Recorded video overlay for events, with export

Answered

Andrew Gordon

November 24, 2017 05:02

Hi

I'm trying to replicate the text overlay of events that we currently have with our Mobotix cameras.  An example is shown here:

https://youtu.be/KDYIECtIXoQ

A log entry of an (instantaneous) event is sent to the camera and the camera automatically overlays it and the last so many events onto the video stream.

We use it with events from our shop tills, door access control system, weigh label stations, time clock readers etc.

Getting other cameras to do this has proved difficult.

I can create a text overlay with Nx Witness using the API but as far as I can tell this isn't stored with the recorded video.

What I'd love to be able to do is send a string of text to Nx Witness along with a list of cameras and have it:

• Timestamp it (if not provided) and record it with the recorded video for the given cameras
• Trigger recording of the cameras' hi-res streams, with pre and post event buffers
• Overlay the text on the camera view if any are being viewed, along with the previous x lines.
• Show the scrolling stream of events/log text "as they happen" on playback of recorded footage
• Include the text when the video is exported, perhaps as a subtitles/captions/overlay stream (to avoid re-encoding and make it so they can be turned off on playback)?

How many lines are shown, and the text size (scaled with the size of the video window), font, colour, and position etc should be configurable per camera.

For events with a duration bookmarks are awesome (would be even better if they could be exported along with the video, perhaps as a subtitles/overlay stream too?), but they don't really suit events that just happen.

Thoughts?

1

• 

  Igal

  November 27, 2017 20:55

  Andrew,

   

  Great, great idea indeed. I'll pass it to our Devs.

  Meanwhile, you can use bookmarks instead. Later on, if a video file required, we suggest using our Export to Executable feature to be able to play the video with all the relevant information.

   

  Thank you.

  0
• 

  Sean Lewis

  January 12, 2026 23:05

  I have the same issue. I use the bookmarks feature, but would like to have specific data written onto the video as it is recorded. The reason is that several bookmark events can happen at the same time, and text tags will help advise when a new event occurs, and what it is.

  We need to share our video with the public, they just need a video file with the details ‘baked in’ to the video.

  At present I use an expensive analytics hardware box in-the-middle to write these notes over the video. It works where I have a clump of cameras, but it too expensive and power hungry to use at every stand-alone camera site.

  Thanks for your help.

  0

Please sign in to leave a comment.