Introduction
The release introduces a number of major enhancements to VMS Gateway, including:
Download and installation instructions (for new installations and upgrades).
We have an updated VMS compatibility article.
Ability to retrieve an image snapshot via a URL
VMS Gateway can now provide live image snapshots from your video stream to third-party applications using a standard web API. This allows you to build web-based lightweight dashboards or camera video grids that show an overview of your cameras, without the CPU/bandwidth overhead of streaming live video from your VMS Gateway to your video platform
More info: Retreiving an image snapshot
Additional lower bitrate output options available
We have added additional lower bitrate options and smaller frame sizes when configuring the VMS Gateway output settings. This is to allow you to generate considerably more output video streams from your VMS Gateway installation if you do not require higher quality video streams (e.g. for building a video wall with high numbers of video streams).
Support for ARM64 architecture
In addition to the standard Intel/AMD 64-bit installers, this release adds support for the ARM 64-bit platform. This is especially useful for users with Raspberry Pi boards.
VMS Gateway installers are now available for ARM64 Linux machines. These have been tested on Raspberry Pi boards.
More info: Installing VMS Gateway on Pi OS
Improved RTSP streaming compatibility
We have identified and addressed various compatibility issues with various RTSP clients, notably some older versions of gstreamer.
Improved synchronisation between video and analytics
Improvements have been made to better synchronise video data and analytics data arriving from encoders. This should improve the alignment of bounding boxes with detected objects in the video.
Ability to generate ONVIF alarm events that originate from your IP camera
EdgeVis encoders running v9.1+ can integrate with your IP cameras' built-in Profile S/T alarm triggers, and use them as alarm triggers within EdgeVis.
VMS Gateway 9.2 introduces the ability to convert those events back to standard ONVIF events and present them from the Virtual ONVIF device to your VMS.
This enables you to create alarm rules within your VMS using ONVIF events generated by the camera connected to your encoder.
Improved security by switching to IPVLAN from MacVLAN
These two technologies (IPVLAN and MacVLAN) are components that can be used to create virtual network interfaces within containers - this is how VMS Gateway is able to create VODs, each with its own IP address that is addressable from your VMS.
Older versions of VMS Gateway utilise MacVLAN. This required several options enabled when creating VMS Gateway virtual machines within VMWare and Hyper-V:
VMWare: Promiscuous mode, Forged transmits
Hyper-V: Mac Address Spoofing
These settings reduce the security of your virtual machines, and are banned by some IT departments.
VMS Gateway v9.2 has switched from MacVLAN to IPVLAN which does not have the same limitations, and as such, these settings are no longer required.
Users upgrading from earlier versions can now disable the above settings if they have been enabled for older versions.
Additionally, if you delete/recreate a VOD with the same IP address, it will reuse the same MAC address as previously assigned. This avoids issues with certain VMS that would interpret a new MAC address as a different device (and fail due to a perceived security issue).
PTZ improvements
PTZ within EdgeVis has historically been available to only one user at a time. This can cause issues when attempting to add encoders to a VMS, as querying PTZ functionality can fail if another user has ownership of PTZ at that time.
For v9.1+ ZAP encoders, VMS Gateway 9.2 will use a new mechanism for PTZ control that no longer locks the PTZ to any single user. This will allow:
all users to retrieve PTZ information, thereby eliminating any potential PTZ access issues when adding to a VMS.
multiple users to take 'control' of the PTZ camera. In line with standard VMS behaviour, should multiple users attempt to move the camera at the same time, the last command from all users is the one executed.
Support for deploying VMS Gateway behind a web CDN
Some organisations, when deploying EdgeVis Server, will place the server's web interface behind a CDN or WAF to provide an additional level of security.
However, this will often make users of the EdgeVis Server web management interface use a new domain name/ip address that is different from the address your EdgeVis Server is using for its video ports.
In previous versions, this would break VMS Gateway, as it would attempt to connect to the standard EdgeVis video ports on the CDN/WAF address, instead of the EdgeVis Server address.
This release allows users to enter a second address to connect to your EdgeVis Server in these scenarios:
Under the Advanced settings section, you can now enter a second address (which should be the same as the address that you use in EdgeVis Client to connect to your server). This then provides VMS Gateway with both addresses needed to successfully connect to your EdgeVis Server.
Security improvements and minor bug fixes
As with every release, we have upgraded the third-party libraries used to the latest releases to include the latest securty patches, while fixing a variety of smaller issues.