Some cards are more suited to handle the constant-overwrite workloads of DVR functionality, such as the Western Digital Purple, Samsung Pro Endurance, SanDisk High Endurance, and SanDisk Max Endurance lines of cards.

Recording in both 720p and 4k requires a card that can support 1.5MB/sec writes, but that isn't a high bar, and any class 2 or greater card is fine. Most cards are going to be more than fast enough.

3.1.2 Installing Micro-SD Card

To access the SD Card, the dome cover must be removed. SD Card

A close-up of a usb port

Description automatically generated

3.2 Recording to SD Card Only

If Access Protocol is “None” video is recorded on SD Card only.

Go to Operation > DVR
Set “DVR function” to “Enabled”
Set Access Protocol is “None”
Complete the dialog as follows:

Where:
- Recording loop duration determines number of days to record until older videos are discarded. Setting this to larger than the SD card has space for will result in storing only up to the card’s capacity.
- Clear all pre-existing SD card data results in a one time reformatting of the SD Card.
If successful, you should see following state:

3.3 Recording to SD Card and AWS account

3.3.1 Setup AWS Account

Kinesis video streaming is required to enable SAFR Camera DVR recording to cloud. See Article Create AWS Account at http://docs.real.com or http://support.real.com for information on setting up AWS Account.

3.3.2 Configure DVR

If Access Protocol is “WebRTC via AWS KVS” video is recorded on SD Card and in AWS.

Go to Operation > DVR
Set “DVR function” to “Enabled”
Set Access Protocol is “WebRTC via AWS KVS”
Complete the following dialog.

Where:

Recording loop duration determines number of days to record until older videos are discarded. Setting this to larger than the SD card has space for will result in storing only up to the card’s capacity.
Clear all pre-existing SD card data results in a one time reformatting of the SD Card.
Select the AWS Region closes to you or the region you prefer if proximity is not the only factor.
Use AWS Account Access Key and Access Secret created above.
Set AWS Channel Name to a unique value within the AWS Account.
- This will be the Video Stream name created in AWS Kinesis Account
Enter remaining values as desired.

If successful, you should see following state:

3.4 Accessing Recorded Video on SD Card

Recorded videos on SD Card may be access via RTSP URLs provided in the DVR Status display. Recorded video can be played directly from the camera’s SD Card. You can use tools such as ffmpeg to store the video on local disk.

3.4.1 Enable RTSP Playback from SAFR Camera

Before you can play or download recorded video from SAFR Camera, you must enable RTSP Streaming.

Go to Security
Select “Video RTSP Access” and set to “Enabled”
Enter a password (username is always ‘admin’)
If unsure, use Digest Authentication.

Playback URLs for live RTSP streams are available in System > Video Streams. Below is information non accessing the recorded video streams.

3.4.2 Viewing Recorded Video

You can view recorded video in VLC or other RTSP-capable Player as described below.

Go to Operation > DVR
Click on Get rtsp:// URL from time index
Enter a time index in the indicated format if desired (not required for viewing live stream)
Copy the desired RTSP URL
Paste that URL into your video player. VLC is a good choice. You can download VLC from https://www.videolan.org/vlc/#download.
VLC will prompt for username and password. Username is always ‘admin’. Password is SAFR Camera RTSP Password set as described in Enable RTSP Playback from SAFR Camera section above.

Exporting Recorded Video

To export recorded video, you will need to use a tool such as ffmpeg to download and save the video to local disk. This section document show to use ffmpeg for this purpose.

Get RTSP URL as described above.
Download a tool that will record an RTSP stream to disk. ffmpeg is a good choice. You can download ffmpeg from https://www.ffmpeg.org/download.html.
- Download options can be confusing. The easiest option is to use the gyan.dev download site and look for a ZIP file (.zip extension) with “essential” (e.g. ffmpeg-6.1.1-essentials_build.zip)
Unpack the downloaded file and look for ffmpeg.exe located in the ‘bin’ directcory.
Place ffmpeg.exe in your command path or in the directory where you will record files to.
Open a DOS Command prompt and change directory to the location where your ffmpeg.exe file is
In DOS, use the following command to record the RTSP Stream in segments from the camera:

ffmpeg -i "RTSP_URL" -c copy -reset_timestamps 1 -metadata title=\"TITLE\" -map 0:0 -f segment -strftime 1 -segment_time 60 -segment_format mp4 "Record__%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S.mp4"

Where

RTSP_URL should be replaced with the URL obtained in Viewing Recorded Video section above. You need to add the username and password into the URL as follows:
rtsp://admin:PASSWORD@IP_ADDRESS/PATH
Example:
rtsp://admin:letmein@192.168.1.139/video?localtime=2024-01-14-23-15-00
TITLE can be any string. This will be set as the video file metadata title.
-segment_time 60 can be changed to the duration you wish for the recorded file. If you do not wish to segment, set the value to a longer duration than needed and press keyboard shortcut control-c to stop recording when desired.
-segment_format may be changed as follows. If name is not unique, existing file will be overwritten.

The resulting file will be saved to the same directory. Press Control-C to stop recording.

3.4.3 Creating Batch File for Saving Recordings

For convenience, the above can be put in a text file and saved as a DOS Batch file (.bat extension) or Linux shell script (.sh extension). You can even put replaceable parameters such as the following for Windows:

ffmpeg -i " rtsp://admin:%1@10.124.13.3/video?localtime=%2-%3" -c copy -reset_timestamps 1 -metadata title=\"%2 %3\" -map 0:0 -f segment -strftime 1 -segment_time 60 -segment_format mp4 "Record__%%Y-%%m-%%d_%%H-%%M-%%S.mp4"

Notice that %1, %2 and %3 were added to allow inseting command line arguments and existing “%” were replaced with “%%” to avoid them from being replaced.

Save the above as ‘record.bat’ and run as follows:

record.bat MYPASSWORD 2024-01-14 23-15-00

Where the arguments are password, date and time respectively.