Chapter 2: Main Control
Remote Connection to Video Server
Main Screen
1) Preview and main controls – real-time video preview and main controls.
2) Playback.
3) Float-out – float out a tab-view. The floated-out window can be moved to another monitor. This feature is useful for users using multiple monitors.
4) Channel control bar – a bar to show information and hold control buttons for a channel. Here you can reset alarm indicator, run a channel and control a PTZ camera:
(a) Channel number
(b) Alarm Indicator – tell
you whether alarm occurred. Left-click on this icon can reset the indicator.
Normal
,
Alarm
(c) Date and time of the current video in local time zone
(d) Instant Playback
(e) Show up PTZ controller
(f) Run/stop
channel – Stopped 
, Running
5) PTZ Controller – here you can control the PTZ device which bound to the main channel.
6) Show/hide non-client area – non-client area is where you can minimize, maximize or close the program. You can right-click this button to close or lock the program too.
7) Open setting dialog.
8) Start/stop scheduler – here you can start and stop the scheduler.
9) Main channel selectors – here you can select the main channel.
10) Start/stop audio – here you can start or stop audio preview for the main channel or all channels (depends on your setting).
11) Screen division selectors.
12) Program state indicator – CyeWeb initially comes with 4 indicators (later extension modules may add more):
a. Storage
Capacity: Health 
,
Low 
, or Empty
b. Windows
Media Broadcast: Active 
or Inactive 
c. CyeWeb
Video Server: Active 
or Inactive 
d. Http
Web Server: Active 
or Inactive 
13) Run/stop channels – clicking on this button will show up a pop-up menu to run or stop some/all channels.
14) Channel group selectors – CyeWeb has 4 channel groups: 1-16, 17-32, 33-48, 49-64. Channel group can float out as a standalone window. This feature is useful for users using multiple monitors.
15) Hide/Show control panel.
16) Timeline Playback
17) Module View – a list of floatable windows for bound application modules such as e-Map or application status log.
18) Reset channel arrangement – you can arrange channels by drag-and-drop on the preview videos. This button allows you to reset the channel order to the pre-defined state.
Module Binding
Most functions in CyeWeb require module binding. A module is a logical block that provides some specific functions. For example, an Advance Video Analysis module provides functions such as object counting, loitering object detection, etc. To activate a module, you must bind it.
There are 2 types of module: Constraint and Unconstraint. Typically Constraint Module is bound to some limited system resources, such as a USB webcam. Unconstraint Module generally provides unlimited duplicable functions, such as a de-interlace filter.
Note for module binding in channel pipeline: the bound channel modules, except Capture Source modules, active only when the channel is “running” (you can run a channel on the main control UI).
Program Settings
In the program setting dialog, you should see the buttons for Channel Setting, Account Management, Application Module Setting, General Setting and Schedule Setting. Press any of them will show up the corresponding dialog.
Under the Tools Menu, you should see a sub-menu with Export Setting, Import Setting, Reset Application Persistence and Reset Application Settings.
Import/Export setting –import/export CyeWeb’s Channel Setting, Application Module Setting and General Setting. Please note account setting and schedule setting cannot be imported or exported. The exported setting file can be used in Scheduler’s “time to import setting”.
Broken Media File Link Check – check how many broken links in storage database. Broken link is generally caused by someone manually delete media files in the storage folder, or some storage drives were removed. It is strongly recommend to not deleting files directly in the storage folder. Instead you can delete media files in CyeWeb’s playback browser. Too many broken links will cause recording and storage recycle ineffective. You can periodically use this check to check and remove broken links
Reset Application Persistence –reset your application state persistence. Application state persistence contains “automatically logon” information, windows position, size information and screen division mode last time the program closed, etc. If you checked the “Remember me” and “Log on automatically” checkboxes on the Log-on dialog during program startup, every time you run CyeWeb the remembered account will be used to logon. If now you want the dialog to show up again, you need to reset application state persistence.
Channel Settings
Channel settings are the most important settings in CyeWeb. Here you can setup the channel pipeline.
For the details of the modules in channel pipeline, please refer to the Module chapter.
Capture Source
Here you can bind a channel to a video/audio source module.
- Video: under “Constraint Module”, you may select DirectShow-Based source (USB webcam, PCI/PCI-E capture cards…, etc) and hardware compression cards (available for purchase separately). Under “Unconstraint Module”, you may select IP Camera, Windows Media Stream, Video files, remote CyeWeb source…, etc. Please note that a video source may be also embedded with audio.
-
Attach Video: this is typically for dual streams IP camera/DVS.
With attach video you can concurrently retrieve 2 streams from dual streams capture
device, probably one for live view and one for storage/broadcast. For example,
CIF/15fps stream for live view to reduce decoding requirement, and 4CIF/30fps
stream for storage.
Attach video is generally the secondary compressed stream in the channel
pipeline. You can configure to use the secondary compressed stream for
recording/broadcast in the Compression module.
In most case, you should also disable the real time decoding (if there is) of
the attach video. Otherwise the CPU usage will be higher than you don’t use it.
- Attach Audio: you can select DirectShow-Based audio source here.
Analytics
Here you can bind a channel to motion detection module and advance video content analysis module (depending on the CyeWeb edition you have). These modules provide features such as motion detection, object counting, illegal parking detection, loitering object detection…, etc.
Pipeline Filters
Here you can bind a channel to pipeline filters. These filters provide features such as OSD timestamp, de-interlace…, etc.
Event Handlers
Here you can bind a channel to event handlers. These handlers provide features such as video analysis result presentation, email notification on events…, etc.
Devices
Here you can bind a channel to external devices. Initially CyeWeb comes with PTZ control module only.
Compression
Here you can bind a channel to a compression module. Initially CyeWeb comes with a compression module that features local storage, broadcast and event recording.
Misc
Here you can configure the miscellaneous settings for a channel:
- Attach audio time adjustment — here you adjust the sample time of the attached audio source. Typically this value is used for tuning synchronization of video and attached audio. Please note that the adjustment will NOT reflect on real-time preview, but will affect local video storage and network video streaming. Please also note that this value affect only “attach audio source”. Audio embedded with video source (such as a local video file) will not be affected.
- Participate in Storage Recycle – here you tell whether the recorded video files of this channel can be “Storage Recycled”, which is a feature that deletes old media-file on storage shortage.
- Stream break tolerance in media file – this value tell the maximum allow interval for a media-file not having media data. This feature is generally used with “compress on event” in Compression module. For example, if you configure this value to 5000ms. Then if there’ve been no event for 5000 ms, the current media-file will be saved and closed. The next recording will be on a new one.
- Media-file maximum size – here you tell the maximum size of a media-file. Whenever a media-file reaches this size, it will be closed and a new one will be opened to continue recording.
- Media source buffering – here you tell the buffer size for video/audio source before the media pass through the pipeline. This setting is typically used with network video/audio source, such as “Connect to other CyeWeb”. If the preview video of a channel is lagging, you may try to tune this value (If you need to set this value, 1000 ms is a recommend number).
- Decode Audio/Video Stream – here you can select whether to decode the video and audio stream from compressed capture source. This setting is important for large-scale deployment of IP solution. For example, if you use a server to connect 64 IP cameras and each camera streams high resolution compressed video/audio (may be in MJPEG or other compression format) to the server. In this case you may want to disable decoding because you do not want to exhaust your server by decoding all 64 channels audio/video simultaneously. The disadvantage for this is that you no longer can use filers or motion/event detectors in the channel which decode-option is disabled. Instead you can setup multiple client PCs to connect to some selected channels of the server and do whatever you want as usual.
Account Management
Here you can add/remove account or change account permissions.
There are 2 types of account: Administrator and Standard User. The only different between Administrator and Standard User is that Administrator can launch account management while Standard User cannot.
There is a pre-created Administrator account “administrator” with password “administrator”. This is the only account you cannot delete or disable.
There are some pre-defined user permissions (later extension modules may add more). Permission may have sub-permissions, e.g. “Remote Connection to Video Server” and “Playback”.
Below are descriptions of some selected permissions:
Remote Connection to Video Server
This permission means whether you allow the user to connect to CyeWeb Video Server through Internet.
- Authorized Channel(s): the channel(s) you allow to view/connect over Internet (e.g. by using Microsoft IE or other CyeWeb).
- Allow Multiple Login: tell if you allow simultaneously multiple connections on this account.
Change Application Setting
This is the permission to change your program settings. The settings includes all setting (Channel, Application Module…, etc) except this Account Management.
Application Module Settings
CyeWeb currently has 5 application modules: Windows Media broadcast, Video Server, Web Server, Application Status Log, and e-Map.
For more information about the settings of the above modules, please refer to the Modules chapter.
General Setting
- Video preview priority – priority of the real-time preview video. Higher priority would produce smoother preview video but consume more CPU resource.
- Allow multi-channel audio preview on the same preview panel – by default only the main channel audio will be rendered. If you checked this, audio of all channels will be rendered simultaneously.
- Minimum disk space – the minimum size of disk space in a storage location. If the disk space of a storage location is lower than this value, recording will continue on next storage location or Storage Recycle will occur.
- Disk space to cleanup on Storage Recycle – the space to cleanup on storage shortage. Storage Recycle occurs if all storage locations are full. Old media-files marked to participate in Storage Recycle will be deleted. Files are deleted one-by-one until disk space is free up to this value. Please note that you can configure to exclude a channel from Storage Recycle in Channel Setting.
- Sound Alarm media file – the audio file to play on sound alarm.
- Storage Location – here you configure the storage locations for media-files.
- Language – here you can configure the UI language. This configuration takes effect on next time you start the program.
- Run channel(s) on startup – here you select the channels to run on program startup.
- Run Scheduler – setup to run the scheduler on program startup.
- Lock UI – setup to lock UI on program startup.
- Screen Division Setting – here you can setup up screen division template, starting and ending channel. The default is to use 4 groups; each group shows 16 channels (totally 64 channels). You can setup to use 1 group to show all 64 channels, or other combination.
Scheduler
There are 2 schedule types: weekly schedule and one-time schedule. There is one note: one-time schedule has higher priority than weekly schedule. Whenever a weekly schedule overlaps a one-time schedule, that weekly schedule will be ignored.
Other than schedule type, there are also 2 types of schedule item: time to run channel(s) and time to import setting. With these 2 schedule items, you can schedule almost everything.
Note: On importing setting file, CyeWeb compare the existing settings with the new ones. Only those parts with different settings will be reloaded.