Manage multi-streaming

Viewing live video and playing back recorded video do not necessarily require the same video quality and frame rate. You can have either one stream for live viewing and another stream for playback purposes or multiple separate live streams with different resolution, encoding, and frame rate settings.

To change which stream to use for recording

For live streaming, you can set up and use as many live streams as the camera supports, but you can only select one stream for recording at a time.

  1. In the Site Navigation pane, select Devices.
  2. Select the relevant camera in the Overview pane.
  3. On the Streams tab, select the Record check box for the stream to be recorded.

Limit data transmission

You can set up a set of conditions to ensure that video streams only run when viewed by a client.

To manage streaming and limit unnecessary data transmission, streaming does not start when the following conditions are met:

  1. In the Site Navigation pane, select Devices.
  2. Select the relevant camera in the Overview pane.
  3. On the Streams tab, on the Live Mode list, select When needed.
  4. On the Record tab, clear the Recording check box.
  5. On the Motion tab, clear the Motion detection check box.

If these conditions are met, video streams will only run when viewed by a client.

Examples

Example 1, live and recorded video:

  • For viewing live video, your organization may prefer H.264 at a high frame rate
  • For playing back recorded video, your organization may prefer MJPEG at a lower frame rate to preserve disk space

Example 2, local and remote live video:

  • For viewing live video from a local connected operating point, your organization may prefer H.264 at a high frame rate to have the highest quality of video available
  • For viewing live video from a remotely connected operating point, your organization may prefer MJPEG at a lower frame rate and quality to preserve network bandwidth

Example 3, adaptive streaming:

  • For viewing live video and decreasing the load on the CPU and GPU of the XProtect Smart Client computer, your organization may prefer multiple high frame rate H.264/H.265 but with different resolutions to match the resolution requested by XProtect Smart Client when using adaptive streaming. For more information, see Smart Client Profiles (Client node).

If you enable Live multicast on the camera's Client tab (see Client tab (devices)), it only works on the default video stream.

Even when cameras support multi-streaming, individual multi-streaming capabilities may vary between different cameras. See the camera's documentation for more information.

To see if a camera offers different types of streams, see Settings tab (devices).