Videorecorder — How-To Guides

Step-by-step instructions for adding cameras, viewing live feeds, and reviewing recorded footage.

Add and configure an IP camera

Goal: Connect an IP camera to the Abilis so it can record footage, show a live view in your browser, and trigger alerts based on motion or a schedule. and show a live feed in the browser.

How cameras connect: Unlike typical NVR systems where you enter an RTSP URL and credentials, the Abilis discovers cameras through the Automation > Discovery system — the same way WIO modules are found. The camera appears as an Rvs (Remote Video Surveillance) device.

1. Connect the camera to the same network as the Abilis.
2. Go to Automation > Discovery.
3. The camera should appear in the discovery table as an Rvs device with Status: Free.
4. Click on it and Bind it to a resource (e.g. Rvs-1), the same way you bind a WIO module (see Discover and connect a WIO module).
5. Once bound, go to Videorecorder to configure the camera settings.

Camera settings

Click on the camera name (e.g. Rvs1_Cam1) to open its settings:

• Enable camera — must be ticked for the camera to work.
• Description — a label (e.g. "Rvs1_Cam1").
• Snap camera — trigger conditions for capturing snapshots:
  • when device: select the device (e.g. Rvs-1)
  • port: select the trigger port (e.g. DI-1 — a digital input like a motion sensor)
  • goes ON or OFF — when to trigger (ON, OFF, or ON or OFF)
  • You can add up to two more trigger devices.
• Sending an alert on: No (default), or choose an alert channel (email, SMS, call, digital output).
• Resolution: image quality (e.g. 4 Mpx).
• Rotation: rotate the image (0, 90, 180, 270 degrees).
• Lamp duration (sec): how long the camera lamp stays on after a trigger (default: 30).
• Storage (GiB): maximum disk space for this camera's recordings. SYS (4) means use the system default of 4 GiB.
• Recording max age (days): how long to keep recordings before auto-deleting. SYS (14) = 14 days.

Advanced settings

Tick Advanced (top right) to reveal additional controls:

• Contrast / Brightness — sliders to adjust the image (0 = no adjustment).
• Lamp threshold — sensitivity for the automatic lamp.
• Lamp-ON exposure time — shutter speed when lamp is on (e.g. 1/60).
• Idle recording interval (sec): how often to record a frame when nothing is happening (default: SYS 60 = every 60 seconds).
• Min. alarm recording (sec): minimum recording length when an alarm triggers (default: SYS 180 = 3 minutes).
• Max. alarm recording (sec): maximum alarm recording length (default: SYS 600 = 10 minutes).
• Alarm holdoff (sec): cooldown time before a new alarm can trigger (default: SYS 600).
• Max. LIVE recording (sec): maximum length of a manual LIVE recording (default: SYS 600).

Click Save when done.

View a live camera feed

Goal: Watch what a camera is seeing right now in real time, directly in your web browser — without installing any special software.

1. Go to Videorecorder.
2. Click on the camera thumbnail at the bottom of the page (e.g. "Rvs1_Cam1").
3. The live feed appears in the main video area.
4. Click the LIVE button in the player controls to ensure you're watching real-time video.

Capture a snapshot from a live camera feed

Goal: You want a single still image from a camera — to include in an incident report, attach to an email, send to insurance or police, or just keep as evidence — without exporting a whole video clip.

1. Go to Videorecorder.
2. Click the thumbnail of the camera you want a snapshot of. The live feed opens in the main viewer.
3. Look for a snapshot or camera icon on the player controls (typically next to the play/pause controls).
4. Click it. The browser either downloads the image immediately, or opens it in a new tab where you can right-click and Save image as…

Pan, tilt, and zoom a camera (PTZ control)

Goal: Your camera can move — it's a PTZ camera (Pan-Tilt-Zoom). You want to reposition it from the browser to check a different angle, follow something happening on-site, or save preset positions to return to quickly.

1. Go to Videorecorder. Click the camera you want to control. The live feed opens.
2. If the camera supports PTZ, a control pad appears alongside or below the feed:
   • Arrows — pan left/right, tilt up/down. Hold to move continuously, release to stop.
   • + / − — zoom in / zoom out.
   • Home — return to the default position.
   If none of these appear, either the camera is not PTZ-capable or the Abilis has not recognised it as one — check the camera's own datasheet and its configuration at Add and configure an IP camera.
3. Move the camera to a useful position.
4. To save the position as a preset (so you can return to it with one click later), look for a Save preset or + near the PTZ pad. Give the preset a name (e.g. Front Gate, Loading Bay).
5. The preset list appears next to the pad. Clicking a preset name jogs the camera straight to that position.

Jump a PTZ camera to a preset when an event fires

Goal: A PTZ camera is watching a wide area. When something happens — a gate button is pressed, a panic button is hit, a sensor trips, a specific number calls in — the camera should immediately jog to a saved preset position pointing at the relevant spot: the gate, the reception desk, the loading bay. The camera "follows the action" automatically, so the live view and the recording are framed on what matters from the first frame.

Before this, set up the basic PTZ presets for the camera — see Pan, tilt, and zoom a camera (PTZ control). Presets are the building blocks this how-to uses.

1. Identify the source event. The trigger can be anything the Abilis already knows about:
   • A digital input changing (panic button, door contact) — see multi-action alarm from a DI.
   • A sensor threshold crossing — see Act on a sensor threshold.
   • A specific incoming phone call — see Phone call activates a relay (the same matching mechanism).
   • A door intercom button press — see Connect a door intercom.
2. Open the alarm / event rule that corresponds to the trigger.
3. Add an action to the rule pointing at the PTZ camera:
   • Target: the camera's device identifier.
   • Action: Go to preset.
   • Preset: the name or number of the preset you saved earlier (e.g. Entrance, Loading Bay).
4. Chain a recording start. Add a second action on the same rule: start recording on the same camera. Sequence matters — the preset jog runs first (a fraction of a second), then recording starts once the camera has moved; the saved footage begins with the camera already on target.
5. Save the rule.
6. Test by triggering the source event. In the Videorecorder live view, the camera should visibly move to the preset within a second. The recording for that camera will be marked as alarm-triggered and show the incident from the correct angle.

Watch several cameras on one screen

Goal: A single-camera view is fine if you only have one camera or you're investigating one incident. For situational awareness — a reception desk keeping an eye on entrance + loading bay + car park simultaneously, a security guard monitoring all zones at once — you want several cameras visible on the same screen.

1. Go to Videorecorder.
2. Look for a multi-view or grid button in the controls (often an icon showing four squares).
3. Choose a layout — common options are 2×2 (four cameras), 3×3 (nine), or an asymmetric layout with one large camera plus thumbnails.
4. Drag cameras from the list into each cell of the grid, or click an empty cell and pick a camera from a dropdown. You can assign the same camera twice if you want it in two places.
5. Save the layout with a descriptive name — Reception-entrance, Night-security, All-cameras — so you can switch between presets quickly.

Play back recorded footage

Goal: Go back and watch footage that was recorded earlier — for example, to see what happened at the front door last night or to review an incident.

1. Go to Videorecorder.
2. Use the date selector (top right) to pick a day. Dates with recordings are highlighted in blue.
3. The Recordings panel (left side) shows all recordings for that day with timestamps. A warning triangle (⚠) indicates an alarm-triggered recording.
4. Click a recording to play it in the video area.
5. Player controls:
   • — take a snapshot of the current frame.
   • LQ — toggle low quality mode (for slow connections).
   • Speed slider — playback speed (slow to fast).
   • ↻ — refresh.
   • ◁ ‖ ▷ — previous frame, pause, next frame.
   • LIVE — switch to the live feed.
6. The timeline bar at the bottom shows the day's activity. Use From and To fields to narrow the time range (e.g. 08:00 to 18:00 for business hours only).

Configure recording behaviour

Goal: Control when and how your cameras record — continuously in the background, only when motion is detected, or a combination of both. This lets you save disk space while still capturing the moments that matter.

1. Go to Videorecorder → Overview. Click on the camera you want to configure.
2. Tick Advanced to reveal all recording settings.
3. Set continuous (idle) recording. The Idle recording interval controls how often a frame is captured when nothing is happening. The default is SYS (60) = one snapshot every 60 seconds. Set it to 0 to disable continuous recording entirely (the camera will only record during alarms).
4. Set alarm recording. When a trigger fires (motion detected, a digital input changes), the camera switches to full-speed recording:

   Setting	What it controls
   Min. alarm recording	Minimum recording time after a trigger — even if the motion stops immediately, the camera keeps recording for at least this many seconds.
   Max. alarm recording	Maximum recording time — the camera stops even if motion continues, to prevent filling the disk from one long event.
   Alarm holdoff	Cooldown period — after an alarm recording ends, the camera waits this many seconds before a new alarm can start. Prevents rapid re-triggering from a swinging door or flickering light.

5. Click Save.

Configure motion-detection zones on a camera

Goal: A camera's own motion detection is triggering on the wrong things — trees waving in the wind, traffic on a road, a flag on a pole, a shadow moving across the ground as the sun sets. You want the camera to watch motion only in specific parts of its field of view (the gate, the walkway, the doorway) and ignore everything else. This cuts false alarms, reduces storage waste from useless alarm recordings, and makes every triggered recording meaningful.

1. Go to Videorecorder and click on the camera whose zones you want to configure. The live feed opens in the main viewer.
2. Open the camera's Motion Detection settings. Some cameras expose zone configuration directly through the Abilis web interface; others require logging into the camera's own web interface. Check the camera's documentation if the setting isn't visible in the Abilis view.
3. Draw the zones. The interface is usually a grid overlaid on the live image — tick cells that should be sensitive, leave others inactive. Alternatively, some interfaces let you drag rectangles on the image.
   • Draw around the gate, the doorway, or the path people actually walk on.
   • Leave out the road, the treeline, the sky, and any reflective surfaces.
   • For a parking lot, zone the parking bays but exclude the access road outside your property.
4. Set sensitivity per zone (if supported). A doorway doesn't need high sensitivity — any person-sized motion triggers. A distant gate may need higher sensitivity to catch someone walking up.
5. Save. Test by walking through each zone and seeing the camera trip into alarm recording. Then walk through excluded areas (e.g. the road beyond the fence) and confirm it doesn't trip.
6. Tune over a day. If false alarms still happen, check the Videorecorder alarm log — often one specific zone is catching a shadow at a certain time of day. Adjust or remove that zone. One week of tuning usually resolves 90% of false alarms.

Start recording when an automation event fires

Goal: You want the cameras to switch to full-speed recording in response to an event somewhere else on the Abilis — a panic button pressed, a door contact opening after hours, a water leak sensor triggering, a specific phone call coming in. Not just motion detected by the camera itself, but any event the Abilis knows about.

How it works: the Configure recording behaviour section sets up alarm recording based on the camera's own motion trigger. To start recording from an external event, you link the automation alarm to the camera via the ALARM resource — the same place you'd wire the event to call a phone or send an SMS.

1. Confirm the camera is working and saving recordings as expected — see Add and configure an IP camera and Configure recording behaviour. Set the idle recording interval low or to 0 so the "interesting" recordings stand out in the timeline.
2. Set up the source event — the digital input, threshold, or phone call. Examples:
   • Panic button on a DI: Fire a multi-action alarm from a digital input.
   • Sensor crossing a threshold: Act when a sensor crosses a threshold.
   • Specific phone call: Activate a device from a phone call.
3. In the alarm rule (step 3 of the referenced how-to), under Action, add an entry that targets the camera — typically a start camera recording action pointing at the Rvs (Remote Video Surveillance) device and the specific camera number.
4. Optionally chain a PTZ preset call: add a second action that tells a PTZ camera to jump to a saved preset (e.g. Entrance) before recording starts, so the camera is pointing at the right thing from the first frame.
5. Save the alarm rule.
6. Test — trigger the source event. In Videorecorder for that day, you should see an alarm-marked recording (with a warning triangle) appearing at the trigger time.

Set camera resolution and frame rate

Goal: Balance image quality against bandwidth and disk usage. Higher resolution and frame rate give sharper video and smoother motion, but they also mean the recordings fill the disk faster and consume more CPU. You want settings that are high enough to identify faces and number plates when something matters, without burning storage on quiet hours.

1. Go to Videorecorder and click on the camera you want to configure. Its settings panel opens.
2. Tick Advanced (if present) to expose quality controls.
3. Find and set the camera's quality parameters. Typical fields:
   • Resolution: choose from the list the camera supports — 640×480 (low, small files), 1280×720 (HD, good balance), 1920×1080 (Full HD, sharp but large), 2560×1920 or higher if the camera is 5-megapixel+.
   • Frame rate: frames per second recorded during alarm. 5 fps is sufficient for most surveillance; 15–25 fps is smooth motion for live monitoring; 30 fps is real-time video — rarely needed for security and very expensive in storage.
   • Bit rate / quality: some cameras expose this as a compression quality slider or a target bits-per-second. Higher bit rate = less compression artefact = larger files.
4. Click Save. Some cameras apply immediately; others need a restart of the video stream (re-open the live view).
5. Observe the live feed to confirm the picture is good, then check disk usage the next day — if the partition is filling faster than expected, step down one resolution or reduce the frame rate.

Manage recording storage

Goal: Check how much recording space is left, understand when old footage gets deleted, and adjust settings so you don't run out of space or lose recordings you still need.

1. Check current disk usage. Go to Tools → Disk Analyzer (see Check disk usage for details). This shows how much total space is available and how much is used by video recordings, audio files, and system data.
2. Check per-camera storage settings. Go to the camera's settings page (Videorecorder → click the camera → tick Advanced). Two settings control how much space this camera uses:

   Setting	What it controls	Default
   Storage (GiB)	Maximum disk space allocated to this camera. When full, the oldest recordings are automatically deleted to make room.	SYS (4) = 4 GiB
   Recording max age (days)	Recordings older than this are automatically deleted, even if the disk isn't full yet.	SYS (14) = 14 days

3. Adjust if needed. If you need more history (e.g. 30 days instead of 14), increase the max age. If the disk is running low, either reduce the storage per camera or reduce the max age to delete old footage sooner.
4. Click Save.

Download a video recording to your computer

Goal: You need to save a specific video clip from your cameras — for example, to share with the police after a break-in, to send to your insurance company, or simply to keep a copy on your computer before the recording is automatically overwritten when storage fills up.

1. Find the footage first. Follow the steps in Play back recorded footage to navigate to the date, time, and camera you're interested in. Make sure you can see the clip in the player.
2. Look for the download or export button. On the playback page, look for a Download, Export, or save icon (usually a downward arrow) near the video player controls.

   

3. Select the time range. If prompted, set the start and end time for the clip you want to download. Keep the clip as short as possible — video files are large (a 10-minute clip can be several hundred megabytes).
4. Download. Click the download button. Your browser will save the video file to your Downloads folder. The file will typically be in a standard video format (MP4 or AVI) that you can play in any media player.

Camera feed is offline or stuck — what to check

Goal: A camera that was working is now showing a red status, a frozen frame, or nothing at all. Before opening a support ticket, there are a handful of things that fix almost every case.

1. Check the camera status in the Abilis. Go to Videorecorder. The camera thumbnail normally shows a status indicator:
   • Green — connected and sending frames. The problem is elsewhere (browser, network path to your computer, not the Abilis).
   • Grey — inactive; the Abilis isn't trying to reach the camera.
   • Red — the Abilis is trying but not getting through.
2. Reach the camera on the network. Go to Networking > Info > LAN Connections > ARP Monitor and look for the camera's MAC address in the list. If the camera does not appear, the Abilis cannot see it at all on the network — the issue is physical: power, cable, switch port.
3. Check power over Ethernet. If the camera is PoE-powered, the switch port (or PoE injector) might have lost power. Unplug and replug the network cable at the switch end; if the camera has a status LED, it should come back on.
4. Reboot the camera. If the camera is reachable but not streaming (it answers ARP but no video), reboot it. Either cycle the PoE at the switch, or if the camera has a web interface of its own, use its reboot button.
5. Rediscover on the Abilis side. Go to Automation > Discovery and force a rediscovery. The camera should reappear with status Bound — see Discover and connect a WIO module which uses the same discovery system.
6. If the feed is connecting but distorted or stuttering, the issue is usually bandwidth. Check the CPU load under Monitor CPU load — sustained high CPU means the Abilis is struggling to process the stream. Lower the camera's resolution or frame rate in the camera settings.
7. Still not working — collect the camera's IP address, MAC address, model, and the exact error message (or screenshot) from the Videorecorder page, and contact Anteklab support. These details let them diagnose in one round-trip instead of ten.