The Previous article on Prime DVRs and NVR’s covered some basic configurations. The first was the Time. Time arguably being the most important feature to be set up properly since you have to know what time an “event” took place. For legal purposes a proper date and time stamp is mandatory. As well as having the DVR update its time on its own so you don’t have to worry about daylight savings time change. The output resolution of the DVR to a monitor is another function that needs to be configured correctly to ensure you have a visible interface to work with. It is very easy to change the resolution out of range of the monitor you are using. Old PC monitors do not support the newer and bigger resolutions and that is always something to keep in mind. The last feature I detailed was the network features. This is where the magic happens when it comes to remote access of the DVR. Remote access being another value added feature to any system.
The next feature I am going to go over is the Local configuration options.
As you can see we have 12 options to configure. Generally this can all be left default; however, for our advanced users I will detail these functions.
- Protocol: This determines what kind of communication protocol to use over an Ethernet connection. You have two protocols to choose from: TCP and UDP.
- TCP is what is referred to as a connection oriented type communication protocol. The TCP protocol initiates the connection between two devices by sending requests to establish the connection. Once the connection is established it is maintained by the devices syncing, requesting and acknowledging the data movement. This means if the data flow is too fast for the receiver, the receiver will let the sender know to slow down. The receiver will also let the sender know what packets of data have been sent. The protocol will determine what packets to re-transmit if the packets of data are lost or damaged. As you can see this is why TCP is considered connection oriented.
- UDP is often referred to as spray and pray. The reason for that is there is no error correction for the most part. The only after the fact error correction is the checksum which only verifies you have the file in its entirety. Otherwise with UDP there is no duplicate protection if the same packets are transmitted multiple times. There is no order in which the data packets come. Also there is no guarantee of delivery of the data. It is a lightweight protocol compared to TCP. You can benefit from it while watching live video streams because it is more important to have the stream constant than the error correction. As the error correction can add to the lag.
- My recommendation is to leave the option on TCP. The reason being is that not IF but WHEN you do have errors most people do not know what to do to recover from them. TCP protocol generally does it for you. Networking is an imperfect technology subject to all sorts of interference issues.
- Stream type: This option refers to the stream type to watch from the camera feeds. You can choose mainstream or substream. You should leave it on the mainstream since when you open feeds you can specify there too if you want to use main or substream.
- Image Size: The size refers to the aspect ratio of your display. This is not display resolution. Auto-fill will automatically fill to the monitor size. This is generally the best option. The other two options are hard settings. It will force the aspect ratio to either 4:3 or 16:9. If those two ratios are not correct for the monitor, part of the display may be off the screen or extremely tiny. Again . . . this is one of those options you typically want to leave default at “auto-fill”.
- Record File Size: The function of the “file record size” is to cut video segments into more manageable sizes. For example, you are recording all the time by default. The record file size cuts the video into 512MB size by default. The other options are 1Gb or 256MB. The take away here is that the larger the file is, the longer it takes to transfer to other types of media such as a CD or flash drive. Also if you do not have video editing software it will be next to impossible if not impossible for you to make the file smaller.
- Live View Performance: LVP affects how the video appears during live viewing. The options to choose from are shortest delay, real time, balanced, and fluency. The take away here is understanding what is more important to you for viewing live. Are you OK with there being a delay? Does it have to be real-time? Is a fluid feed more important? These are important questions to ask yourself as you cannot do all at the same time. If you want real time, the video has a tendency to jump frames because of network lag or jitter. This can make the data packets show up not in order. That is why you can get the frame jump. Still the video is as real time as the DVR can make it. If you are ok with a delay of a few seconds you can make the video very fluid, by choosing the fluid option. This allows the DVR to buffer the video and assemble the packets in order. With this option it gets all the packets of data correlated so the video is just smooth.
- Auto Start Live view: This feature automatically opens camera feeds for you when you go into the live view. Depending on how strong your network bandwidth is will dictate if you should leave this off or not. In many cases you want to leave it off. That is especially true for remote viewing as you may not have the download speed you expect at a remote location.
- Rules: Something you want to leave disabled. This feature is ultimately set up in other configuration options. This menu is merely where you enable the rules you create.
The last options on this page are for:
- Save recorded files
- Save snapshots
- Save snapshots when playback to pc
- Save clips to
- Save downloaded files to
These options are for you to dictate where you would like video footage and snapshots saved on your local PC. it really can be set to any folder on your PC. Just make sure to use a naming convention so you do not forget what or where they are on your PC.
This concludes the local configuration of your Prime series DVR.