Automate the Camera replacement procedure
Completed
Can you build an automated tool to migrate old footage and settings over when a camera gets replaced?
Maybe you could detect if a new camera ID shows up using the same IP number from an existing camera that also happened to be recently offline, then pop up a message asking if we wanted to move footage and settings to the new camera, and delete the old camera "channel" once it's complete?
Or perhaps just a button in the camera settings dialog that says, [this is a replacement camera] which brings up the similar migration dialog and lets you pick which camera to copy from.
I did find the help resource for doing this manually. And boy is it convoluted.
http://support.networkoptix.com/hc/en-us/articles/217862448-Replace-a-camera-and-recover-related-archive-footage-
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Official comment
This was released as part of 5.1
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Hi Joel Sabine,
The feature is listed on the roadmap, it just doesn't have a fixed release date yet.
There are many feature requests and there is always a limitation in resources, and we have to make choices.Camera replacement is not a frequent routine and therefore had less of a priority to features that affect frequent routines.
JIRA-VMS-973
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Hi Norman,
Completely understand the choices - it's not always easy keeping up with the many requests...
I'm looking at this mostly from 3x perspectives:
- From an enterprise client perspective - 1000+ camera systems typically have life-cycle management programs in place and camera replacements are frequent routines. These systems are rarely installed in one instant so are constantly changing. Not having a simple way to replace cameras is a major roadblock to using Nx for enterprise clients.
- Even for the smaller systems - often we'll use an analog encoder to reduce the cost of entry to a VMS platform for a client with existing old infrastructure and then progressively upgrade cameras to spread out the cost for clients. This makes replacement a much more frequent task.
- Quite a few times now we've had to delete/re-add cameras to a system to deal with compatibility issues when an updated device template needs to be applied (currently have this exact case ongoing) - not having a simple camera replacement tool/mechanism makes this incredibly painful.
Just my two cents for what it's worth...
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Joel,
You point are very clear. To be honest I have no idea how people are handling it now. If I were to do it frequently, I would shoot myself in the head:-(. I feel like it must be done asap. The issue is that other SIs want archive encryption, 2FA, better AI coverage, cloud storage, LDAP groups etc, easier video export(like a link) and so on:-)
Sorry for the inconvenience. We will do our best to speed it up. Will do another brainstorm session on this, to see how to make something quick and simple. -
Because of the hassle, I've just been naming the old camera z-old (camera name) to kick it down to the bottom of the list and telling the customer they had to go to that camera if they wanted to review old footage from it. Once the old footage rolls off I then delete the camera from the list.
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This feature was highlighted on IPVM website recently. Made me wonder why Witneess doesn't have this feature in place yet vs. competitors that have it.
It sure would be fancy to show customers such an easy process... vs.. moving data between folders manually as appears to be the process outlined in 2015.
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Hi Matt Barber
I'm afraid that this feature hasn't got the attention it deserved, but at this moment it is a formal task for our developers to fulfill.
Unfortunately, I have to inform you it won't change in the next release, but we will try to make some changes in the release after that to make the camera replacement less cumbersome.
JIRA-VMS-973 -
what happened to this being in 4.1??
see thread and link below
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yeah i would love to see the option to update the mac address (instead of deleting 10 cameras and adding it back in) or a reindex and mac refresh...
i just replaced 10 cameras with a system that has 8 HDD drives and it was a pain in the **** to keep the old footage, renaming all the folders to the new mac and deleting all the cameras and adding it back in to update the model and mac address.....
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Lazer,
Believe me, I know that pain!
This is already in the roadmap for 4.1.
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Hi Lazer Wiesner,
Thank you for your feedback. I just have shared your request with our team.
Unfortunately, I already know, this feature request didn't make it into the next release.
We wish we could fulfill all requests asap, but in reality that is unfortunately not possible.
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For anyone interested here's how to do it without all the pain.
1) Add the new camera, then right-click the camera, go to "Camera Settings". Under the General tab click "More Info" under the camera name and look for "Camera ID" and click the copy button. DO NOT ENABLE RECORDING YET.2) Go to the old camera's settings and go to it's "More Info" area and look at (but dont copy) it's camera ID.
3) Go to your Storage location and find the folder that matches the old camera's ID.
4) Rename that folder to the new camera's ID from your clipboard.
5) Go into the Storage Menu in NX/Wave/Spectrum and reindex the archive. Now all the footage from the old camera shows up in the history for the new camera.
6) Enable new camera recording and you're done
This isnt terribly difficult but it would be great if anyone from NX/Hanwha knew this was the process to tell us integrators what to do. Having an interface mechanism where I can link the old camera to the new camera and merge their archives would also be fantastic, but until then this works for my use case, its just annoying.
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Hi Jeff Jones, John Griffin,
Some good news. In the upcoming release, there will be an GUI based feature for camera replacement. (Finally).
Ps. default has been a camera ID, also prior to v5.0, but in case cameras replied too slow on certain request, a MAC address is shown instead, and it doesn't matter if it is Ubuntu or Windows. The behavior should be equal.
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I received this interactive walk through where you can test out the actual ui interactions and i like it a lot. hopefully this comes out soon!
https://qil86q.axshare.com/#id=vvngyo&p=_demo__4_3-plus-add-devices
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