of the "combine or cut" feature? Why would I like to do anything like that?
 
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Bump :) is there any benefit of the combine or cut feature? it seemed to "grey out" the cameras in the timeline and cut the clips together in the clip view/Ui2 web view. i dont fully understand the benefit of this


(although the greying out could have been down to the fact that i had the two cameras on the same colour?)
 

bp2008

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Bump :) is there any benefit of the combine or cut feature? it seemed to "grey out" the cameras in the timeline and cut the clips together in the clip view/Ui2 web view. i dont fully understand the benefit of this


(although the greying out could have been down to the fact that i had the two cameras on the same colour?)
Combining motion-triggered clips is mostly just useful if you find you end up with an unmanageable number of clip files. Like if you are recording thousands of clips per day, combining them could reduce that to a few hundred or less new files. Windows's NTFS file system is not very fast at dealing with extremely large numbers of files.

Multiple cameras with the same color do get merged into one on the timeline, so you might want to do that if you had, say, two cameras looking at the same thing, but otherwise it is usually good to use different colors.
 
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Combining motion-triggered clips is mostly just useful if you find you end up with an unmanageable number of clip files. Like if you are recording thousands of clips per day, combining them could reduce that to a few hundred or less new files. Windows's NTFS file system is not very fast at dealing with extremely large numbers of files.

Multiple cameras with the same color do get merged into one on the timeline, so you might want to do that if you had, say, two cameras looking at the same thing, but otherwise it is usually good to use different colors.
ah! perfect, thank you for the help.
 
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