Creation and configuration of the Camera object is done in the Hardware tab. The objects tree of a camera is generated automatically according to its functions that are integrated into Axxon One (the presence of alarm inputs, relay outputs, PTZ device, etc.).

You can configure the camera recording to the archive in the Archive tab (see Configuring archives).

Configuring the camera settings

When you have added a camera via the IP Device Discovery Wizard (see Adding and removing IP devices), you can edit the camera's parameters. The camera parameters are grouped as follows.

In the Object identification group, you can enter a camera name and a short name.

By default, the short name is a camera's ID. The full name of the video camera in the objects tree is displayed in the <Short name>.<Name> format. You can use camera's short name in hotkeys (see Notes regarding hot key actions).

After changing the short name and restarting the Client, the cameras in the objects tree will be sorted by their short names.

Also, you can disable the camera by selecting No in the Enable field.

Every camera enabled in the system (including analog cameras, see The IP Server Object) is a video channel in terms of licensing (see Axxon One licensing). Disabled cameras are not subject to licensing. If you run out of camera licenses, disable offline/unused cameras.

In the Object features group, you can see the following camera properties:

  1. The IP address (assigned automatically and can be changed if necessary).

  2. The port used to transmit data between the camera and the Axxon One (this value is set to 80 by default, but can be changed if necessary). Initially, the port number is set via the camera's Web interface.
  3. The MAC address.
  4. Manufacturer, model, driver version and current firmware.
  5. The number of the video channel (for an IP Server).

  6. Device serial number (for Axis devices only, see Axis IP Devices).

You can also customize a number of options shared by all video cameras in this group:

  1. If you want to interrupt video streaming from the camera to the Server whenever it is not needed, select Yes for Break unused connections (1).
    Conditional interruption of video transmission from a camera to the Server, if:
    1. the video stream is not displayed on either Client or Web-Client layout;
    2. the stream is currently not being recorded into archive;
    3. the stream is currently not being processed by any detection tool.
  2. After starting the Client, the default setting is to display video only after the first I-frame (key frame) is received. If the stream comes with a relatively long GOP length (Group of Pictures) or GOV length (Group of Video Object Planes), i.e. the number of P- and B-frames between I-frames in the stream, the video may be not available for a minute. In this case, select Yes for the Low GOP keyframe rate setting (2). This will reduce the waiting time for video by pushing the preceding I-frame that can be stored in the memory buffer on the Server. In some cases, the I-frame will not be buffered, but in most cases this means that it will soon be received from the device.

In the Authentication group, you can set the username and password to connect to the camera.

If the username and/or password for connecting to the camera are different from the factory settings, select No in the Default field and enter the current credentials.

If the camera supports the Digest HTTP-authorization, add the symbol " : " to the last character of the password.

To enable video buffering on Clients, set the buffer length in milliseconds in the Video buffering group. This value should be between 50 and 1000 milliseconds. If the value 0 is selected, video buffering is disabled.

In the Video stream settings group, you can see video image parameters (contrast, brightness, color saturation, etc.). When configuring these, you can look up their descriptions in Axxon One interface. For more detailed information, please refer to the camera manual.

You cannot edit these parameters if you added the camera in the Save current settings mode (i.e. with the parameters that were set in the web interface, see Adding and removing IP devices). To be able to configure these parameters, you need to set the Send settings to device checkbox.

Once you set a checkbox for a video camera, the checkbox is also set on all its channels and child objects.

In the Panomorph group, you can configure fisheye cameras (see Configuring fisheye cameras).

In the Other group, you can configure the parameters for the devices connected via the RTSP protocol (see Configuring connection of devices via RTSP).

In the Alternative camera 1 field, you can specify any camera in the current domain that can replace this camera on the layout when it isn't connected.

In the Geolocation group, you can specify the coordinates (latitude, longitude, azimuth) of the camera location (the coordinates are used when adding the camera to the geomap, see Adding video cameras and changing size of their icons on the map).

In a special case, when configuring an alarm layout (see Configuring Alarmed cameras layout), in these fields, you can specify the closest cameras this one for the simultaneous display.

Camera preview window

The preview window displays the video image from this camera.

If the camera supports simultaneous transmission of several video streams, then the Main stream, Second stream and other tabs will be available in the window, depending on the number of added video streams (see Configuring video stream settings).

  • The indicator in the upper right corner displays the current time and recording status (see Time Display).
  • When a stream is selected in the preview window, the settings for the relevant stream are displayed. The settings for the other stream are hidden.