Daily fast scan file - My idea !

Snaffs

One area for BIG Improvement from Reolink, and other NVR/Camera system makers
for improving and making it possible to fast scan through a whole days video:
(Google does this, and would love to see Reolink also)

My suggestion of a way to make this happen would be (wild guess)
Get your Camera/NVR to take 1 single snapshot every, (guessing) 30 seconds and save this to a separate file.

Then via a Reolink client, perhaps using a mouse scroll wheel or slider, smooth scroll through a whole 12 or 24 hour period in seconds by scanning through this file.

Let's do some maths:
Over a 24 hour period capturing a single frame every 30 seconds you would get
2880 frames
At a normal playback speed of 20 frames/sec that would just be 144 seconds or about 2.5 minutes of footage to store in this file each day.

Then you could simply fast scan thru this 2.5 mins of footage recorded daily and see the whole days events (at 1 frame every 30 seconds)

I just used one frame ever 30 seconds as an example. Given how little extra data storage it really is, it could easy be 15 seconds between each frame.

Snaffs

Just as a follow up.
Having a play with the Google/Nest Hello app and it's ability to smooth scroll though hours and hours of video just sliding your finger across the screen.

I would say Google/Nest are taking a single frame every 5 seconds to create this footage.

I know I have explained above, but would be lovely if this could be done (let's go with a frame every 5 seconds) and store that as a separate file. To be able to quickly and smoothly scan through to see if there are any events you wish to find in the main quality footage.

Mike

I second this, it would be a very helpful feature.

fishki

You are describing time lapse.

But yes that might be a nice feature to implement. I do have 16 cameras running, that would still be alot of footage to watch if I did that on all my cameras. But maybe on one or two could be a nice way of scrubbing thru a day in a shorter amount of time.

Snaffs

Thanks for backing my suggestion (or whatever 'technical method' to achieve the same)

In the morning I can open the Reolink Client, and I see perhaps 20 or 30+ alerts and have to manually tap each one to see what might have triggered it.
Most of which would be.
A Fly
A Moth
A Raindrop
Perhaps a car goes by
Another Fly
A cat walks past.
Opening up and viewing each one just to see if there is anything important to make not of.
Having a smaller "Time-Lapsed" reording, of, lets say 1 frame every 5 seconds
(rather than main footage of 20 fps which would be 100 frames during 5 seconds)
Would allow the client to much easier quickly scan through video 100x easier than normal footage.
If done right, you could literally just slide your finger up/down your phone/tablet screen, or your mouse pointer over your computer screen, and run back and forth thru this 'time-lapsed' chunk. Be it a 12 or 24 hour chunk, and see within literally a few seconds if there was anything important during that entire 12/24 hour period that you then wish to open up your main recording and view in more detail.
.
As I said, a great example is the Google/Nest mobile app. You have 2 ways to view recorded video. One is just thumbnails for the events, the other is the smooth 'Timelapse' scroll, where you can just run your finger up/down the full screen height of the phone/tablet and view hours and hours of footage instantly as it's just 1 frame every x seconds it's smooth scrolling through.
No idea how Google/Nest do this, but I'm having a wild guess it must be something as I suggested, and creating a separate small file during the day and placing frames into that which is easy for the system to move through.
After all we can't expect a NVR/Home network to be able to move through perhaps 60GB of daily video in seconds!
.
Not expecting anything like this soon, but would love it if Reolink would take note, and put it onto there:
New features for a future update pile.
.
Right now it's simply easier for me to open my Google/Nest Home App for my front doorbell, and be able to scroll thru that and see if there is anything worth looking at in much more detail on my reolink footage.

Cynthia

Thank you for your suggestion. We will forward your suggestions to the R&D team. They will do some surveys to see if most customers have this king of needs.

Snaffs

Thank you Cynthia
It would be hard to imagine anyone would not wish to have a quick and easy way to smooth scan through hours of footage in a very user friendly simple/quick way.
But of course, I full understand you need to check and be sure to focus energy onto aspects which most customers want
Keep up the good work & thank you for listening.

timbercreek

Timelapse would have benefits and drawbacks.
-
Yes it would be nice to compress a days worth of video into a shorter duration when reviewing it. And if done correctly would benefit some people.
Lets take for instance, someone wants to set up a camera where the deer come up to feed and record that location for 12 hours, but only have a 15 minute long video. Timelapse is the perfect solution for this.
Or they have a camera at their front door facing the driveway and street, creating a timelapse would work in this scenario as well to see the vehicles and pedestrians that go by or approach.
-
The drawback of timelapse for security reasons would be the playback speed, you would only want 2 or 3 frames per second or you would miss detail.
For instance, if you have a blindspot on your coverage, and it was possible to run in, do some damage, lets say, to a car parked in a driveway and run out of that area, all in less that 10 seconds. If you are recording 1 frame every 5 seconds. That person is on 1 frame, maybe 2 but doubtful. Playing back at 20fps, you will likely never see that person. So you would need the slower playback.
If i did the math correctly, 1 frame every 5 seconds, playback at 3 frames per second.
1 hour of recording equals 4 minutes of playback. Still not that bad.
Users would need the ability to set capture and playback rates.
-
Timelapse vs Fast Forward
I have noticed during playback and using the fast forward, it doesn't really ff, it jumps, it lags, it is worthless at anything over 2x and needs improvement. On a few occasions LEO's have asked me to review my footage to help them. Trying to go thru terabytes of footage is horendous at best with the clients provided.
With the wide open views that I have an some cameras, I can see how timelapse would be a great help to narrow down time frames.
-
For a budget build I think Roelink has a great product they can expand upon. There are still areas for improvement and added functionality and hopefully they can give this some serious thought

Snaffs

^ Thanks for the great post in response to my suggestion
-
I think we seem to be on the same page fundamentally in feeling it would be excellent to be able to scan a lot of footage quickly and easily to find "something" and then, if something is found then you can go to main footage to see in detail they event.
-
I'm thinking perhaps part of my explanation did not come across as I meant it to, so let me clarify one point.
I'm not suggesting having such footage "Auto-Play" at high speed, as you say. A person/animal/vehicle may only be on 1 or two frames.
I am suggesting it's implemented in a similar playback method as the Google/Nest home app.
It's a manual function, either with a finger on a phone or mouse on a computer, which gives you very find control, you move your finger/mouse and the footage moves at the speed you are moving.
If you see something FLASH on one frame, you stop moving, and can go backwards and forwards across this point of movement.
-
If you could see this happening it would be easier to understand than trying to visualise my explanation.
-
Note. I'm not wanting a 2 min video playing at 20x speed constantly, as you say you'd miss things. Using manual control to smooth move gives a vastly easier/better experience.
but it has to be able to keep up with your finger/mouse speed, hence a small file size. Perhaps this file would be loaded into RAM before viewing to allow the needed speed/control?

timbercreek

Sorry, I am not familiar with Google/Nest and the word timelapse was out there.

So more like a slideshow? Capture a frame every so many seconds and put that image into like a slideshow gallery that you can just scroll back and forth?

Snaffs

Hi,
It's always hard to describe something, which is instantly understandable when you see/use it in person
-
If I continue to use the Google/Nest app as my example as that's what inspired me to want the same/similar from Reolink.
You go to one of the two playback areas, and you place your finger on the screen underneath the current view and move your finger (there is then a few seconds delay. I guess as their servers then know what you are wanting to do, to they may be assembling the time-lapse footage for you) Once this has happened, you move your finger up and down the entire height of your phone screen, and as you move your finger, at the same speed you are moving your finger, the video moves forwards/backwards directly under your control.
You move your finger fast, clouds zoom across the sky, you move it very slow, as slow and as tiny a movement as possible, then you might see a car, jump position moving along as it appears to be one frame every 10 seconds ish (am guessing)
It's amazing and feels so free to be able to move your finger at any speed and have the playback move forwards/backwards at the same time.
-
If I do this, I may see a few flashes of someone coming to my front door. I can then go to the main event playback and watch the full footage of the event.
-
I can't yet find a video on the internet of someone demonstrating this. If I do I will find it.
But it's important to have fine manual control.
As you rightly said, if it was simply a fixed speed 20fps playback you'd miss too much.
Under finger control you have pretty much zero to way faster than reality playback speed.

timbercreek

I have been searching myself, found a youtube video, I am with you 100% now.
And yes, I would love to have that feature for playback.
Sorry for all the confusion.

Snaffs

^ No need to be sorry myself.
I'm my fault for not being able to explain myself clearly enough.

There is always one work-around for the time being.
Buy a Google Nest Hello (even if you don't wish to use it's doorbell functions)
It could cover the area you wish to look at, and you could use that to quick scan for anything that's happened and then go look on the Reolink for the high quality footage
-
I think every single person must have the same problem.
Given how (unfortunately due to the lack of a good AI) bad motion detection is (I don't need to be alerted every time a tree moves or a moth flys past!)
We all need a nice easy, simple method of looking through many hours of alerts/footage to quickly see if anything happened.
-
What I find myself doing is ignoring most alerts as 99% of them will be of something that should not really be an alert.

Cynthia

Sorry for the false alarm.
We will soon release its first-ever IP cameras with the advanced person/vehicle detection, RLC-510A, and RLC-810A. With the power of intelligent detection technology, users can enjoy peace of mind and get notified only when the important events that they truly care about happen.

Ace

Interesting. Good to see the RLC-510A and RLC-810A will support continous recording to SD with 256gb support.

Snaffs

Very interesting.

Can anyone state all the differences between the RLC-810A and the B800 model?

I will admit I don't understand what the camera does against what the NVR does.
I would have thought the NVR was the device doing the detecting, but I must be wrong.

Should I also presume there will be a Dome version of the new 810A with the same better motion detection?