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i-catcher playback server help
 Configuration
and usage of the playback web server
Please note: i-Catcher Playback Server is a deprecated product. Its functionality is now built-in to i-Catcher Sentry, Wildlife and Console as standard.
i-Catcher Playback Server is an add-on for i-Catcher Sentry or Wildlife. The server runs as a separate application and allows recorded
images to be reviewed via a conventional web browser. The server is very
easy to set up and use.
Installation and configuration
As with all i-Catcher software, installation is via a Microsoft Installer
file. Once installed, click the application icon on your start menu in the
i-Catcher folder. The first time the server is started, you are asked to
fill in some details regarding the location of the stored i-Catcher images.
You will need to specify the location of the i-Catcher Sentry/Wildlife
still images. If you are unsure of the location of this directory, you can click the
large button marked "Determine working folders from i-Catcher settings". You
will be asked for the directory that i-Catcher Sentry/Wildlife is installed
in. The playback server will then attempt to determine the location of the
required folders from the settings files. You will be required to specify
the i-Catcher profile to use to determine the stills folder.
Once the stills folder is set up correctly, all other settings can be safely left alone. Details
on the other settings can be found below.
Usage
Usage of the playback server simply requires accessing the web server via
the port specified in the settings. By default, this is 4000. If you are
unsure what address to enter into your web browser, then click on the middle
button on the main window (with a camera image), and a browser window will
open and load the web playback page.
At the bottom (under the current image frame) is a console of controls.
Along the top of this, is the seven player controls. In order (from left to
right) they are: Go to first frame, go back one frame, play backwards, stop
playing, play forwards, go forward one frame, go to last frame.
On the next row of controls, is the time and date values. You can change
either of these, and then click "Apply" to instantly go to any time or date
in the current feed. The "Refresh" button will update the image list to
include the most recent images for that date.
On the bottom row is the timeline. This image shows the motion recorded
on the current day. Red bars indicate points of motion.
One bar represents roughly 16 minutes of time. Clicking on any point on the
timeline will take you instantly to that time.
At the top of the page (above the frame image) is a toolbar. On the left
is a quality selector. High Quality images will be unmodified images. Low
Quality images are reprocessed with a lower image quality to give a higher
compression. This allows more frames to be received on a slower internet
connection.
On the right are two icons. The "i" icon will open a new window giving
information about the current image, the magnifier icon will show the
original unaltered image in a new window. Note that neither of these two
functions are available while playback is in progress (you will need to
press the stop button first).
More on configuration
The configuration of the playback server is accessed via the left of the
three buttons on the main window (with a tools icon). This will open a
configuration window with three tabs: Server, History, and Toolbar.
Server Tab
The server tab controls the specifics of the web
server. This includes the default port to listen on, the maximum number of
connections to accept (no more than 10 allowed), and allows you to set a
password to make the playback pages available to privileged users. Please
note that there is no username setting. From this tab you can also specify
the preferred playback page: purely JavaScript, or JavaScript and Java. The
latter implements a Java image object which provides smoother playback when
used with Microsoft Internet Explorer.
History Tab
This tab controls the location of the still images. For more information, see the beginning of this page.
Toolbar
This tab controls the functions available on the
toolbar. You can see whether High or Low Quality images will be served by
default, or if High Quality images are allowed at all (useful for
low-bandwidth connections where the economising of connection usage is
essential). You can also disable the image information and image display
functions, for example if you can't spare the bandwidth. |
