RTSP software that adds AI motion detection to any IP camera
- ONVIF discovery or a URL
- Sub stream is enough
- H.264 and H.265
Interior, after hours
Fixed camera, low light, two subjects
Analysing the clip
Clip
Decoded in your browser. Your video is never uploaded.
Sets the luma delta threshold and the smallest region that counts.
Kills the one frame flicker that no operator wants paged about.
Exclude zone
Put it over the road, the tree, the neighbour's window. Events inside it stop alerting.
The frame an event was found on shows up here.
Nothing selected yet
Hover a row in the event table to preview its frame, click it to hold the frame and jump the clip there.
- Length
- 0.0s
- Confidence
- 0%
- Area
- 0.0%
0
Motion events found
0
Dropped by zone
0
Dropped, too short
0
Alerts you would get
| # | Start | Length | Class | Conf. | Area |
|---|
Reading the clip. Events appear here as they are found.
Get these alerts from your own cameras.
Nine times out of ten the URL is one of these, with your own address and credentials in it.
Paths change between firmware versions, so treat these as the first thing to try and your model's manual as the authority.
| Brand | Main stream | Sub stream |
|---|---|---|
| Hikvision | rtsp://user:pass@ip:554/Streaming/Channels/101 | rtsp://user:pass@ip:554/Streaming/Channels/102 |
| Dahua and Amcrest | rtsp://user:pass@ip:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0 | rtsp://user:pass@ip:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=1 |
| Reolink | rtsp://user:pass@ip:554/h264Preview_01_main | rtsp://user:pass@ip:554/h264Preview_01_sub |
| Axis | rtsp://user:pass@ip/axis-media/media.amp | rtsp://user:pass@ip/axis-media/media.amp?resolution=640x480 |
| UniFi Protect | Enable RTSP per camera in Protect, then use the URL it shows | Choose the low or medium quality stream in the same panel |
| Hybrid DVRs | Usually the Hikvision or Dahua pattern with the channel number changed | Same, with the sub stream suffix |
If your camera speaks ONVIF, which nearly all business cameras do, you do not need any of this: discovery asks the camera for its own stream profiles and you pick one from a list. The table is for the cases where discovery is blocked by a VLAN or turned off in the camera.
Detection does not need 4K, and using it makes everything worse.
This single choice decides your bandwidth, your CPU load and how many cameras one connection can carry.
Keep the main stream for recording
Your recorder should carry on storing the full resolution feed exactly as it does now. The sub stream is what gets read for detection, and the two are independent, so nothing about your evidence quality changes. A 720p sub stream is enough for person detection camera software to work, because a person at a useful distance is still tens of pixels across.
When you open an event and want the good frames, you go to the recorder for that window, which the timeline gives you to the second. This is the same arrangement described on the AI security camera software page: the cameras and the recorder stay exactly where they are, and only what reads them changes.
Seven causes, in the order they are usually the culprit.
Wrong credentials, or a password with a special character
Camera passwords with an at sign, a slash or a colon break URL parsing. Percent encode them, or set a stream specific account with a simple password.
RTSP disabled in the camera
Several brands ship with it off, and UniFi Protect requires enabling it per camera. Check the network or advanced settings page before anything else.
A separate account is required
Some firmware refuses stream access to the administrator account and wants a viewer or media account. Create one.
Port 554 blocked between VLANs
The single most common cause on a properly segmented network. Cameras on a camera VLAN, quite correctly, cannot be reached from elsewhere without a rule.
Channel numbering starts at 1, not 0
On a recorder, channel one is usually 101 in the Hikvision style path and channel=1 in the Dahua style. Off by one here returns nothing rather than an error.
H.265 on something that only decodes H.264
Switch the sub stream to H.264 and try again. This fixes a surprising share of streams that connect but never show a picture.
Too many simultaneous connections
Cameras cap concurrent RTSP clients, often at four or fewer. A recorder, an app and a test tool can exhaust that before your new client gets a slot.
A quick way to isolate the problem: open the same URL in VLC on a machine on the same network. If VLC cannot open it, the cause is in the list above and no software will do better. If VLC can, the problem is routing between the camera and whatever is trying to read it.
The demo runs on clips. Connecting the live stream is the step we walk you through.
Everything on this page is what you need for a live RTSP connection, and it is written now because it is the work you would do anyway with any product in this category. What you can do this minute is take a clip exported from that same camera and run it through the demo: real frame differencing, real classification, computed in your browser, with the clip staying on your machine.
When you confirm an email address, the steps for connecting your first live stream come back to you directly. We would rather say that plainly than describe a self serve flow that is not there.
Worth having ready
- The camera or recorder IP addresses, and which channel is which physical view.
- A stream account, ideally not the administrator one.
- Whether the cameras sit on their own VLAN, and who can open a rule if they do.
- A sub stream profile at around 720p, 10 frames a second, H.264.
Four questions from whoever holds the camera passwords.
01
Do you need my cameras exposed to the internet?
No, and you should not do that for any product. Port forwarding an RTSP camera to the open internet is one of the most reliable ways to end up on a public camera index. Outbound connections only.
02
Does an RTSP viewer for Windows do the same job?
A viewer shows you the picture, which is useful for testing a URL and nothing else. It does no detection, keeps no events and sends no alerts. Use one to confirm the stream works, then point detection software at it.
03
How many cameras can one site connection carry?
On sub streams at around 720p, a normal business connection carries a couple of dozen comfortably. Full resolution main streams are where sites run out of upstream, which is another reason detection reads the sub stream.
04
What about ONVIF discovery?
If the camera is reachable and ONVIF is on, discovery finds it and lists its stream profiles, and you never touch a URL. The manual paths on this page are the fallback for when discovery is blocked or turned off.
Related pages for whoever wires it up
Video management software for IP cameras
Six VMS platforms on licence model and price, and which half of the job you already own.
AI security camera software
What the model adds once the stream is connected.
CCTV video analytics software
Older estates, hybrid DVRs and mixed brands.
Person detection camera software
Person alerts from a stream that never had them.
Motion detection software for webcam
The same tuning advice for a USB camera.
Enterprise security camera systems
Network posture, SSO, roles and retention.
Video analytics software price
What each connected camera costs per month.
Test the camera before you touch the network.
Export sixty seconds from the stream you were about to connect and run it through the demo. If the detection is right on that clip, the wiring is worth doing.