Using the Generic IP Camera Driver

Owned by Anand Rajaraman
Last updated: Dec 04, 2019
1 min read

Symptom

  • Person has a network camera that is not currently on our supported camera/driver list and is asking how to configure a camera to use the generic IP camera driver or how the driver works

  • An IP camera is not displaying video as expected with the correct network camera driver configured in SystemManager.

Solution

The generic driver works by accessing the camera's video stream over the network.  The industry standard is to use RTSP protocol for MPEG-4/H.264 format and HTTP protocol for MJPEG format.

The URLs are specific to the camera manufacturer and generally are a generic path that is used by all of their models, depending on the supported video formats.  Typically the only part of the URL that changes is the insertion of the camera's IP address.

The stream path should be set on each channel under the IP Camera settings.  By default, we assume the first part of the URL, depending on the settings in SystemManager.  We fill in the HTTP or RTSP depending on the video mode, as well as the camera's complete IP address, from the IP and Port values configured.  It is important to remember this, because the URL entered should not contain this info (protocol and IP).  For example if you want the MPEG-4/ stream and the manufacturer's RTSP URL is something like- "rtsp://<ipaddress>/mpeg4/<etc.>", then the string you'll enter in SystemManager should simply be- "/mpeg4/<etc.>".