Now that you have set up your TVT Camera System, you will see that you have multiple options for viewing and using your TVT system on your PC.
Live Display
Once you have set up your TVT system and logged back in, select “allow” on any pop-ups. You will now be brought to a screen that shows all of your camera views live. You can switch between your cameras on the sidebar to the left. Once you have selected the camera you wish to view you can see, on the sidebar to the right, the resolution of the camera. If you wish to view it at a higher resolution, select “main stream” and you will be able to zoom into finer details of the live footage. If you have a camera with a zoom, you will be able to adjust the zoom under “Lens Control”.
Playback
VIEWING YOUR PAST CAMERA FOOTAGE
Select “Playback” at the top of your page and, in the left sidebar, select the camera you are wishing to view. Select the day you are wishing to view on the small calendar at the bottom of the screen, then select the search icon. This will bring up all of the footage from that camera on that day. On the bottom of the screen you will see a timeline for that footage. The areas marked in yellow signifies the times that the camera has detected movement over that day. This will assist you in locating the section that you need.
LOCATING A SECTION OF FOOTAGE
There are a few tools that will assist you in locating a section of footage. You can see, as you hover your mouse over the timeline, it will give you a timestamp for that section. If you click on that section, you will jump to that timestamp. Once you have the located close to what you want to view, you can speed up the footage by selecting the fast-forward icon. You can also widen a timeframe by clicking the plus icon at the bottom of the page, which can also be very helpful.
CAPTURING A SINGLE FRAME OF FOOTAGE
Once you have located a frame of footage that you wish to download, pause the playback. You can then use the camera symbol on the right sidebar to take a screenshot of that frame. A pop-up will appear in the bottom right corner to notify you of the location that the screenshot has been saved to.
DOWNLOADING A SECTION OF FOOTAGE
To dowload a section of footage, you will need to select it first. Towards the bottom of the screen you will see two icons that look like a pair of scissors, “back-up start time” and “back-up end time”. Selected the start of the section you wish to download and click the “back-up start time” icon, then select the end of the section and click “back-up end time”. You will see the section that you have selected marked in a cross pattern on the timeline of the video. Now that you have made your selection, click the “download” icon to download it.
How to use the Search & Backup feature on your TVT System
SEARCHING FOR A TIMEFRAME OF FOOTAGE
The simplest way to locate footage from a specified timeframe, and download them is to use the Search & Backup feature of your TVT system, which can be found in the top toolbar. Let us use the example of the police requesting footage from 11am-11:45 am, on the 06/10/20. Navigate to “Search & Backup” and you will see to the left of the page you will see two dropdown menus under “Start” and “End”. If you click on the dropdown under “Start”, a small calendar will appear. Select the starting day of the period you wish to download, the 06/10/20, and select the starting time just below that, 11:00:00. Select the end date and time in the next dropdown menu in the same way.
After you have selected your timeframe, you then need to select the cameras that you are wishing to download footage from. You will see a list of your cameras on the left and all you need to do is click on the relevant cameras to select them. In the video you can see “Driveway”, “Carvery” and “Carpark Middle” have been selected. You can then bring up all the footage from those cameras during that timeframe by pressing the large search icon.
DOWNLOADING THE FOOTAGE YOU HAVE SELECTED
Now that you have searched for all the videos in your desired timeframe, you can download these on to your computer. You will see a list of all the videos from that timeframe. Select the videos you wish to download and click “Backup” at the bottom of the screen. You will have a pop-up appear, and will be able to select a folder to download to in the “Path” dropdown menu. Once you have selected your folder click on “OK” and this will start your videos downloading to your computer. You will be able to view each video’s download progress on the screen.
Locating and playing your saved files
Now that you have downloaded your files, open the folder that you saved them to on your computer. The files that you have downloaded are encrypted in a way. This is not only to save storage space by making the file size smaller, but it also makes the files harder to tamper with. VLC Media Player can be used to view these files if you do not already have a program that can do so. You can download the program for free here. Once you have the program on the computer you can simply select the video to play it.