Live view

Open any camera to watch it live.

Player controls

• Play / pause the live stream.
• Mute / unmute for cameras with audio.
• Two-way talk to speak through the camera (see below).
• Fullscreen and Picture-in-Picture to pop the video into a floating window. In fullscreen the dots in the control bar switch Shortcuts, the Timeline over the video and the PiP Source overlay. On a phone held upright, the timeline sits at the bottom of the screen, below the picture.
• Digital zoom by scrolling or pinching, up to 5×, with a minimap. Drag to pan when zoomed in. The crop holds while you scrub the timeline, until you double-click the picture or zoom back out.
• Quality switches the source resolution (High, Mid, or Low Resolution).
• Open camera opens the full camera page with recordings and the timeline.

When you review recordings, the player also offers rewind, fast-forward, and playback speed. See Timeline & playback.

Detection boxes

With Detections on, the player draws a box around everything the camera currently sees, with the type, the confidence and the track number. A camera that reports a detection without a position gets no box.

An object that has settled, a car parked in the driveway or a bin left at the kerb, keeps its box but gets a faded label and a timer counting how long it has been standing there. A settled object triggers no new events and no notifications, see stationary objects. It goes back to a normal box as soon as it moves again. On a small card the labels are left out and only the box remains.

Two-way talk

The Intercom button sends your microphone to the camera's speaker, on cameras that support two-way audio.

Second stream overlay

Give a source a PiP Source in the camera settings (Sources tab) and the player gets a Toggle PiP button. It shows that second stream as a small overlay on the video. Click the overlay to swap the two streams.

The PiP Source can also be a stream of another camera, the list groups them by camera. That fits a second lens of the same device, such as the tele lens of a dual-lens camera added as a camera of its own. Clicking that overlay opens the other camera with its timeline and recordings, at the same moment while you review footage, and the camera you came from becomes its overlay.

Streaming modes

You set the streaming mode per camera in its settings, where a new camera starts on Auto. The player also has a button to switch between WebRTC and MSE while you watch.

• Auto starts WebRTC and MSE together and keeps whichever connects first, so a network that blocks WebRTC still gets a picture. When the camera's codec cannot travel over WebRTC it goes straight to MSE.
• WebRTC gives the lowest latency.
• MSE is a broadly compatible fallback.
• webrtc/tcp sends WebRTC over TCP only. Pick it in the camera settings if some networks block the ports WebRTC normally uses. It is not available from the player button.

The setting applies to the camera view. The small players elsewhere, the zone editor, shortcut previews, the floor plan hover and the event dialog, always run on Auto.

Activity mode: Always On and Standby

Each camera has an Activity mode that controls when its stream runs:

• Always On keeps the stream live at all times.
• Standby starts the stream when you open the camera and stops it again a few seconds later. Click the video to resume.
• Activity keeps the stream running while there is activity and lets it rest otherwise.

Shortcuts

Shortcuts are controls you place on the video to jump to another camera or operate a sensor. Turn on Edit Shortcuts on the player to add them. See Shortcuts.

More options

The options menu (the dots) toggles Zones, Heatmap and Edit Shortcuts, plus Detections on cameras that run motion or object detection. AI descriptions appears when the NVR plugin is installed. Export appears once the timeline is open, and saves the range you trim there. See Detection & AI.

Cameras with pan, tilt and zoom get their own bar at the top right of the player, with the home position, the presets saved on the camera, and the PTZ button for the on-screen controls. See PTZ & autotrack.

The camera page

Open camera (or selecting a camera from the list) opens its full page: the live player, a Recordings tab, a list to switch between Cameras, Shares for admins, and a Timeline panel for jumping through footage. Drag the handle between the player and the tabs to give either more height; the browser keeps that split, a double-click on the handle resets it. The Settings cog (admins) opens the camera settings drawer, where a camera's sources, zones, PTZ, detection, and more live.

To watch several cameras at once, use Camview.