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CHAPTER 4 MENUS
PICTURE 4-11
PICTURE 4-12
Pack Duration
– Rather than creating 24-hour long files when a channel is set to record all
the time, this allows you to set the maximum record length between one to two hours
(measured in minutes).
DVR No.
– If you are controlling more than one DVR with a single remote, this allows you to
give each DVR a separate numerical ID.
Video Standard
– This DVR operates using the NTSC standard common to North America.
Auto Logout
– This sets the duration of inactivity before the DVR will automatically log a user
out of the system.
Snapshot
– When you enable snapshots in the Schedule menu (Section 4.6), this determines
how much time will pass between snapshots. You can set the interval from 1 to 600
seconds (10 minutes).
IMPORTANT!
You
MUST
stop all recording before changing the date or time.
DST
– In order for your DVR to adjust to
Daylight Savings Time automatically,
you should enable the function
and then set whether DST begins
and ends in your region based on
a variable date such as the last
Saturday of a particular month or a
specific date.
ENCODE
This window allows you to manage the quality of the recording from each channel as well as
the transmission rate and whether there’s an accompanying audio feed.
As with other windows described earlier,
each channel can be set individually or all at
the same time. Settings can be copied from
one channel and pasted to another. Only by
hitting
Save
will your settings be retained.
Right-clicking or hitting
Cancel
will leave the
system with your previous settings.
The system is configured to record using the
H.264 format and this cannot be changed.
In addition to the settings for display on the
DVR, you can also adjust the settings for
the sub-stream display, referred to as
Extra
Stream 1
in this window. This stream is
the data that is sent to remote monitoring
devices. Due to bandwidth concerns, these
data streams are generally smaller than those
sent directly to the DVR itself. These streams
run in parallel with the main stream sent to
the hard drive and they do not affect each
other.
PICTURE 4-13
Resolution
– This system supports the D1, CIF or QCIF recording format. D1 is equivalent to
full TV resolution at 704x480 pixels and offers the best resolution at the cost of taking
up the most disk space. CIF is roughly one-half the resolution of D1 at 352x240 and
correspondingly takes up less room on the drive. QCIF is smaller still at 176x120
pixels.
The Extra Stream can only use the QCIF resolution.
Frame Rate (FPS)
– Variable between 1 to 30 frames per second. The higher the number, the
smoother the playback.
NOTE!
Generally, the trade-off for higher quality and increased frame rate is
the amount of room a video file will take on the drive along with how much
“bandwidth” the signal takes up within the system. This system cannot record
with all channels set to maximum resolution and frames per second and it will
limit you to one channel set at D1 recording at 30FPS with all other channels
Bit Rate Type
– Variable Bit Rate (VBR) versus Constant Bit Rate (CBR). VBR provides better
compression, but issues may arise when streaming for remote viewing.
Quality
– Only enabled when VBR is selected, this can be set from 1 to 6 with 6 having the
highest image quality.
Bit Rate (KB/S)
–Configurable from 192 to 1024 kilobytes per second, this is the maximum
bit rate the selected channel can utilize. Your network may not have enough
bandwidth to handle maximum rates from all of your cameras. Adjusting these
settings to suit your network will improve performance and on-screen image quality.
either being limited to CIF at 30FPS or less, or D1 with a maximum frame rate of 7FPS.
