Motion Detection Questions

[pyrotech1620]

I had some questions around Motion Detection on Surveillance Station 5 on my QNAP Nas.

To start
NAS: TS-469L
Firmware: 4.1.0 Build 20140612

1. Is it possible to setup a Alarm Marker only on motion detection. I record 24/7 on my cameras but I want a quick way to be able to see times motion was detected when looking back at the Play Back. I see there is the ability to select Alarm in the playback but in order for that to work you also have to have Record on. I hate to have motion recording and 24/7 recording on as I am then using twice the space. Most system like Dropcam or even other NVRs such as Dahua provide the ability to do this. I am hoping I am just not seeing it correctly. If it is not part of the system is there a way to use the User-Defined Action to write to a log or something when motion was detected?

2. This is more of a problem. I currently am testing using Recording 24/7 and Motion Detection Recording but when I have both those on when motion is detected the camera gets pixelated. For example a car drives by without motion on and the camera works fine and look clear. Whenever I turn motion detection on when a car drives by it leaves a pixelated trail of it going across the screen. Now watching the CPU I do not see any large spikes and I also am only using 20% of the Memory so I don't believe its resources but I could be wrong. Anyone else having this issue or know how to fix it?

[doktornotor]

Good that you did not mention the cameras model(s)... Helps a lot with debugging.

[pyrotech1620]

Wow.. I completely forgot to add those..

Currently both cameras are: Dahua ipc-hfw2100s (1.3MP Cameras)

[AlastairStevenson]

Hello,
It's not necessary to activate schedule recording in order to enable motion detection recording. You can disable the schedule without affecting motion detection recording.
You do need to ensure there is a recording action specified for the 'Motion detection' event under the required camera, in the 'Event management' configuration section of SS Pro.
The 'Playback' facility will highlight in red any times where there have been alarm recordings, and allow these to be selected for viewing, however on my rather low-end NAS I find that Playback although quite functional is pretty slow to navigate and use, especially when it's creating the video thumbnails that would be useful on a faster NAS.
For reviewing motion detection recordings, I tend to access the Recordings share, and navigate down the 'record_nvr_alarm' folder tree using Windows (7) Explorer, playing the files with Windows Media Player.
OK, so I don't get much fast forward, or frame-by-frame, but it works pretty well in terms of speed of access.

On the pixellation problem - are you only seeing this on the recorded files on the NAS, or on the Live View of the NAS via the SS Pro web admin screens?
Do you also see this if you access the camera directly at the same time as SS Pro is active for motion detection recording with something like VLC Media player via another computer?

It's not an effect I've seen.

[pyrotech1620]

Hello,
It's not necessary to activate schedule recording in order to enable motion detection recording. You can disable the schedule without affecting motion detection recording.
You do need to ensure there is a recording action specified for the 'Motion detection' event under the required camera, in the 'Event management' configuration section of SS Pro.
The 'Playback' facility will highlight in red any times where there have been alarm recordings, and allow these to be selected for viewing, however on my rather low-end NAS I find that Playback although quite functional is pretty slow to navigate and use, especially when it's creating the video thumbnails that would be useful on a faster NAS.
For reviewing motion detection recordings, I tend to access the Recordings share, and navigate down the 'record_nvr_alarm' folder tree using Windows (7) Explorer, playing the files with Windows Media Player.
OK, so I don't get much fast forward, or frame-by-frame, but it works pretty well in terms of speed of access.

On the pixellation problem - are you only seeing this on the recorded files on the NAS, or on the Live View of the NAS via the SS Pro web admin screens?
Do you also see this if you access the camera directly at the same time as SS Pro is active for motion detection recording with something like VLC Media player via another computer?

It's not an effect I've seen.

I actually want it to record 24/7. I find it hard to get the sensitivity on the cameras to get everything without producing false motion. So As of right now I have the 2 doors that one camera watches set really good which prevents false alerts but in doing so it does not detect if someone walks/drives by on the street. There has been cases of where the police have asked if I saw a certain truck around a set time and I was able to go back and find the plate of the truck. The guys had been breaking into houses down the street. So if I disabled scheduled recording would not have been able to see that as they didnt go to my front door. So I often don't look at the 24/7 recordings it is there if I need it and simply want to mark the spots as well if someone goes to my doors.

As I guess I also just found out it does not use double the space.. It appears that the scheduled recording stops and it moves it to the alarm recording.. I realized this when looking at the raw files in VLC. The scheduled recording stopped 10 seconds before the motion was detected and made a new file in the alarm folder. Once it was over it then went back to the scheduled recording. So guess this makes my first question pointless.. As I can just leave it the way it is since it is not using double the space on motion.. =]

The pixellation happens in the live view as well as the vlc file itself.

[AlastairStevenson]

I was thinking of your

I hate to have motion recording and 24/7 recording on as I am then using twice the space

statement in my comments.
But your description of the scenario makes perfect sense - you need continuous recording plus the motion markers to satisfy that.

I have to admit that I have only ever set up continuous recording, or motion detection recording, so didn't know that SS Pro switches between the 'alarm' and 'normal' folder structures when both are active.
That's pretty neat - it's good to learn something new. I'll check it out, maybe change my setup.
So - with the motion markers that the playback web GUI provides, and also the Windows QVR client that's installed with SS Pro - you should have just what you're looking for.

On the pixellation - just to be sure - when you 'turn motion detection on' and get the pixellation, are you referring to turning it on at the camera itself? Or in SS Pro?
I'd have said at a guess that if you see the pixellation directly on the camera stream using VLC, the problem is within the camera.
However - if the motion detection settings within SS Pro affect the problem, it's hard to say where the cause lies.
Have you tried reducing the camera resolution settings to 1280x720 to see if that affects the problem? I'm assuming you are using the higher resolution capabilities of the camera.