Alarm.com Video Service Camera Settings

Hey, guys. Hayden here from Alarm System Store again, and today I'm actually going over the alarm.com video settings. So each camera has its own settings, but there is a general settings layout, so I'm going to be running through all that, kind of show you guys everything. And to preface this video, I recorded this at the same time that I finished up our V724 part two video.

And so you'll hear me reference that a few times, but basically a lot of these settings are going to be universal to all alarm.com cameras. There will be some things like a two way audio and onboard recording that are specific to certain cameras. So you won't see those options if your camera does not support it. But just wanted to put this video out there for you guys so that you guys get a general idea of where to locate settings and what all you can change, things like that.

So anyway, I will leave you guys to it. So the last thing I want to show you guys are the actual cameras, just general settings and you can change these for any camera basically you'll go to the top here, you'll click settings in the black area again. And over here on the left side, you can choose between different cameras so if you have multiple cameras, you'll have a list here.

You can select what you want to change. So since we only have the one, being cam one and then right here, basically this is just these settings right here. So you can either select it from this section or you can come over here and read exactly which one is going to change one. But I'm basically just going to run through and giving a short rundown of what all of these sections do.

So very the first one is video device info. So when you get here, what it's going to show is your video device name. It's going to show the model of the camera, it's going to show the Mac address, the IP address, both private and public. It's going to show the different ports that the camera is using. It shows the firmware version, shows DNS update time.

So that's basically the last time your connection updated for the camera and then normalized wireless signal strength. It will show you how well your camera is connected to Wi-Fi. So you can refresh that value. Right now, it's not going to show me anything because it's not connected, but anyway, the next section, the next selection is turn off cameras, microphone and speaker.

So yeah, the V 724 has two way audio, which means it has a microphone and a speaker in it. So if you wanted to turn those off for any reason, you can do so here. And right below that is the call volume. So this is going to determine how loud the sound you hear through the app is basically how sensitive the speaker is in and it also shows normalized wireless signal strength.

If available, it gives an option to turn off the camera's microphone and speakers so you can completely deactivate the two way audio if you wish. The call volume, this determines how loud the speaker is on the camera. So if you're speaking through it often, you might want to have this all the way up so that whoever is outside can hear it properly.

If you don't really care, you can turn it down, set it wherever you need to. This is kind of trial and error as well. And then you can also turn off the devices LED light, and then you can also turn off the infrared LED, which basically affects whether or not your camera is going to pick up video in the dark.

Now, if you need to, there are some advanced network setup and testing options that you can go into. I'm not going to cover that in this video. And it's a little bit outside the point of this video. So we're just going to move on to the next section. So second one is live video. You can come here to change the resolution of the camera.

So the highest resolution that the V 724 records in is 1080P. So if you set that for highest, it is always going to record in 1080P and it's going to adjust the resolution to be more clear. But you do lose motion capture ability by going for clarity. There's a standard option, which is a balance between motion and clarity.

And then there's a reduced resolution which is optimized for motion so set that how you wish. And then the second one or the next option on this page is light video connection. So this live video connection, basically if you're on the same network that your camera is, this can speed up the amount of time that it takes to load up your camera.

But what it does do, if it's checked on, it will slow down remote operations. So if you're at work and you need to check your camera, it's going to take longer to load that live video feed. So now it's kind of dependent on the person. You can change that if need be. So if you want if you're going to be looking at your cameras remotely more often, I would leave this option off.

But if you're going to be at the location more often than not, leave it on that way. It speeds up your live connection time. Make sure all these settings that you're changing, if you do change them, make sure you save and it will actually set them on the camera. And then the next section is video device image. So this is brightness contrast saturation and basically if I had a video feed right now, it actually would give me a box and show what the camera sees and you can adjust all these settings so that the camera looks exactly how you wish it's got along with your normal just video settings.

That also has night vision sensitivity. You can flip the image, which would basically do a one to 80 vertical, so everything would be upside down. So if your camera is fixed to the ceiling instead of like a wall pointing facing the normal way, you can use this to flip that image if need be. So you can change max exposure, which is how bright your image is going to be during nighttime captures.

So infrared capture, it won't let me change it, but there's a couple of different options in there. You can set it how you wish and just make sure that you test these settings so that it's going to work the way you want. And then you can also turn on and off the high definition, high dynamic range and all that does is it's more of a light and color enhancement than anything.

So if you have dark areas on the camera, itself, turning this on can brighten up those dark areas to help get better visuals. If it's off, if it sees dark, shadowy spots, they will look like dark shadowy spots. And like I said, the box did appear while I was in here recording. So normally this would have an image of your screen.

And as you adjust these, if you give it a minute, it will actually show you the difference on the screen itself. So let's go to the next section, so the next section is saved video, and this is going to be settings for the clips that the camera is going to take. So the first option here is automatically share videos from this camera.

Now, while installing the device, you will be asked about this basically alarm.com will take any shared video clips and they use that for troubleshooting purposes. They use it for quality purposes. It's similar to websites asking for cookies, too. Improve the user experience so you can decide whether or not you want to donate your clips to alarm.com.

But anyway, set that however you wish and then the next section is going to talk about the actual recorded clip resolution image quality frame rate and number of days that it's supposed to keep clips. You can change the resolution from low to high. Basically it's 640 by 360, 1280 by 720 and 1920 by 1080. So set that as you wish.

You can set the image quality and when you click on this it will show you highest largest recorded clip standard is default and reduced is smallest recording clips. So basically that changes the size of your clips. Now down here, I believe it will actually change this timer here. I'll re update this when I redo this video, but basically it will change the amount of clip length dependent on these settings up here, but basically just decide how you want this camera's quality to look whenever it's recording clips.

And you can also limit the number of days that it keeps these clips. Typically you can just leave it to unlimited and it will just overwrite as it needs to. You can also change the clip format from Standard MP4, or you could do mobile video file. This helps if you're always on mobile. The only time you ever use it is with your app.

Basically allows these clips to be formatted to run on a phone or tablet, whatever the case may be. There's also Windows Files and Mac files. So if you have these clips sent to a computer, you can choose whether it's a Windows computer or a Mac, and that will optimize the recording clip for that computer type or for that clip format.

And then the next one is request clip uploads for how many minutes during an alarm so basically, if you have an alarm, all cameras by default are set to trigger. So you can change how long this camera is going to record in the event of an alarm. So you can do one minute, 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes and 15 minutes. So set that as you wish.

Basically, if your alarm system goes off, it's going to start recording for that amount of time. Now, this setting right here, this timer is for camera triggered clip lengths. So if the camera is triggered, this is how long it will record for you can change it from 20 to 30 seconds to 40 to 60 seconds. Anything beyond that it will not record because these cameras are cloud based.

So basically those are your two options and then the event triggered clip length again this one is going to be dependent on these settings up here when your camera is actually connected, unlike mine, it will adjust this as you change these settings. So normally if I change this to high, it would take away about 20 seconds or so on the clip.

This last setting right here is very important. This is the pre trigger recording so let's say somebody triggers your camera and they're there for all of about 30 seconds, but you wanted to see like where they came from, what they were doing prior to this pre trigger recording. If enabled, it will start recording or start the clip a few seconds before the actual trigger was received.

So basically you'll get prior footage to the trigger so you can see what triggered it. And then everything past that now because of the event triggered clip length in the camera triggered clip link, this will take away some of the time towards the end of the actual recording. So you may want that or not. You can decide basically it's either going to give you about 10 seconds before the recording or 10 seconds at the end of the recording.

Make sure you save that when you're done and then the last one is that I'm going to cover is the video analytics calibration. So what I did earlier where I was taking multiple pictures backing away from the camera, if you need to calibrate your camera again, if your video analytics don't seem to be working properly, you can come here and click on that and it's actually going to start the calibration process all over again.

So you can retake those pictures and make sure the camera is working as it should and you can change your wireless networks for your cameras from this section. So if you got a different router, you can come in here as long as your camera is still connected to wireless at the time. You can do it from the computer portal.

This is really helpful if you get like alarm.com, smart gateway for their cameras, they actually have a wifi device that is specifically designed to optimize camera networks so if you connect your cameras to that, you will get the best possible wifi connection to that camera that you can. So if you plug that in and get the smart gateway connected to your Internet, you can come here and move the camera from your home Internet over to that alarm.com gateway.

And this option right here, this stream video to security panel screen. This is tied to very specific alarm systems, mainly the IQ panel 2+ and the IQ panel 4. If you choose to stream your video to the camera, basically what it allows you to do is choose whether your camera will actually show up on your IQ screen.

So if you want to be able to operate your cameras from your IQ panel, you can come in here, select this checkbox. And if you have multiple cameras, it will show them. I don't know of any limit on this. I've seen up to 16 cameras on an IQ panel, but there may be a hard limit. It doesn't mention it here.

So if there is one I am unaware of it. But basically select all the cameras that you wish your IQ panel to display. I'm actually going to start doing more videos on the IQ panel 4, or well the IQ panel period. I have an IQ 2+, so I'll be doing some videos on those to kind of give you guys an idea of how well it integrates, especially with cameras and like doorbell cameras and things like that.

But we'll get into that at a later time. But this is where you would select what cameras you want to view on your IQ panel, so make sure the checkmark is in the box and then click save If you want that setting and those last two sections, ones for SD card information, and that one doesn't have any options to change.

So I'm not going to go into it. You can reformat your SD card from that section, but that is the only option available there. Otherwise it just gives information. But that would be for onboard recording so if you have on board recording, by all means, jump in there, check it out, see what it shows you. And then the last option is for adding a new video device.

So if you have additional cameras to add, you can do it from that. Or if you go to your devices tab on your phone, you can add it there. Basically same process. But anyway, that is where I'm going to end this video. So I hope you guys enjoyed it. This one didn't cover anything real specific. It was kind of just a general information video so that you guys know where to find settings for your cameras.

So hopefully you learn something new. And if there's anything in particular in regards to like alarm.com or maybe their video cameras that you guys want to see. By all means, let me know and I will try to make it happen. Otherwise I'm going to hop off of here and I will catch you guys on the next one.