Ethiris VMS 13.2 – With adaptive video streams

New version of Ethiris VMS - 13.2

The new version of Ethiris VMS contains very exciting news, most exciting of all is adaptive video streams. Feel free to download our brochure describing this and all other news in Ethiris VMS 13.2. Below is a brief overview of what's new.

In this version, we launch a very exciting concept that we call adaptive video streams. The purpose is to multiply the performance of Ethiris Client and Ethiris Mobile by allowing the client to automatically select lower resolution video streams when appropriate. This means that with a given hardware, Ethiris Client can display many times more cameras at the same time compared to previous versions of Ethiris.

In projects with our complete rack solutions for video surveillance, there have been several requests to be able to receive alarms if a single disk in the NAS has broken. The video storage feature of the system is maintained by having the disks configured in RAID, but to find out the status of individual disks, SNMP communication is required. Therefore, we have now developed a new script object to read information through SNMP.

Read on to learn more about these and several other news in Ethiris 13.2.

 

Adaptive video streams

The concept is based on the fact that you can now define multiple video streams for each camera in Ethiris. By defining video streams at different resolutions, you can make huge performance gains in both Ethiris Client and Ethiris Mobile. When viewing live video, the client sends the current size of each camera view to Ethiris Server, which automatically selects the video stream closest to the current resolution. When many cameras are displayed at the same time, this means that lower resolution video streams are selected, thereby radically reducing the client's video unpacking work.

In addition to performance gains, multiple video streams provide other benefits and opportunities. One such is that you can choose which video streams for a camera should be available for live viewing. Together with, for example, Axis Privacy Shield, this can be used to show live video with masked people while recording unmasked video where you can require permission to view the recorded unmasked video.

Another possibility is that scripts can define which video stream is currently to be used for recording. It can be used, for example, to increase both frame rate and resolution for recorded video in case of serious alarms. A big advantage in this context is that Ethiris automatically handles the prealarm buffer in such a way that when switching over to recording another video stream, you get the entire prealarm time with the new video stream. For example, if you have 1 minute prealarm time and a serious alarm occurs, then you get the higher frame rate and higher resolution of the recorded video a full minute before the alarm was triggered.
 

SNMP

A brand new script object, SNMPReader, provides the ability to communicate with devices that support SNMPv1. Normally, you won't notice if a disk in a NAS breaks because the RAID function in the NAS ensures that the video storage works anyway. By reading information through SNMP, Ethiris can find out if there is a problem with any of the disks in the NAS and can thus generate alarms that the operator can react to immediately. SNMPReader can be used to read information from any device that supports SNMPv1, such as other network equipment to detect problems with a switch, for example.
 

Other script news

To streamline the work of the script editor, we've added a few more keyboard shortcuts. This applies to collapse/expand all blocks in the editor. Blocks are a very good way to structure scripts in Ethiris and by collapsing all blocks you get a quick overview of the entire script. We have also added an attribute to the Debug object to ensure that all debug printouts are written to the so-called Trace log, Debug.Trace = true.
 

EthirisViewer

EthirisViewer, which is used to display video exported to Ethiris' own export format, has undergone a major update. Performance has been significantly improved to meet the market's need for high-resolution cameras, so now it can easily play multiple files simultaneously with, for example, 4K resolution. EthirisViewer has also gained new functionality such as the ability to play video backwards, which is very useful in situations where you are looking for something special and need to play back and forth several times to find what you are looking for. In the new version, EthirisViewer supports double-clicking in a camera view to maximize that view. Double-click again to return to the original layout. From a multi view, you can drag out individual camera views and display them in your own windows to, for example, place on another screen. All camera views are played back synchronized regardless of whether they are in the same or in separate windows.
 

Universal

We recently released our new license model Universal, which is a subscription-based license model where customers pay a monthly fee based on how many cameras they have used during the month. In order to increase the security of our customers, we now provide information about how many cameras are currently connected to systems with a Universal license and thus form the basis for invoicing. The customer can now also set a desired maximum limit on the number of connected cameras. This maximum limit is also useful if you are running an Ethiris Cluster because this allows you to determine the maximum number of cameras on each member server and thus determine the degree of redundancy in the cluster.
 

Improved alarm operator features

The alarm operator functions in Ethiris enable efficient handling of alarms where several operators can work in parallel. An alarm operator only sees its own alarms, which in most cases is good because only one operator at a time should work with the respective alarms. However, if an alarm operator still has alarms in their list when the shift is over, no one else could easily take over these alarms. In order to easily deal with this problem, we have now introduced a new privilege, Alarm Administrator Functions. If you log in with this privilege, you will see all the alarms, even those that are assigned to someone else. In this way, the alarm administrator can put the assigned alarms back in the common alarm list and an available alarm operator can take over the alarms.

To streamline the alarm operator's work, we have introduced keyboard shortcuts for the most common actions such as assigning and acknowledging alarms. The so-called control panel in the mini player, which appears when assigning an alarm to itself, now remembers the last selected setting so that the operator does not have to change this every time if the default setting does not fit.


Download the brochure Ethiris VMS News 13.2 >>