Configuring a Video Agent

The Multimedia Video Agent allows you to send a video or a video snapshot to a computer providing alarm information. The general settings for video agents may vary depending on which device is used. General settings will only function if you have a video capture device (Web camera) installed on your computer. If no video capture device is found, you will get an error message informing you that the application could not find any video capture devices.

Although many different kinds of video capture devices can be used with the Video Agent, we will use the Logitech® QuickCam® video camera here as an example configuration. This example assumes that the Logitech QuickCam software has already been installed on the system. Once the video capture device is installed, go to the Alarm Configurations - Multimedia Agents - Video folder on the tree control of the Multimedia Configurator. Click on the General Settings button, as shown in the figure below. If you do not see the General Settings button, make sure that Dialog View is checked on the View menu.

If you don't have one, configure a video agent template:
1. In the AlarmWorX Multimedia Configurator, open the Configuration folder. Right-click Media Templates and select Add Media Template.
2. Select the Video option and then click the ellipsis (...) button on the right. The Template Definition Wizard appears.
3. Under Select Field Type, select Snapshot Capture.
4. Under Field Properties, enter a value of 0 (zero) to get a snapshot (that is, a still image), or enter a greater value to record a small video. The value is in milliseconds so, for example, if you want to capture five seconds of video, enter a value of 5000.
5. Click the Insert button to apply your changes.
6. Click Close.
In the AlarmWorX Multimedia Configurator, open the Configuration folder and expand Multimedia Agent. Double-click Video or right-click and select Edit from the shortcut menu.
Click the General Settings button. You will see the Snapshot Configuration dialog where you can adjust the Display, Compression, Format, Source, Video Driver, and Jpeg Settings.
- Display: Allows you to choose video display options.
- Compression: Choose a component to use if you wish to compress the video files.
- Format: Sets options such as color, mirror, flip, and size.
- Source: Configures hardware settings based on the video driver you choose to use.
- Video Driver: Choose a video driver to use.
- Jpeg Settings: Select the quality level and the option to display in color or grayscale for snapshots.
- Show This Dialog Whenever Server Connects: By default this option is checked. If you deselect this option you will receive a message stating "you will not have access to this preview screen unless you manually run this application form the GENESIS64\bin directory."

Note: The general settings for video agents may vary depending on which video capture device is used. General settings will only function if you have a video capture device (Web camera) installed on your computer. If no video capture device is found, you will get an error message informing you that the application could not find any video capture devices.

If you are using a remote node for video capture, you will have to go to the remote node and change the settings for video capture on that remote node. If there is no Multimedia Configurator installed on your video capture node, then you can run the "MMXSnapshot.exe" in the "Bin'' directory to set the general settings.

Assign the video template you created in Step 1 to this agent.
Click Close.
Click the button Empty Agent's Input Queue if you want to delete what is in the agents queue.
Click the down arrow and select how you want to Report Hardware Failures.
Click the Apply button to save your settings.
At this point, you can assign the Video Agent to an Action Set, or click the Test button to see what the result will look like.