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Configuring your system

Once you have StreamShuttle installed and some cameras added, there are other things you may want to configure or adjust. The overall configuration can be broken down into a few different stages. Initial configuration, Break In Period, and Post Break In Period. Initial configuration takes place when configuring the cameras for the first time. The Break In Period is roughly the first couple weeks after the Initial Configuration, during this time you will may find that some settings may need to be tweaked, such as motion zones or alert settings. During the Post Break In Period, you probably won't need to change much unless the physical space a camera monitors is changed or new devices are added.

Initial Configuration

Unfortunately, the current trend with most of the off the shelf cameras is that they now require you to setup/configure them using their own proprietary apps. During the initial configuration will probably be only time you will need to use these apps, and after your system is configured and broken in you will most likely not even need them installed.

Although many of the device settings and adjustments we refer to can also be applied within StreamShuttle, it is usually best to set these on the device itself. In a perfect world, you will be able to utilize pass-through recording in StreamShuttle, meaning that we are storing the video directly "as-is" from the camera itself. This is ideal as it means there is less processing to do. If, for instance, we change the resolution, frame rate, or add a timestamp in StreamShuttle; then we have to also decode and re-encode the video which takes a lot more processing power. Simply making the adjustments on the device itself allows for the recordings to remain as pass-through.

The primary "performance" based settings we might consider are resolution, frame rate, and CBR vs VBR.

  • The resolution is the size of each video frame. The larger the resolution, the more space and processing power is required. There is a drastic difference between 1080 and 4k.
  • Frame rate is how many video frames per second (fps) are captured. The higher the frame rate, the more storage is required. If the frame rate is too low, then fast moving objects may appear to be "skippy". 30fps has been the standard for TV for ages. However, this is generally overkill for most scenarios. Many devices don't even record at that rate. In most instances, around 15fps is usually a good trade off between smooth motion and storage size.
  • The final piece of the puzzle is CBR (constant bit rate) vs VBR (variable bit rate). This is usually configurable at the camera. Generally, and especially with WIFI based cameras, it is recommend to set this to CBR. The difference between the two settings is that CBR essentially ensures the video does not exceed a specified bit-rate, while with VBR the bit-rate will spike when there is a lot of activity in the video. This spike using VBR could cause frames to drop and connectivity issues, especially when using WIFI. It’s also tough to calculate the storage needs for VBR based streams since it’s well … variable.

Another setting better set at the device is the video codec itself (H264 vs H265). Video codec is a specified file format used to compresses the video.

  • Although H265 encoding is supported out of the box with StreamShuttle, many devices still cannot playback H265 content in the web browser. Therefore, it is recommended to change the video encoding to H264 at the device itself. StreamShuttle can also re-encode the video, however there may be a pretty big performance hit.

Break In Period

All new systems will have some type of break-in period. After a few days, you will also have a much better idea of the storage usage and general performance profile of the system. You will also start to become aware of potential quirks of your particular system.

For example, maybe there is a bush somewhere that always triggers motion because of the wind.

  • You can no go in and start to adjust the zones to help eliminate those types of false alarms.

Maybe you notice one of the wireless cameras tends to have lot of restarts.

  • You can lower the resolution and/or frame rate.

Perhaps one device is restarting because of timeouts.

  • This is usually because of too much load on a single disk.
    • You can add another disk or reduce frame rates.

Post Break In Period

After a few days of working with the new system and working through any quirks, you should be good to go! Now the system will be in more or less maintenance mode, allowing you to worry about what really matters.