Introduction, English, The Basic Setup

Swann H.264 Introduction, English, The Basic Setup, and test your system, Getting the DVR Setup

English

Introduction

Congratulations on your purchase of this Swann DVR. You’ve made a fine choice for keeping a watchful eye over your home or business. Let’s take a moment to talk about some of the features this DVR offers, and how to get the most out of them.

Oh my, this is a big manual. How long will this take?

Yes, but you won’t have to read all of it - you should be up and running by page 25!

It can take a few hours to connect everything and run through the setup procedure.

The latter half of this manual is for advanced users only - the DVR is seriously configurable - the out-of-the-box settings do a great job in 90% of situations, but some users will want to get into the nitty-gritty detail, so that information is presented for those who need it.

The Basic Setup

The default settings of the DVR will cover most basic installation requirements of the DVR.

To get the most out of your hard drive, we’ve configured the DVR to record only when it detects motion - that way, you won’t fill the hard drive with video of nothing happening.

Before installing anything, connect the DVR and cameras

and test your system.

We ensure everything is working properly when we ship them out, but sometimes things can be damaged in transport, and occasionally components can fail. Better to find out now, before everything is fixed in place!

Getting the DVR Setup

There are three stages to getting your DVR set up. If you want to use the default settings, you’ll only need to complete steps one and two.

Stage 1. Connecting the DVR (page 6 to page 9)

This section details what you can connect to the different inputs/outputs of the DVR.

Everyone’s setup will vary a little bit - it depends on what cameras came with the DVR (if any) and what device(s) you’ve already got.

Stage 2. Basic DVR Setup

The DVR needs a few things to be set properly before it can do its thing. Follow the instructions from page 11 to page 24 to get everything working.

3. Optional: Advanced DVR Configuration

The latter part of this manual covers advanced DVR operations.

This DVR comes with all the professional-grade capabilities you’d expect from a quality Swann product, but many advanced capabilities require detailed setup to function correctly.

If you’re not an advanced user, don’t worry. The out-of-the-box settings really do work well, and we’d only suggest changing them if you’ve got a really specific plan in mind.

You’ll need to read a page or two of this section if:

•you’ve got a PTZ capable camera - see page 48.

•you want to alter the motion detection sensitivity or the areas it applies to (page 42).

•you want to change some of the advanced options for recording quality and resolution (see page 28).