Episodes

When several cameras see the same activity around the same time, camera.ui can bundle those sightings into one episode: a single title and a short story that follows the subject across cameras, in order. A person walking from the driveway to the front door becomes one episode instead of three separate events.

Episodes need AI descriptions. The AI writes the story, so a provider has to be set up first.

Turning it on

In Settings → Recordings, open the Episodes tab and turn on Enabled. Then set up Camera Groups: an episode only forms among cameras in the same group, and a group needs at least two cameras. Cameras you leave out take no part.

• Join Window. A new event joins the open episode when it starts within this long after the last activity. Default 90 seconds.
• Quiet Time. The episode closes and gets its story once it has been this quiet. Default 60 seconds.
• Wrap Up After. Once an episode reaches this length it stops taking in new activity and closes at the next natural break: whatever is still happening finishes first, and later activity starts the next episode. Default 10 minutes.
• Custom Instructions. Free-text guidance added to the built-in prompt for the story, for example what to watch for or how to phrase it.
• Video in Push. Whether an episode push plays the episode clip, which switches cameras like the episode player. Off never attaches it, Always always does, and Camera setting attaches it when at least one camera in the episode has Video in Push turned on. Default Camera setting.

Where episodes show up

• Home. Episodes appear in the Recent Events row as a mosaic card, showing how many cameras took part.
• Recordings. The same mosaic card appears in the list. A recording that belongs to an episode shows an Open episode button that jumps to it. Episode cards follow the filters like everything else there: type, search, audio, attributes, sensors and a custom date range all apply to them.
• Apple TV. Episodes are available in the Apple TV app too.

The episode player

Opening an episode plays the whole sequence. It switches between cameras on its own as the story moves, and shows the current camera's name and time. A strip below the video holds one block per camera stretch, so you can jump straight to any point or skip between cameras. Zoom and pan work as in the live view.