IP Camera Learning blog

HOWTO: Create video clips on demand for local hard disk storage using the Y-cam IP camera

May 8th, 2009 by Greg Innes

One of the interesting features of the Y-cam home security camera is its ability to record short video clips with audio. These video files are stored natively in .asf format, suitable for playing back using Microsoft Windows Media Player.

This guide will show you how to create video files on demand by manually selecting the video start and stop points from the camera’s live view interface. We will also show you how to choose the location for storage of your video clips and also how you can limit the maximum file size per video.

This guide is suitable for the following Y-cam models:

Y-cam White
Y-cam Black
Y-cam Knight

HOWTO:

Before we start we must note that the video clips generated will only be saved on the hard disk of the local machine viewing the live stream. You cannot have the camera automatically send video clips by email or FTP.

Also, as this feature relies on an ActiveX plug-in it is only available when viewing the camera in Internet Explorer.

Step 1 – Log into your camera

Using your administrator username and password, log into your Y-cam as normal. From the splash page (shown above) select ‘live view’ and you will be taken to the live view interface of your camera, as shown below:

Step 2 – Setting the default location for recordings

The video clip creation tools are located here on the main interface:

To access the settings click the ‘wrench’ icon. This will allow you to choose the location for your video recordings, browse quickly to the location of your recordings, specify a maximum file-size for each video and set the camera to record based on motion (a topic we will cover in a later article).

In the ‘Record Path:’ box you will notice it has chosen a default recording location. This is normally the ‘My Videos’ folder in the ‘My Documents’ area of your PC. If you wish to choose your own location click the ‘Browse…’ button and choose your folder.

The ‘Open:’ button will open your recording folder. Consider it a shortcut to all your recordings.

If you want to limit the file size of your captured video you can enter the value, in MB, in the ‘Max Record Video File Size:’ field. There is no value for unlimited, you have to enter a number between 1MB and 9999MB.

Step 3 – Creating your video clip

Now that you have sorted all the settings you’ll probably want to create a video clip.

From the live image page simply click the record button to start the recording:

The button will depress and the record icon will turn red or display an ‘R’ symbol to indicate recording is in progress.

To stop recording simply click the record button again, the record button will go back to the normal state and your video will be saved in the location you specified in Step 2.

FINISH

Thats all there is to it. It’s very simple and quite useful. You can view the videos back using Windows Media Player or even edit them using Windows Movie Maker or upload them to YouTube, it’s up to you.