Manage multi-streaming

Viewing live video and playing back recorded video do not necessarily require the same video quality and frame rate.

To change which stream to use for recording

Adaptive playback requires that two streams are set to recording, a primary and a secondary stream. For live streaming, you can set up and use as many live streams as the camera supports.

In the Site Navigation pane, select Devices.
Select the relevant camera in the Overview pane.
On the Streams tab, select the stream that you want to use for recording.
Select the relevant option on the Live mode list. The options When needed, Always and Never indicate when the stream should be applied in the client. If nothing is requested from the client, the recording will use the stream where the Default live stream check box is selected.
To record on one stream, select either Primary or Secondary on the Recording list.
To use adaptive playback, set up two streams and set one of the streams to Primary and the other one to Secondary.
To record on a stream, select either the Primary or the Secondary stream on the Recording list.

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:

In the Site Navigation pane, select Devices.
Select the relevant camera in the Overview pane.
On the Streams tab, on the Live Mode list, select When needed.
On the Record tab, clear the Recording check box.
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).