Advanced settings

Your system supports multicasting of live streams from recording servers to clients. If multiple XProtect Smart Client users want to view live video from the same camera, multicasting helps saving considerable system resources. Multicasting is particularly useful if you use the Matrix functionality, where multiple clients require live video from the same camera.

Multicasting is only possible for live streams, not for recorded video/audio.

Enabled: is the default setting. In the XProtect Management Client, the recording servers and cameras must also have the functionality enabled to make multicasting from servers to clients available.

Disabled: multicasting is not available.

Controls if hardware-accelerated decoding is in use. The load on the CPU is high in a view with many cameras. Hardware acceleration moves some of the CPU load to the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). This improves the decoding capability and performance of the computer. This is useful, mainly if you view multiple H.264/H.265A compression standard for digital video. Like MPEG, the standard uses lossy compression. video streams with a high frame rateA measure indicating the amount of information contained in motion video. Typically measured in FPS (Frames Per second). and a high resolution.

Auto is the default setting. It scans the computer for decoding resources and always enables hardware acceleration if available.

Off disables hardware acceleration. Only the CPU processes the decoding.

Controls how many decoding threads are used to decode video streams. This option can help you improve performance on multi-core computers in live as well as playback mode. The exact performance improvement depends on the video stream. This setting is mainly relevant if using heavily coded high-resolution video streams like H.264/H.265—for which the performance improvement potential can be significant—and less relevant if using, for example, JPEG or MPEG-4. Note that multi-threaded decoding generally is memory-intensive. The ideal setting depends on the type of computer you use, the number of cameras you need to view, and on their resolution and frame rate.

Normal means that no matter how many cores your computer has, it will only use one core per view item with a camera.

Auto is the default setting. Auto means that the computer uses as many threads per view item with cameras as it has cores. However, the maximum number of threads is eight, and the number of threads actually used may be lower, depending on which codecA technology for compressing and decompressing audio and video data, for example in an exported AVI file. (compression/decompression technology) is used.

Advanced users can manually select the number of threads used, with a maximum of eight. The number you select represents a maximum; the number of threads actually used may be lower, depending on the codec (compression/decompression technology).

This setting affects all view items with cameras, in all views, in live as well as playback mode. You cannot specify the setting for individual view items with cameras or views. Because this setting may not be equally ideal for all of your view items with cameras and views, we recommend that you monitor the effects and, if required, re-adjust the setting to achieve the optimum balance between performance improvement and memory use.

Controls if adaptive streaming is in use. The load on the CPU and the GPU is high in a view with many cameras. Adaptive streaming enables XProtect Smart Client to automatically select the live video streams with the best match in resolution to the streams requested by the view items. This decreases the load on the CPU and the GPU and thereby improves the decoding capability and performance of the computer.

Disabled is the default setting. No automatic stream selection is done.

Enabled scans the XProtect system configuration for available streams and selects the best matching ones for the selected view.

Even though adaptive streaming can be enabled when only one stream is available, you must have at least two streams per camera with different resolutions to take advantage of adaptive streaming.

This setting affects all views in live mode.

Interlacing determines how an image is refreshed on a screen. The image is refreshed by first scanning the odd lines in the image, then scanning every even line. This allows a faster refresh rate because less information is processed during each scan. However, interlacing may cause flickering, or the changes in half of the image's lines may be noticeable. With Deinterlacing, you convert video into a non-interlaced format. Most cameras do not produce interlaced video, and this option will not impact quality or performance of non-interlaced video.

No filter is the default setting. No deinterlacing is applied, so the characteristic jagged edges may show up in images if objects are moving. This is because the even and odd lines of the full image are weaved together to compose the full resolution picture. However, these are not captured at the same time by the camera, so objects in motion will not be aligned between the two sets of lines, causing the jagged-edge effect. Performance impact: None.

Vertical stretch top field: This option only uses the even lines. Each odd line will be “copied” from the previous (even) line. The effect is that jagged edges do not appear, but this is at the expense of reduced vertical resolution. Performance impact: Less expensive than the No filter option because only half the number of lines will need post-processing.

Vertical stretch bottom field: This option only uses the odd lines. Each even line will be “copied” from the following (odd) line. The effect is that jagged edges do not appear, but this is at the expense of reduced vertical resolution. Performance impact: Less expensive than the No filter option because only half the number of lines will need post-processing.

Content adaptive: This option applies a filter to areas of the image where jagged edges would otherwise show up. Where no jagged edges are detected, the image is left untouched. The effect is that jagged edges are removed and full vertical resolution is preserved in the areas of the image where no jagged edges are perceived. Performance impact: More expensive than the No filter option because the total CPU cost per decoded and rendered frame is increased by around 10%.

View the settings and performance level of the video stream in the selected view. This is helpful when you must verify settings or diagnose a problem.

Select between these options:

Hide: No video diagnostics overlay. Default setting.

Level 1: Frames per second, video codec, and video resolution.

Level 2: Frames per second, video codec, video resolution, multicast, and hardware acceleration status.

Level 3: Debug level. Mainly for system administrators to troubleshoot or optimize system performance.

Change the time zone, for example if the time that is displayed in the camera title bar does not match your current time. Select a predefined time zone or a custom time zone:

• Local: The time zone of the computer running the XProtect Smart Client

• Server time zone: The time zone of the server

• UTC

• Custom time zone: If you want a particular time zone, select this option and then select from the list of available time zones in the Custom time zone field.

If you have selected Custom in the Time zone field, you can select any time zone known by the computer. This is useful if two users in different time zones need to view an incident—having the same time zone makes it easier to identify and establish that they are watching the same incident.

Select A4 or letter format for your PDF reports. You can create reports of events.

Select a font to be used in your PDF reports.

Logging (for technical support)

Enable the logging of application events, for example when alarms are triggered. This is mainly to help technical support troubleshoot issues that may occur in XProtect Smart Client.

There are three different log files:

• ClientLogger.log
• MIPLogger.log
• MetadataLogger.log

The logs are located here on the machine where XProtect Smart Client is installed:

C:\ProgramData\Milestone\XProtect Smart Client\Logs.

These logs are different from the System logs in XProtect Management Client.