BI 5 Feature suggestion thread

[ramaz16]

You can quickly export as MP4 with out re-encoding.

Which I found useless without timestamp, given prime purpose of BI as surveillance package. In fact, it is rational to offer a VLC plugin for VBR playback by non-users like law enforcement, or a portable stand-alone mini BVR player as a UI wrap around OS media player with the format interpreter.

What we have now makes no sense and simply counterproductive: having surveillance package with tons of videos no-one can watch without prohibitive efforts, like days of re-encoding or installing BI on a police or court computer - hardly allowed by admin security policies, and unlikely given multitude of other surveillance packages and recorders in use.

[MikeBwca]

I understand.

What I've done is to set my cameras options (in the camera themselves) to display the date, time, and camera name. In this way, the feed into BI has these in the bvr recording, and I can export mp4 quickly without re-encoding. The resulting exported mp4 will have the date/time/name in the exported mp4 video.

[TimG]

Since the old cpu loading issue with overlays was sorted, I use BI5 to time and date stamp the video on all cameras which ensures they are all synchronised. My cameras are on a sub net, and I was previously using an NTP clock running on the BI server as the cameras deliberately cannot reach the internet. That was a fudge and some of the cameras wouldn't work with a non www NTP.

When I was asked by law enforcement for footage of the local night time car door checkers, I gave them the complete BVR file, as well as the short clip of the problem saved as MP4, and both show the time and date. They were quite happy with this.

[ramaz16]

I gave them the complete BVR file, as well as the short clip of the problem saved as MP4, and both show the time and date. They were quite happy with this.

Important note: JURISDICTION!!! It all depends on local laws and practices. In your example: the police needs your footage to identify, apprehend, and charge the suspect. Your footage is sufficient probable cause to do just that. Going forward to court, the prosecutor might need much stricter grounds to get conviction for many reasons: local laws and practices on evidence admissibility, lack of a video player to play the original recoding to the jury, lack of collaborating evidence etc. Without conviction - can't stop the crime!

There is time spent and storage hardware prospective too: no need for a home owner to preserve years of empty footage, when all he needs to preserve is a pattern of concern or memorable activities in a form of short clips, and full original of prime event footage. No need to re-encode anything just to preserve a clip - trim it instead for long storage. Later re-encode (on another hardware) only footage you show others, if suitable player is missing.

[ramaz16]

set my cameras options to display the date, time, and camera name.

Agreed, its the solution when acceptable for various reasons. Not acceptable examples: analog cameras without timestamp, or in the TimG's post above, or need uniform timestamp on all cams. Paramount purpose of any surveillance - a target video footage. Simply hard to comprehend given broad variety of existing BI options, why the primary option is missing: no way to trim & save an existing BVR clip in BI ??? Pls allow the user to decide, what to preserve and in what format & volume with minimal resources and efforts.

[YrbkMgr]

BVR Trimming

It would be nice to trim and save an existing BVR section as a separate BVR without re-encoding.

However, conversion might make them inadmissible into evidence in some jurisdictions, where video evidence is often treated by courts as "hearsay", especially if its not the original footage.

Firstly, editing the BVR introduces the exact same tamper/custody concerns from an evidentiary perspective as exporting. If you edit it, the file format is irrelevant - it is not an original.

Secondly, BI already allows a user to accomplish the same thing as a trim feature but more elegantly. The difference is how it's done. To my way of thinking, you create a clone edit its settings -> record when triggered -> disable combine/cut on the record tab, and set the clone's detector appropriate for events of interest. Every event recorded by the clone will be a discrete BVR for that event. The clone master will have it's original sensor and record settings, maybe continuous recording cut every 8 hours or whatever... but the clone will produce a BVR for each trigger and the master will have a BVR for what it records. They will both live in the stored folder. Further, you can tweak the break time and make time of the clone to capture more motion pre and post trigger.

You now have two pristine files to hand over to the police if need be - the event and a backup. The authenticity would be uncontested. So no disrespect for opposing opinions, I have trouble seeing the utility in editing and subsequently exporting a BVR file format.

Personally, I would rather see development efforts focused on a scrubber during timeline playback.

Not sayin' I'm right, I'm just sayin' that's how I see it.

[Wen]

In BI Camera Layout menu put a "Save Settings" option. So that I can save the settings I currently have, BEFORE I grenade my current settings by "testing" a different layout.

I would like to try some other layouts, but it took too long to get the one that I have, so I don't mess with layouts anymore.

Thank You!

[MikeBwca]

In BI Camera Layout menu put a "Save Settings" option. So that I can save the settings I currently have, BEFORE I grenade my current settings by "testing" a different layout.

I would like to try some other layouts, but it took too long to get the one that I have, so I don't mess with layouts anymore.

Thank You!

You don't have to 'destroy a layout group to test new layouts.

In any Layout group, right-click over a camera and select 'Copy to new Group', and give it a unique name. Now you have a new Layout to test with, without effecting any other Layout.

[bluecollarbobs]

Absolutely love the new updates to ui3 (time-line view). I now prefer this over using the app to view footage. Please put in the scrub slider and next/prev alerts controls in at the bottom under timeline (you could hide the server info as that's not really important to pin). I'm not a huge fan of grabbing the time line to slide it but the controls in bi console is really nice. Also in the clips view, the thumbnails are too small. It's amazing I can quickly see my ai label and ai markup on a thumbnail but it's sometimes too small. Also it would be a game changer if you could get this ported to Linux. I'm sure there are reasons for not, but mswindows just sucks for reliability. Dw spectrum runs on Linux. So gotta be possible.

[HeneryH]

Yep, I need to get used to the idea of grabbing the timeline to slide it and always having the current time in the middle.

I think I will get used to it and actually maybe prefer it.

Having the timeline for all x (four in my case) camera views and being able to slide the timeline is very nice. Alerts are marked on the timeline so at least they are visible even if you can't jump to them.