Video Problems

Owned by Anand Rajaraman
Last updated: Dec 06, 2019
3 min read

Symptoms

  • Missing feeds (showing the "VIDEO UNAVAILABLE" "NO VIDEO SIGNAL DETECTED" or "LOADING" messages) corresponding to one or two ports on the encoder card may indicate that the cameras or dongles may have problems

  • 4, 8, and 16 missing feeds may indicate a bad port or ports on the video card, or a bad dongle

  • The video will shake or wobble on occasion, creating spurious motion events that are usually short (0.5 - 2 sec in length)

  • Video quality is lower than expected, blurry, discolored, or otherwise distorted Channel(s) are missing events

Solution

This solution should be used to troubleshoot video problems that are seen both locally and remotely, indicating a problem with the hardware

  1. Reboot the 3VR.

    1. Remote users: Right-click on the system in the System Manager Manage Servers tab and select Restart Server.

    2. Local users: Press the power button once to shut down the system. Unplug and wait 1 minute, then press the power button again to boot up the SmartRecorder.

  2. Rule out a camera issue.

    1. Plug the cameras into known good feeds or into a test monitor to verify that they are actually sending video.

  3. Rule out a dongle issue.

    1. Plug a known good camera into the dongle of a camera that is having issues, and verify that the video still appears.

    2. Swap the problematic dongle with another dongle and check to see whether this resolves the issue.

    3. Verify that the dongles are being used correctly:

      • P-Series: user is not trying to use the 17th dongle
        About 300 of the P-Series units have shipped with video cables that have a 17th BNC connector. This 17th BNC connector could potentially be used as an alternate SpotMonitor output but right now that is not supported. The customer should ignore connector 17 and put the 17th camera channel on the first connector of the second video cable.

      • P-Series: user is not accidentally swapping the 6th and 9th dongle

      • P-Series: user is not accidentally plugging dongles into audio ports or DVI output port

      • 1000, 3000, 4000, 5000-Series systems, and P and S-Series systems with Stretch 7 cards: Make sure the video dongle is not plugged in upside-down. The can be inserted upside-down fairly easily. 

    4. Verify that correct dongle types are in use: 16, 8, or 4-channel depending on system type. See solution which video dongles are used to check dongle types based on model.

    5. If you determine that the dongle has failed:

      • For P-Series, ask whether the technician still has the red dongle that was sent with the 3VR Appliance. This cable can be used in place of the yellow dongle.

      • Issue an RMA for the failed dongle and send a replacement.

  4. Rule out a video card failure.

    1. Run Video Diagnostics.

    2. If there are errrors, see solution loading all channels without any events. (P-Series).

    3. If it is a P-Series, Video Diagnostics may not return an error if it is a problem with the video card driver. See loading all channels without any events. and troubleshoot the driver before continuing.

  5. To eliminate a setting issue:

    1. Verify that the channels are enabled in SystemManager and that video recording is not halted or disabled.

    2. Verify that the Analog video input is set to the correct number for the channel.

    3. If it is a problem with only one or two channels, disable and re-enable the channels.

    4. If it is a problem with one or two channels, change the channel type to nothing and then back to Analog to reset it to the default settings.

    5. If the message says "LOADING" instead of "NO VIDEO SIGNAL DETECTED," make sure the Analog Video Input ID is correct for that channel.

    6. Check the Motion Sensitivity setting, if set too high, video may be blurry, if set to low, spurious events may be generated.

    7. Have the user run the System Diagnostics utility to send channel settings back to us for analysis.

    8. Once you have the diagnostics, check camera settings across the system for frame rate, video quality, and analytics. If these are set too high, the system will be overloaded and they may see intermittent "Video Unavailable" messages if system processes are restarting.

    9. About 300 of the P-Series units have shipped with video cables that have a 17th BNC connector. This 17th BNC connector could potentially be used as an alternate SpotMonitor output but right now that is not supported. The customer should ignore connector 17 and put the 17th camera channel on the first connector of the second video cable.