Playing Back Clips with the Vivotek ST3402 Software

From EZWatch Wiki

Vivotek ST3402 Playback

Features of Playback

The Playback program of this application software is a very powerful yet convenient and user-friendly tool the user can use in browsing the recorded media datamedia database. It has two display modes (normal display mode and event preview mode) and three playback methods (full range, time period, and events preview). There are several main tools consisting of special features in this Playback tool. These tools are depicted as follow.

Powerful play control tools:

Play

Stop

Pause

Step forward

Fast play (from x1 to x16)

Slow play (from /1 to /16)

Convenient display adjustment tools:

Zoom in (from 1:1 to 2.25:1)

Zoom out (from 1:1 to 1:2)

Full screen

Flexible searching range adjustment tools:

User input (from full range to 1 second)

Zoom in (from full range to 10 seconds)

Zoom out (up to full range)

Page searching

Full range

Various tools:

AVI file transducer

BMP file snapshot

Output to printer directly

Volume control

System control tools:

Lock Program

System settings

Minimize

Miscellaneous tools:

Location selector

Alert window selector

Layout

Once you have successfully logged in to the Playback system, the main window appears at the top of the screen and the display resolution will be changed to 1024x768 automatically, if the current resolution is less.

As shown above, there are four main areas in this window: Display area, Histogram area, Control area, and Status area.

There are also three visual indicators of the controls: Area Selection Indictor, Frame Selection Indictor, and Pull Bar.

These features provide for powerful search for specific video recorded in the surveillance database.

Using the Tools

This section discusses the method of how to use the tools in the control area.

Selector Tools

Figure below shows the Selector tools.

These are: Location Selector, Period Start Time Selector for the selection of the beginning time, Period End Time Selector for the selection of the ending time, Playback Method Selector, and Alert Area Selector.

Location Selector

The Location Selector lets you select the camera you want to view from (refer to above figure). The location information is the same as the location name associated with the dedicated channel in the Monitor program. If there are more than one time segments in the same location, another dialog will appear (as shown in figure below). You must select an interval in that dialog. If your selection is correct, the Playback program will automatically switch to that location and start to display.

Period Selector

Period Selector provides you a precise way to choose the start time and the end time of a new period. The end time should be larger than the start time. After you have given the correct start and end times, clicking on the “Play” button in the Jog Dial. The system will display the new period in the display area and change the period start and the end time labels. The Pull Bar and Histogram Area will be changed, too. If the selected period is not present in the database, the data in the period selector will be changed back to the previously correct start and end times and a warning message will be shown.

Playback Method Selector

Full Range

If you select this method, the database will be displayed from the beginning to the end of this location. Any change in the period selector will have no effect unless you change this selector to “Time Period”.

Time Period

If you change the playback method to “Time Period”, you can modify the start and end times in the period selector. When you click on the “Play” button in the Jog Dial, the period you have selected will be displayed.

Events Preview

This method changes the display mode from the Normal display mode to the Event Preview mode or vice versa. The program will save the previous start and end time settings in “Time Period” mode. Therefore, if you want to change the Period Selector to see in another period, you must first use the Playback Method Selector to change to the mode you want to use. Otherwise, the Period Selector will revert back to the previous period when you last changed the playback method.

Alert Area Selector

In the Preview mode, the Playback program only shows one type of the alert events each time. If you want to see the other type of events, you must use the Alert Area Selector to change to other event type. In the Normal display mode, the alert type that the Alert Area Selector indicates will be highlighted with a red rectangle. The Alert Area Selector will be changed to alert window 1 by default settings when you change the location selector.

Play Control

For Play Control, we used a jog dial, as shown in below, to make it easier to control video sequence display. Except for the “Play” button, all other buttons can control the displaying frame in the Normal display mode and the selected displaying frame in the event Preview mode.

Play from Beginning

The “Play” button we support here is an intelligent user-interface. The functionality of this button can vary to fit different circumstances. In the Normal display mode, click on the “Play” button restarts the displaying video sequence. In the Preview mode, if you do not change the data of the period selector, clicking on this button restarts the selected displaying frame. If the data of the period selector has been changed, clicking on the “Play” button restarts all frames to display the first nine events in the new period.

Stop

When you want to stop displaying the video sequence, you can click on the “Stop” button. Note that once you had pressed the “Stop” button, the start point will be reset to the beginning of the present period.

Pause/Resume

The “Pause” button provides you a way to pause video sequence display. When the displaying video is paused, clicking on the “Pause” button again will resume video display.

Step Forward

This button is valid only when the displaying video sequence is paused. Each time the “Step Forward” button is clicked, it will display the next frame in that period.

Fast Play and Slow Play

We support up to a maximum of x16 fast forward play and a minimum of 1/16 slow forward play. This function provides you with more flexibility in browsing through the surveillance database. If you want to change the playing speed, you only need to move the speed indicator. To increase playing speed, move the indicator in the clockwise direction. To decrease playing speed, move it in the counterclockwise direction. Current speed you are set at will be shown in the second column of the status area.

NOTE: You can press Ctrl key and the corresponding button introduced above simultaneously to stop/pause/resume/play all events in event preview mode.

Display Adjustment Toolbox

When you move the mouse cursor over to the displaying area, the display adjustment toolbox will appear. Using the display adjustment toolbox, you can change the displaying video sequence to the size you want to see in the Normal display mode. Move the area selection indicator to the display area. Figure bleow shows the display adjustment toolbox and its own three elements, i.e. “Zoom In”, “Zoom Out”, and “Full Screen”.

Zoom In

Each time you click on the “Zoom In” button the image size in the display area will be magnified 12.5 percent of the original size. Due to the limitation of the display area size, the maximum zoom in size we support here is 792 x 540 for NTSC modulation mode, 660 x 540 for PAL modulation mode and 720 x 540 for CMOS modulation. If you want to see the image in more details, you can use the Full Screen function we support in the same toolbox.

Zoom Out

Each time you click on the “Zoom Out” button, the image size in the display area will be minified 12.5 percent to the original size. In order to completely show the location and time, the minimum zoom out ratio is limited to 0.5:1.

Full Screen

When you click on the “Full Screen” button, the video sequence will be enlarged to fill up the entire screen instantly. You can double-click on the mouse button in any area on the screen, or press the “ESC” key to return to the original state.

Toolbox

In our playback program, you can check the database and you can export the database to other media. Using the toolbox, you can export the database into other more portable formats, such as AVI file, bitmap file, or paper (hard-copy). You can also use Windows media player or other programs to browse the exporting data. Under Normal display mode, you can use all the exporting tools. Under Preview mode, only snapshot and print can be used. Figure below shows the elements of the toolbox.

System Control Toolbox

The System Control Toolbox provides you some basic operations for the Playback program. Figure below shows the elements of the System Control Toolbox, i.e. “Lock Program”, “Settings”, “Minimize”, and “Exit”.

Exit

The Playback program will close as you click on the “Exit” button. If the AVI exporting procedure is running, this procedure will be stopped first.