Introduction
Cameras, particularly in surveillance systems, can use Network Time Protocol (NTP) to synchronize their internal clocks with a central time server. This synchronization ensures that all cameras in the network have accurate and consistent timestamps on their footage, which is crucial for event review and legal documentation. Configuring NTP involves accessing the camera’s settings, enabling NTP, and entering the NTP server’s address. This setup reduces the need for manual time adjustments and helps maintain uniformity across all devices, preventing issues that arise from time discrepancies.
Many IP cameras can display the current date/time overlayed on the video. To print the correct time, IP cameras need an accurate time source, usually accessed via an internet connection. If your camera does not have an internet connection the EdgeVis encoder can be configured to run an NTP (Network Time Protocol) server to ensure that all the EdgeVis components and your IP cameras use the same date and time.
This is particularly important if your camera is transmitting analytics metadata or you are using the EdgeVis encoder analytics in order to ensure that the analytics are synchronized with the video stream when viewing in a VMS.
Configuring an encoder to run as an NTP server
The option to enable/disable NTP is available from the Time and location settings page of the encoder's local web configuration interface.
To enable the encoder to act as an NTP server:
Navigate to the encoder local web configuration interface.
Under Settings select Time and location.
In the Time and locations page, select the Enable NTP server Configure button.
On this page, you will be able to enable this functionality. Once this is enabled, it will be necessary to log in to each IP camera and configure it to use NTP as a time source. The address for the NTP server should be the IP Address of the encoder’s LAN port (that it is connected to).