How can I find protected clips?

[YrbkMgr]

The subject says it all - I'd like to review what I've protected in the past and determine if I still need them.

Thought I'd ask here before pinging BI Support.

[IAmATeaf]

I’ve not found a way so would be interested in the reply.

I keep a text document on the desktop with the cam, date, time and drive that the clip is on.

[YrbkMgr]

Excellent - someone else tried and couldn't figure it out either. I'll post an update when I hear back.

[MikeBwca]

You can also Flag your protected clips. This isn't ideal, since you may also have other flagged alerts.

In BI Help page 116, the bottom paragraph. In BI Settings 'Clips and Archiving', check the 'Auto-protect when flagged'.

Now, when you flag a clip, it will also be protected. And vice-vera.
Note: long press a clip to flag/unflag.


I've made a feature request to have multiple 'flag' colors so that we could categorize our Flagged' clips, AND, to be able to select flagged clips ALL, or by color.

[YrbkMgr]

when you flag a clip, it will also be protected. And vice-vera.

Deepstack autoflags confirmed alerts, and even so, that doesn't help me find previously protected clips.

I had already tried using the flag filter to find the protected clips. There are some roadblocks to that strategy. Before I wrote BI Support about it, I even tried finding clips in file explorer with ATTRIB -R - then it occurred to me the Protected status was likely stored in the DB, not a file attribute (that's a guess) - so that was a dead end. See the attachment with the calendar - in this example, how would I find a clip that was protected in September?

BI Find Protected Calendar.JPG (75.73 KiB) Viewed 2873 times

Consider this semi-hypothetical use case: In Aug 2021 there was an intruder on my porch. I protected the clip capturing the event. Recently, there was another intruder and I would like to compare the clips to see if it was the same guy. It would benefit law enforcement to know if it was the same guy also... You get the picture. There are a dozen benefits to filtering on Protected, not the least of which is archiving, disk storage, etc.

The second attachment shows that I have 81,000 clips across three drives - Just pulling a number out of the air, if half were flagged, I'd still have to visually inspect up to 40,000 clips to identify protected clips. And then ask myself, "did I get them all?". How much space is taken up by protected files? Is it a problem? Do I still need them?


Finally, without the ability to find and review protected clips, the option to automatically protect (Record Tab) should not be used - the caution described on p107 of the help file regarding disk full condition cannot be properly mitigated.

2021-12-20_152458.JPG (17.62 KiB) Viewed 2873 times

[IAmATeaf]

Something also worth pointing out is that I’m sure I read that if you have to rebuild your DB then all your protected clip flags will disappear? Bit of an oversight if that is true.

[YrbkMgr]

Something also worth pointing out is that I’m sure I read that if you have to rebuild your DB then all your protected clip flags will disappear? Bit of an oversight if that is true.

Rebuilding won't do that, but Delete and Regenerate will - at least prior to v5.5.4. And it's not limited to Protected, it was all flags. Anything stored in the DB would be wiped. Ken changed that.

video and JPEGs are retained, but alert images and other flags that exist only in the database will be lost. You do have the option to save each alert image as a file instead with an option on the Trigger tab in each camera’s settings pages.

Still, without a Protected filter in the clips database, you can't use the calendar (or anything else) to find them - per the screen shot above.

[IAmATeaf]

Ah yes that is what I meant

[Tinman]

Looks like a nice feature request to me.

[YrbkMgr]

After posting here, I submitted a request to BI Support. The response I got back initially was essentially the same as all of us had -> use flagged to find protected. I replied with the use case similar to my post above - waiting to hear back.

The way Ken phrased his initial response, I got the sense that it's a PITA to fix. Just guessing. The incorporation of AI/DS introduces unintended consequences and may mean redesign of the DB - and I'm sure he'd rather pound his balls flat with a wooden mallet before doing that.