Introduction
In most circumstances, your encoder will be recording the video that has been received from your attached cameras. This is stored on your encoder at the original quality so that you have the best quality video available should you require it for evidential purposes.
Only after recording your video to disk will your encoder reduce the dimensions, frame-rate, and bitrate for transmission over EdgeVis.
If you have the appropriate permissions, it is possible to download the original video recordings over the air using EdgeVis Client (and its companion utility Recordings Downloader). Recordings Downloader is installed as part of the EdgeVis client.
As recordings are stored on the encoder at the original video resolution and bitrate, this can result in large file sizes that may take a long time to download.
Steps
Within EdgeVis Client, open the video stream that you want to download footage from.
Select Download remote recording from the Action menu
Selecting a time and duration that covers the time period you want to download (by default, it selects the past 10 minutes):
After hitting Next, the encoder will return a list of files to download:
The file listed are in approximately 50 MB chunks, and include recordings for every camera attached to your encoder. The first four characters of the filename show which camera the recordings relate to (i.e. CH0_ is camera 1, CH1_ is camera 2).
In most circumstances, click the tickbox next to the Download column (in the header of the table). This will select every file in the list for download.
However, if you wish to limit the download (e.g. to the first camera), you can select individual files to download.
(v9.1 encoders and above only) The last step of the wizard is to choose the download priority:
There are two options (both of which will use the same amount of data):High priority - if you need the downloads quickly.
This will download the recordings as quickly as possible by ignoring your encoder's maximum bandwidth setting. In ideal situations (if your encoder and client's connections have the link capacity), this can allow the download speeds to reach up to 20 Mbps.
The risk with this option is that you are potentially saturating your encoder's connection. In most situations, the quality-of-service mechanisms will automatically protect your live video stream; however, highly volatile connections could suffer, leading to lower bandwidth being available to the live video, lowering picture quality.
Normal priority - a background download that protects your live stream.
This will allocate a portion of your encoder's stated maximum bandwidth for downloading, guaranteeing that your video stream bitrate will not spike and will stay within usual levels. This avoids most risks with oversaturating your encoder's communication link and is the safest download mechanism.
However, it is 5-20 times slower than the high-priority mode. In most situations, this is not a concern, and it is usually acceptable to attempt a high-priority download first, then fallback to a normal priority download instead should you encounter issues.
Select Start to begin the download. This will send the job to Recordings Downloader.
To observe progress, click the Recordings Download icon in your task tray:
Once complete, you can find your recordings in My Documents -> Digital Barriers -> Archived Video and Pictures.
Inside that folder, there will be a list of folders (one for each server you have). Open the folder with the name of your server
You will then see a list of folders (one for each encoder you have saved media for). Open the appropriate folder for your encoder.
Open the archive folder - this uses a Year -> Month -> Day folder structure for your files.