PC DVR Disk Replay Client For use with the DMB-X Mobile Series DVRs V1.5 24 nd October 2007 CONTENTS 1.0 Overview 2.0 Outline Functionality 3.0 Minimum system requirements 4.0 Programme Installation 5.0 Starting PC DVR Disk Replay Client 6.0 Accessing the Hard Drive 7.0 Accessing the Video Recordings 8.0 Reviewing Video Recordings 9.0 Archiving Recordings 10.0 Printing Snapshots 11.0 Creating a CD/DVD
1.0 Overview This User Guide will take you through the process of selecting, viewing, archiving and burning CDs/DVDs of recorded material from the Aventura Technologies' DMB-X Mobile Series DVRs. The PC DVR Disk Replay Client is a Windows application that will allow the viewing and processing of.h264 video files from the Mobile DVR on a normal Windows desktop PC. The Mobile DVR records video material onto a removable hard drive in the form of a sequence of discrete files of configurable lengths of time. To replay these recordings in this Client you need to view each file one by one. Accessing the recorded files Recordings can be accessed from the Mobile DVR in several different ways including: Removing the hard drive caddy Wireless access (WLAN or 3G/GPRS) USB Flash memory Laptop transfer This User Guide focuses on accessing via a removable hard drive. 2.0 Outline Functionality Playback options include play, fast forward, slow motion, pause, time line jumping and stop. Screen shots can be printed directly to any installed printer or saved as BMP/JPG files. Sections of material can be saved as new independent.h264 files and written to any supported media including HDD and CD/DVD for archival and/or evidential purposes. 3.0 IMPORTANT - Minimum System Requirements Processing high quality video images demands substantial processing power. It is vital that you have a sufficiently powerful PC in order to operate this programme. Recommended minimum requirements: Windows XP AMD Athlon 2200+/P4 2.4Ghz based system Native USB 2.0 ATI Radeon/GF4 graphics card 512MB RAM 800 x 600 screen resolution, and 32 bit colour depth Aventura DMB-X Series PC Disk Replay Client Manual v1.5 Page 2 of 14
Notes: Although this PCDVR Disk Replay Client will run on almost any PC, due to the high processing demands of h264 video streams, an insufficiently powerful PC will result in suboptimal replay performance e.g. stuttering video, inability to play fast forward, inability to synchronise multi window video images. The PCDVR Disk Replay client runs on Windows 98, ME, 2000 and XP however USB performance will be compromised on 98/ME and 2000 due to poor USB 2.0 support. Screen Resolution of 800 x 600 or higher is required and 32bit colour depth. (NOTE: If 16bit colour is used the image will look blockier than it really is as the images are captured in 24bit colour) Hard Disk Space: 10MB is required for installation of the Client programme. We recommend that at least 3GB is free for archiving. 4.0 Installation To install the PC DVR Disk Replay Client place the CD into your computer drive and it will automatically start the installation process. If you have downloaded the software just double click with the left mouse button on the PCDVRdiskreplay.exe file to begin the installation process. You can always find the latest release of the software at http://www.aventuratechnologies.com The default directory for the software on your PC is C:\Program Files\PCDVRDiskReplay You may select an alternative installation directory without any impact on the execution of the software. NOTE: If you have an older version of the client it will automatically be overwritten by the new version. 5.0 Starting PC DVR Disk Replay Client To start running the PCDVR Disk Replay client click on the icon below that will have been created on the desktop during the installation process. Aventura DMB-X Series PC Disk Replay Client Manual v1.5 Page 3 of 14
6.0 Accessing the Hard Drive 6.1 Removing the Hard Drive caddy from the DVR Unlock the hard drive caddy fitted to the vehicle by turning the key clockwise to the 12 o clock position. Then pull the disk caddy from the frame using the grab handle on the front of the caddy. 6.1 Connecting the Hard Drive caddy to the Replay PC Once the Hard Drive caddy is removed from DVR recorder, you need to insert the caddy into the USB docking station. 7.0 Accessing the Video Recordings To access the files from the Hard Drive run the software and then enter the Tools/Options menu. It will bring up the dialog box shown below. N.B this procedure will only be required on the first run of the software on any PC. You then need to point the application to the drive letter that has been assigned to the docking station containing the Hard Disk. As the Mobile DVR allows you to connect multiple disks at the same time there is the facility to view multiple disks. When you have pressed the OK button the program will instantaneously retrieve the database of recorded files and return you back to the main screen. Aventura DMB-X Series PC Disk Replay Client Manual v1.5 Page 4 of 14
8.0 Reviewing Video Recordings Note: Decoding H264 video requires a lot of processing power in the replay PC. If you do not have a sufficiently powerful PC you may get stuttering video when viewing multiple video windows. To alleviate this you can reduce the CPU load by dropping some B-Frames out of the replayed video sequence. This does not affect the recording, just the replay. There will be some reduction in image quality. You can do this by going into the Tools/Options menu and dropping 1 or 2 B-Frames as shown below. Up to 16 cameras may be reviewed simultaneously, however if there are less than 16 then the replay screen can be optimized by selecting a different window option. Click on one of the icons shown below and selecting the option that is most appropriate. Once you have selected the required screen mode that most suits, you we are ready to start looking at the recorded material. To review the recorded material open up the calendar by clicking on the icon shown below: Aventura DMB-X Series PC Disk Replay Client Manual v1.5 Page 5 of 14
The calendar will open up and looks like the following screenshot: Days where you have recorded material are shown in bold. Today's date is shown in red. You can move forward or back a month by clicking on the appropriate arrow. Select the day with the material you wish to view by double clicking on that day. The system will now retrieve the recorded images and the timeline will show periods of recorded material for the day selected. Solid bars displayed on the timeline below the viewing window represent periods for which recordings are present. Solid blue bars represent recordings made as a function of time, yellow bars represent recordings made as a result of movement detection and red bars represent recordings made as a result of an alarm condition. The recordings you wish to view can be selected by moving the slider to the appropriate timeframe (the time bar is 00:00 24:00) as shown below. Once you have selected the time you wish to view press the play button on the play controls and the material will start to play. The play controls have a few functions as detailed below: 1 2 3 4 1. Play/Pause This button toggles between Playing and Pausing the currently selected material 2. Stop This button stops the currently playing material 3. Slow Motion This button plays the images at reducing speeds (1/2,1/4,1/8 and 1/16) Aventura DMB-X Series PC Disk Replay Client Manual v1.5 Page 6 of 14
4. Fast Forward This button plays the images at a faster rate depending on how many times it is pressed (it can play 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x). (Please note that the faster speeds require considerable processing power. Some slower PCs may only be able to play 8x or even 4x.) N.B Once the material begins playing it will be initially unsynchronized (each camera within the window playing from a slightly different time) however the system can be forced into synchronisation by clicking on the icon shown below. Once pressed it will change to the icon shown below and the lead cameras will pause briefly until the rest of the cameras have synchronized. This is important when examining an event sequence. The screen below illustrates a typical view from a recording made on a bus-mounted system consisting of four cameras. Any particular camera view can be seen in full screen by double clicking on it or you can view all the cameras using all available screen space by clicking the full screen switch shown below. Aventura DMB-X Series PC Disk Replay Client Manual v1.5 Page 7 of 14
When you want to return to normal operation move the mouse to the top of the screen and the controls will slide into view, click the full screen switch again. Once you have reviewed all the material you require you may now archive the material to your PC s local hard drive and then produce a CD/DVD. 9.0 Archiving material. Recorded material may be preserved and prevented from being overwritten by archiving it. To carry out this operation right click on any window and a dialog box will pop up save clip as shown below Highlight this and click the left mouse button. You will be presented with the following dialog box: Select the camera you wish to save from the drop down menu, input the start and end times in the boxes provided and press save clip and then select the destination folder. Once this has been completed click on OK. The chosen clip will now be saved on your hard drive. Aventura DMB-X Series PC Disk Replay Client Manual v1.5 Page 8 of 14
The video clip will be saved in the form of one video file per camera. You can use the standalone H.264 Player to review these files. H.264 Player has similar functionality to Windows Media Player and can only play one video clip at a time. Alternatively you can transfer the video clips from your hard drive to CD or DVD format using the Create CD wizard. Instructions are in the Creating a video CD/DVD section below. 10.0 Saving/Printing Snapshots You can save Snapshots of any camera image. To do this highlight the screen you wish to capture and right click and select the Save still image menu as shown below. This will then bring up the dialog shown below where you can choose a filename and location to save the image. Aventura DMB-X Series PC Disk Replay Client Manual v1.5 Page 9 of 14
You can also print directly from the Client to any installed printer. To do this highlight the screen you wish to print and from the file menu select Print Selected Window or press Ctrl+P This will produce a full size print on A4 keeping the correct aspect ratio of the picture. 11.0 Creating a Video CD/DVD You can create a CD or DVD by transferring images either directly from the Mobile DVR hard drive caddy or images saved on your PC hard drive. Within the client software is a proprietary CD/DVD burning application. This avoids the need to have any other 3 rd party burning software. When a CD or DVD is produced, the application automatically adds a replay viewing client. This means that the disk can be viewed on any PC without requiring any pre loaded software. To burn a CD/DVD select the Create CD option from the Tools menu. The Create CD wizard will appear as shown as below. Aventura DMB-X Series PC Disk Replay Client Manual v1.5 Page 10 of 14
Click the Add Video button and the browse files dialog box will appear. This screen will allow you to either add saved files from your hard drive or burn material to the disk directly from the Mobile DVR hard drive. Once you have selected the required video clip(s), the programme will record information about the clips(s) added as shown below: Aventura DMB-X Series PC Disk Replay Client Manual v1.5 Page 11 of 14
You can now either choose to add more video files or click the Next button to move to the next stage. On this next screen you can name the disk to be written, choose which CD/DVD writer to use, choose whether the disk should play automatically when inserted into a PC and whether or not it should any multicamera views should be synchronised during playback. Aventura DMB-X Series PC Disk Replay Client Manual v1.5 Page 12 of 14
Once you have selected the options required press the next button, this will bring up a reminder screen telling you which drive to insert the blank media and how much space is required on that media to write all of the selected video. Click the Next button to write to the disk. Aventura DMB-X Series PC Disk Replay Client Manual v1.5 Page 13 of 14
The selected material will now have been written to the disk. Remove the disk from the burner, label and store. Aventura DMB-X Series PC Disk Replay Client Manual v1.5 Page 14 of 14