Swann H.264 manual Display: Camera, English, Advanced Configuration

English

Display: Camera

Advanced Configuration

Camera No.: Choose the camera / channel you want to edit here. The Camera No is the same thing as the number written on the rear panel next to the BNC socket used to connect the camera.

Camera Name: Select a name for the camera you’ve selected. By default, all channels are named as the Camera No. field, but this can be set to anything you’d like up to 16 characters.

Display Camera Name: When checked, the name you’ve selected for the camera/channel will be displayed on-screen as an overlay.

Record Date: When checked, the date (as displayed) will be recorded directly on to your videos. This can be useful, as it creates an inseparable record of exactly when the footage was captured.

OSD Display Position: Gives you access to a screen where you can easily set the exact positions of any overlaid text, such as the camera name and the date and time.

Simply select any item you want to move (such as the Channel Name and/or the Date and Time) and click and drag it to the position you’d like it to be.

To exit the OSD Display Position screen, press the right click button. A context menu will appear with two options: Save and Exit. To exit without saving, simply choose Exit. If you want to save your changes, choose Save first.

Image Settings: Gives you access to image adjustment tools, allowing you to adjust the way the DVR interprets and displays video images. See opposite for more information.

The Image Settings you choose will affect your recorded footage. Rather than applying the changes after the video has been processed (like many older DVRs) the Image Settings affect how the DVR decodes the video it is receiving from the cameras.

The upside of this is that you can use the Image Settings to dramatically improve the quality of the images being recorded by the DVR. This can be particularly useful for improving the accuracy of your Motion Detection settings.

Mask: When checked, allows you to create, place and shape a “privacy mask” which obscures part of the image on the associated channel.

The Display: Camera menu is where you can make adjustments to how the DVR displays the feed coming from your cameras.

You can adjust aspects of each channel/ camera, such as:

•the camera’s name

•what information will be displayed on-screen, and where this information will be displayed

•whether information such as the date will be recorded directly onto your videos

•any areas of the video you want “masked” - that is, left blank

Brightness: Changes how light the image appears to be. However, it can’t make the camera see further in the dark, or increase the clarity of an ill-lit image.

Contrast: Increases the difference between the blackest black and the whitest white in the image. Useful if sections of the image“grey out”but setting the contrast too high will degrade image quality.

Saturation: Alters how much color is displayed in the image. The higher the saturation, the more bright and vivid colors will appear to be. Again, setting this too high can degrade image quality.

Hue: Changes the color mix of the image (this can have very dramatic results). It’s somewhat like moving through a rainbow.

Remember: Your image settings will affect your recordings!

You can use the Image Settings to help fine-tune your Motion Detection sensitivity. At night, your camera’s images may seem to flicker slightly, or to have increased “noise”. In video, “noise” is random fluctuations of pixels, a little like an old television that is not set to a station, often called “static”.

By tweaking the Brightness and the Contrast you can eliminate much of this video noise, increasing the quality of your images and the accuracy of the Motion Detection.

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