Introduction

The Universal driver is to be used when:

• there is no dedicated driver for the device, or

• the device is not ONVIF compatible.

In order to be able to use the Universal driver you need to know the RTSP or HTTP URL of the video/audio stream and the currently used codec. Getting the URL and the type of codec of the device can usually be done from the device’s Web Page or documentation.

Please note: Specific information on how to get the URL and codec of the device is out of the scope of this document.

The Universal driver can be looked at as a stream media receiver/player. It does only receive multimedia streams and does not control the device in any way. As no specifics of command API or protocols are known the driver does not send any commands to the device. The Universal driver tries to receive a multimedia stream from a device using standard streaming methods (RTSP/RTP, HTTP streaming or JPEG snapshots).

There are currently 3 variations of the Universal driver available in XProtect:

• 1 channel

• 16 channels

• 64 channels

The operation of all these is the same - with the difference of number video/audio channels available from the same device with one IP/hostname.

This document covers the configuration for the 1 channel driver - but the information is valid for the other 2 drivers as well.