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A Guide to Your iVMS-4200 Remote Camera Client

The Alarm Co.

For technical support, contact Kevin at (863)801-7209 or alarmcokevin@gmail.com

For service, contact Carl at (863)484-0707 or alarmcocarl@gmail.com

For any other questions or concerns, contact our office at (863)357-2004 or

thealarmco@embarqmail.com
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Table of Contents

Part I: Introduction Pg. 3

An intro to the iVMS-4200 and its uses

Part II: Initializing the iVMS-4200Pg. 4

Starting the iVMS from the desktop, logging in, and the Control Panel

Part III: Main ViewPg. 5

Accessing Main View tab, creating custom views, and mouse navigation

Part IV: Remote PlaybackPg. 11

Accessing Remote Playback, finding footage, and downloading video

Part V: Account ManagementPg. 19

Accessing Account Management, creating new users, and editing existing users

Part VI: Toolbar CommandsPg. 22

Interacting with the Toolbar, plus a few tips and tricks

Part VII: Locating Archived Videos and PicturesPg. 24

Using archived video from the Security Cameras folder for viewing via media player

Part VIII: Other Historical Data OperationsPg. 27

Resources for using CDs, DVDs, flash drives, etc. to transfer the location of archived video
PART IX: Installing the Client on New ComputersPg. 28

How to put the web software on another computer

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Part I:

Introduction

The iVMS-4200 Remote Camera Client is a tool now being utilized by many locations
around the state of Florida. As there have been many frequently asked questions concerning the
day-to-day operation of the iVMS, we have created a guide to help more easily answer any
possible questions or concerns you may have regarding the software, including step-by-step
instruction on the processes from starting your software to viewing your cameras to transferring
archived data from the digital video recorder to your local hard drive, a flash drive, or disk. The
iVMS is a powerful, valuable tool, allowing the networking of several DVRs or NVRs to one
viewing screen, and its operation will become a simple matter once you have spent some time with
it. Any thoughts or additions or further questions can be directed to alarmcokevin@gmail.com, so
that we might work to improve this guide, broaden it, and have it serve as a quick potential
resource for any questions you may have concerning the effective operation of your security system
in the future.

Thank you,

The Alarm Co.

For technical support, contact Kevin at (863)801-7209 or alarmcokevin@gmail.com

For service, contact Carl at (863)484-0707 or alarmcocarl@gmail.com

For any other questions or concerns, contact our office at (863)357-2004 or

thealarmco@embarqmail.com
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Part II:

Initializing the iVMS-4200 Remote Client,

Logging in, and the Control Panel

From your desktop screen, accessing your software is simple. Begin by finding the icon
representing the software on your desktop and double-click on it. In a moment, a dialogue box
will appear displaying the same symbol and showing the progress of the software as it begins to
boot up. The icon you are looking for and the softwares boot screen should each look like these,
respectively:

The next dialogue box you will see will prompt you to
choose your personal login name as well as enter your
password. If you wish to skip this step at any time in the
future, you may do so by selecting the Enable auto-login option, however, given the often
sensitive nature of the video files able to be accessed freely by using this option, it is not
recommended. (The option may be toggled on and off using the tool path of Tool > System
Configuration > Enable auto-login as well). For now, click on your name and type in your
password, then click Login.

When the iVMS shuts itself down or inadvertently becomes shut off, it will save the last known
state in which it was in, meaning that if you were viewing, for example, 32 cameras and lost
power, upon recovery, the software would return you right back to the same screen you were on,
viewing the same 32 cameras. However, if there was nothing actively being viewed or searched
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for, the software will begin from the initial state of displaying the Control Panel, which looks like
this:

From the Control Panel, all potential paths which you

can take in the iVMS software are laid out for you
plainly, and while there are a myriad of options, as the
end-user there are truly only three (and sometimes
two) aspects of the software which you need train
yourself with. These are Main View (which will
provide you the ability to view cameras in real time), Remote Playback (which will allow you to
view and download any historical footage on the DVRs hard drive), and Account Management
(which will only apply to users with administrative privileges, allowing them to freely create and set
regulations for new users to the system). They look like this on the Control Panel:

Part III:

Main View Features

Before beginning any of the process of getting into some of the interesting features of the software,
we will begin by getting viewable cameras onto the screen. Begin by navigating from the Control
Panel to the Main View panel by clicking on the Main View button. A new screen should appear.
Notice: any time you open a new window from the control panel it will be added to an array of
tabs across the top of the iVMS.

You may navigate back to any of these tabs at any time by clicking on them or close out of them
by clicking the small X in the upper-right corner of the tab, similar to most internet browsers.
Your new Main View screen should look something like this:
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You will notice along the left hand side of the software there is a column containing some options
like View and Camera. We will begin with the Camera option. Under Camera we can see all the
DVRs coupled with our system. In the case of our example, there is only one, Example DVR,
but if there were more they would follow beneath our DVR in just the same suit. By clicking on
the folder once all the cameras associated with the DVR will drop down beneath it. In our case,
these are the West and East Cameras.

To view one of these cameras, choose one and click on the small
icon next to the camera name that looks like a front-facing camera,
and an image will propagate in the viewing window; to keep adding
cameras, keep clicking on more icons. Alternatively, to see all cameras
on a DVR at once, just double-click the DVR name and all cameras
will begin to appear. You will notice too that these small icons also act like indicators for the health
and status of the individual camera.

This symbol displays that the camera is working properly and is connected to the system; it
is able to be viewed at any time.

This symbol displays a camera that is not only working properly, but is also currently
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being viewed on the Main View; you will notice the change whenever you click on the first
symbol as the camera appears onscreen.

This symbol displays a camera that is experiencing some trouble connecting to the system
and cannot be viewed; this camera may require service and should be checked regularly. If
the problem persists, contact The Alarm Co.

Once pictures are on the screen, you may click-and-drag them to another viewing window to
reorganize them into a newer, more pleasing layout. From here you can also increase or decrease
the number of potential videos you may want to view at any time. Say I have four windows to
view and I would like to add in four more, eight more, or even sixteen more. Just navigate to this
button found on the bottom left of the screen and click to view all of your options concerning
camera layouts in both standard and widescreen formats.

But what if you want to create a new view using varying

cameras from one or multiple DVRs and save the orientation of
those pictures? That can be done as well using the Custom View
option on the left side of your screen. Just as before, this mode
will allow you to organize pictures in any way you please, but
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then save the layout to lock it in so you might return to it at a single click later on, or even edit,
embellish, or reorganize the group. Begin by looking for Custom View and clicking on it. Like the
DVR, a list will expand underneath of any views which have already been created. If none exist, or
to add more views, click on New View and type in the name you would like to designate the
Custom View as (this can be right-clicked on and edited later).

From this point you may begin to pull in any number of camera views that you please, arranging
them in a way which best suits your purpose. For instance, if youre concentrating on a group of
people that follow a regular schedule throughout the day, like students in school, half or maybe
even more of your cameras may not be effective views for the whole day. If your subject is or
subjects spend much of their time in set locations, like a cafeteria or classrooms, the need to see
most of the other pictures at that time may not be as pertinent. This is exactly the purpose Custom
Views is designed for, to get you the most efficient camera system for your needs. Keep in mind
that alternating the layout here works exactly as with the more normal live view. Create any
combination you like, and then navigate once more to the layout button, where you will have the
ability to Save View or Save View As (if you wish to
give the view a new name).

These are the basic operations for pulling up and

organizing your video streams in the software. These
are simple, hands-off operations that only need to be completed once. Once you have set up any
number of Custom Views you will be able to cycle between the views which are most valuable at
any particular time. Keep in mind this is only the way in which you view the cameras remotely and
will have no impact on the capturing and recording process being accomplished at the DVR. Feel
encouraged experimenting with the uses of the buttons, layouts of the cameras, and Custom
Views. You cannot hurt the system in any way. If you get to a point where you are confused or
unhappy with the cameras you see, delete them and start again. The number of Custom Views you
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can set up should far exceed any number you might want to set up. Once you have a firm grasp on
how to turn on and off camera views, moving pictures around within the viewing area, and
establishing Custom Views, its time to move on to some of the recording features that can be
utilized while in the Main View mode.

In addition to the ability to create customized views of any number of cameras there are a number
of other features to aide in getting you the ideal footage and efficiency out of your system. Before
jumping into the three main features, we will discuss basic navigation and the button layout. Using
your mouse in the iVMS, you may click-and-drag any viewing window into any other viewing
window, swapping their places on the screen. Additionally, any time you double-click on an
image, the image will fill the entirety of the viewing window as one large single image; to return to
multiple images, simply double-click once again. Now lets examine the long gray bar extending
the length of your viewing window. Many of the buttons here may be recognizable to you, and
are common. Use these buttons to help you navigate your images if there are too many to fit on
one screen or are swapping through multiple single images.

We have already reviewed the Layouts & Save Custom Views button and its usefulness. The
second button on the bar is Stop Live View, which will allow you to stop all currently streaming
cameras and start with a blank slate to add cameras to. Previous or Next will only apply if you have
several single images you are attempting to navigate through, and will most likely not be used. The
same can be said for the Auto-Switch feature, which would only come into use if you had a large
array of cameras you wanted to rotate between at set intervals (anywhere between 20 seconds and 5
minutes), and for the Two-Way Audio feature, which will never be used. While the software and
DVRs support the compatibility, there is no possible way to use the cameras for these purposes as
they do not have built-in speakers and microphones. Lastly is the fullscreen button, which, as it
states, will fill your entire screen with the viewing windows of all cameras. (To quit fullscreen, you
may right click and navigate to the Quit Fullscreen option anywhere on the page.)
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Once you have a grasp on the basic steps to navigating your images, there may be some additional
features to benefit your time viewing your cameras, as well as save time in the future by using real-
time footage that you know you will have to potentially pull in the future anyway. There are three
buttons that we will use to accomplish these steps, and these buttons will appear along a black bar
on whichever camera your cursor is over at the time, looking very
much like this:

Again, you may already be familiar with some of these features. To

begin, the first symbol we have is the Capture symbol. Capture is
going to do as it says and capture a still-frame image of the camera we
happen to be looking at at the time. The Record symbol accomplishes the same task but with
video. When you first hit the Record button a small R will appear on it, letting you know that you
have begun a new recording on that camera. Until you hit the Record symbol again and the R
goes away, you are continuing to record a new section of video. Keep in mind that both captured
images as well as videos will be stored locally on your own hard drive in a file folder located on
your desktop (most likely labeled Cameras or Security Cameras). This will have no bearing on
what the DVR records or its storage capacity and will not override or inhibit its processes in any
way. Even if a camera is not currently recording, you can instruct the iVMS to record anyway,
placing the document right into your desktop folder on your own CPU. We will discuss playback
of this footage and its more precise retrieval further on in this instructional guide. To finish our
explanation, we come to the third button, Instant Playback, which is a key and unique feature of
the iVMS software. Clicking on the Instant Playback button will open for us a menu that contains
a bar numbered in intervals from 30 seconds to 10 minutes. Upon selecting a time, say five
minutes, the real-time view in the window will no longer display the current time, but instead
begin playing its saved data from exactly five minutes ago. You can notice the timestamps in the
corner alter when this happens, and likely a shift in what the image is viewing if there has been
movement.
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By right-clicking on any active view window a list of features

will appear. Many of these features are redundant commands to
the buttons located within the software, some are inactive, but
some are unique and useful and are encouraged to look deeper
into. Beginning from the top, we start with Stop Live View,
which will stop the viewing of whichever camera you clicked
on. Capture works the same as the Capture button; Start
Recording and Instant Playback work in the same fashion. If
your user has the ability, printing a captured image or emailing
a file can be done from here as well. The real benefit of right-
clicking comes in the Digital Zoom features, which, when
clicked on, will allow the user to click-and-drag a rectangular
window. When that rectangle is set, the software will zoom
into the image to give you an even larger picture than before. (Note: When digitally zooming, it is
recommended to use a large box to begin with, then create similar smaller boxes to work further
into the image, ultimately providing you with a clearer picture). The rest of the features presented
here outside of Full Screen are not commands the end-user is capable of performing and may be
discarded.

Once you know how to do these things you may begin to combine them in many ways. Pull up a
set of cameras in Main View; set them up to be viewed quickly later on with Custom Views; use
Instant Playback to drop one of those cameras back 10 minutes in time to view an event; record
that event to your hard drive using the Record button, or take a picture of it using the Capture
button, and use Digital Zoom to more closely examine it; and then use Send Email to send the
relevant clip to whomever may require it all without having to leave your seat, or even leave the
Main View tab.

Part IV:

Remote Playback Features

In the next section of our guide we will cover the operations necessary to take necessary historical
footage from the DVR and transfer it onto our local hard drive for further use. In the last section
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concerning the Main View, we had the ability to jump backwards in time up to 10 ten minutes on
any given camera, then manipulate the footage as we saw fit from there. But what if, however, the
event happened some time longer than ten minutes ago and that needs to be pulled off of the DVR
for review? That is what this section intends to cover to give you the tools you need to locate any
file at any time as well as highlight some potential timesaving operations the Remote Playback tab
will serve you. Again, let us begin at the Control Panel screen. As with Main View, we will click
on the button for Remote Playback to activate a new tab, which will look like this:

Remote Playback will provide you with several options to find the footage you need in an efficient
manner as well as scrub through any footage which you may want to examine over some period of
time. First, lets assume that we dont have any specific time in mind but would like to review
video taken from a certain day. In this example, we will use the day of July 9th. Lets begin by
examining some of the changes and similarities that we see from the Main View tab.

The layout is not all that different. There are four blank viewing screens by default that can be
filled. From there, you can expand up to twelve more spots, totaling sixteen, to review up to any
sixteen cameras from any DVR on the system. There are a few implications to this. One is that
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now when I choose to search through chunks of video I can do so for an entire facility right from
my own desktop. Not only that, but any Custom Views which may or may not have used multiple
DVRs before also exists in our Remote Playback options, providing an easy continuity between
the two pieces of the program. Though they are used to accomplish two separate tasks, they share
many features of look and navigation.

The initial step toward finding the video matter you need begins with the leftmost column on your
screen.

By looking over these boxes, we can see that our

Example Views 1, 2 and 3 have all transferred over
from the Main View, which means that when we perform a search, one of our
options would be to search specifically for the cameras which exist within that
group. However, if we would like to search for different cameras or possibly just
one camera, the process follows the same. Start by clicking on the Custom View
you would like to search by, or start by clicking Camera, then checking off
whichever cameras or whole DVRs are of importance to you. The three modes
by which you can search are View (these are your Custom Views), Camera and Event. Given how
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we set our systems up to operate, the Camera and Event fields are effectively redundant. Our
camera systems are constantly working, their eyes constantly open in case anything is to its field of
vision. Once an object passes through this field, the camera examines the pixels, determining that
there has been movement within the frame, and begins to record footage until the changing of
pixels has halted it knows the movement has stopped. Once it has recorded this video it will have
five more seconds added to the beginning and end (known as pre- and post-record) of the clip, to
give you the full length of the object entering as well as leaving the point of view of the camera.
Since each camera only records on active motion, we can greatly cut down on the consumption of
the DVRs hard drive space to maximize the amount of historical data possible as well as make the
job of the end-user even easier. When you search by Camera, you are actually searching for an
Event that the camera has seen, and not several hours of days of stale footage without movement.

Clicking the gray bar that says Camera will shift it to the top of the column, covering the View
category to refine your search. Lets say we want to look at July 9th, but just the West Camera.
Click on Camera, then check the box for West Camera, then look below to the calendar. By
default, this will be set to search for the current day. To change the day, just click on the day you
would like and the box its in will turn a darker shade of gray. If you need to change the month or
year, use the arrows next to them move forward or backward.

If there is in fact archived footage for that camera on that day a small orange triangle will appear in

the box for the day, like this: This is a quick and easy way to check how many days of
historical video you have stored in your DVR. Many of our facilities require a thirty day
minimum. By flipping back the calendar, we should be able to see orange triangles all the way back
to the last day of recording, where it will return to a regular gray box.

From this point, if we hit the Search button, we will search through the entire day of July 9th for
the West Camera. Maybe this is exactly what we want, but if we wish to refine our search even
more, providing the iVMS with a very specific time, we can do that as well, helping cut down on
the sheer quantity of motion triggered events that may occur throughout a 24 hour period. To do
this, you will need to use the More Search Options button.

By clicking the calendar on the end of the From and To fields,

you can fine tune down to the very second when you would
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like to look, including multiple days if you prefer. After hitting search, the software will take a
moment to think on the request, and then populate a list in the left column again detailing every
event that has occurred within the timeframe set for it to look in. If you have searched for multiple
cameras, you will receive multiple results. They will look just like this:

The first thing you may notice is the list of timestamps listed
beneath each camera. Each time represents a motion event that
the camera has captured, and by clicking on any one of these
events, just like in Main View, we can add them to our
viewing window. By clicking on a new window you can even
open multiple events from the same camera at the same time.
Having seen the way the list is presented, there are a few things
we can already see which may be useful to us. The Filter field
may be typed in to help narrow down a more exact time
within your list of times. An alternate purpose may be for the
use of checking employees on set scheduled rounds. Without
even viewing the footage, we can tell when a person passed
through a specific camera, and if a person is supposed to patrol
the hallway containing the camera every thirty minutes (for
example), you may look at the list of time events that took
place there. Any discrepancies in the schedule could be easily
pulled just by counting the intervals between camera motion
events and viewing the times where they exist.

Once we have a video on the screen the manipulation of this

video becomes paramount. There are several tools in the iVMS
to help you capture down to the very second the footage you
wish to capture. One of the nice aspects of continuity between
the Main View and Remote Playback exists here. Each of the
commands we reviewed in the last section for live video apply
here as well. Using a right-click on one of your videos will show you just how similar it can be and
will give you a rundown on most of the navigation features. Stopping the video, using Digital
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Zoom, Capture and Record, Print Captured Picture, Send Email, and Fullscreen act just as they
did before. Some changes have taken place on the horizontal bar that border the viewing window,
but these changes only help to give the user even more control over tuning in to just the video you
need.

Starting from right to left, the Fullscreen button works the same as in Main View and the 2-Way
Audio button is, again, inactive. The Single Frame button is a new button to you, though
incredibly good for pinpointing accuracy in your videos and highly useful. Hitting this button
while watching a video feed will pause the feed; when you hit it again, it will advance the video
just one single frame forward. Since our cameras record at 30 frames per second, the Single Frame
button is, in essence, providing you with 30 still pictures to examine for each 1 second of video
that passes. Often, unless the movement is quite quick, like a car, the movement on screen may
even appear imperceptible until several frames have been advanced through. Given that you can
still combine the Single Frame feature along with capturing or printing an image, this is an
incredible tool to utilize. Next across the bar are Pause, Play and Stop, all of which should be
familiar to you. The last two I will discuss are also key features to finding and pulling archived
footage as effectively as possible. The more useful of the two is likely the Time Slider Bar.

The Time Slider Bar will allow you to view a video at variable speeds freely. While the Single
Frame button only advances one frame at a time, the Slider Bar will act as a tool to allow you to
quickly scrub through lots of video in a relatively short amount of time. By clicking and dragging
the Slider from 1x, which is real time video, anywhere up to 8x, the user may advance through
video at up to eight times its normal pace. Alternatively, by grabbing and pulling the bar leftward,
the video can be made to play back at a minimum of 1/8 of its actual speed to help identify a
specific moment in time.

The last feature to discuss on the bar is a more advanced feature, and can get somewhat confusing,
but always remember that there is no way you can hurt nor delete anything necessary from the
system in any way by experimenting with these features. The last button is the Synchronous &
Asynchronous Playback button. If you are streaming multiple streams of video onscreen that all
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began at different times, they are considered to be playing asynchronously with one another. By
selecting one of the video streams and hitting the button, the time the streams are pulling from will
synchronize with the one you have just picked. This can be useful if you dont know exactly when
an event took place, so are looking through many cameras at many times to find it. Once found,
you can redirect the other cameras with this feature to look back at the same time as the other,
giving you more potential shots of the area at the right time. This effect can also be accomplished
in reverse by using the button again to desynchronize the video streams.

When a time and camera is found that suits our needs we now need to pull the information off of
the DVR and onto our hard drive on our own computer. There are a few ways in which this can

be accomplished. Firstly, the features that we have already discussed, , Capture and Record,
respectively, still work just as well in the Remote Playback section, and may absolutely be used to
record straight to your hard drive just as you would have done in Main View by finding the event
and hitting Record while the event is happening, and then again when the event is over. In that
case, you are finished, and the file is now in your computer. If, however, the event is long, it may
not be worth the time to sit there and watch it again while it records. It could be fifteen minutes
long, which would require at least fifteen minutes of your time to record the event, so there are
better ways of doing it for lengths of video. This time, when we have found the camera and time
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that we want, we will right-click and find the option. Once we click it,
a new dialogue box will pop open displaying a list of time events just as the column on the left side
did, only this time providing you with an End Time as well as a Start Time. By default the
Download by File tab will be open and look like the picture below.

This list matches exactly the list

on the left side of the screen, so it
should be no trouble to find the
timestamp or timestamps relevant
to you and identify them. When
you have done that, its as simple
as checking the boxes that apply
to you. Checking the topmost
box marked Index will check
all the files. Once you have
checked the times that you would
like to download, click
download. You will see the
designation of the checked boxes
under Status will change once
this happens. They will start as Waiting, change to Downloading, and then to Download
Complete. Unless the files are very large, and longer events, this should only take a few moments.
Now the files you have selected will appear in the Security Cameras folder on your desktop, which
we will explore shortly. The third way to download a video file is to use the Download by Date
tab located within the same dialogue box. Once you click the tab, it should appear.
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This technique, aside from

physically hitting the Record
button yourself, is the most
accurate method of downloading
chunks of video that contain only
pertinent information without
irrelevant video footage. By
clicking on a camera, then
Download, then Download by
Date, the iVMS will allow you to
pinpoint allotments of time from
your entire hard drive. You
could in fact download
everything the camera has seen
since its first recorded archive, or
download fifteen seconds of video from the day before. Just click the check box for Duration 1 and
use the calenders, just as before, to start a customized Start Time and End Time. Once you do so,
click Download. The progress bar along the right side will begin to fill. Once it reaches the end,
your file or files have completed downloading and are now waiting in the same location as other
downloaded videos and pictures.

Part V:

Account Management Features

Like virtually all features of the iVMS-4200, the ability to access Account Management is
dependent on the level of the user. The Alarm Co. tends to remain as the systems one Super User,
giving us ultimate authority to make any necessary maintenance changes in the back end of the
program. However, aside from the Super User, there are two other types of users which can be
created to utilize the software. Each time a user logs in, searches history, or in general accesses
features of the system, these actions are logged and able to be looked up later by high-level users to
check the history of these actions. Nearly every feature we have already discussed sits as a toggle
that may be turned on and off at the command of a Super User or other high-level user in Account
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Management. Now I will show you how to do just that, so that you might help keep your system
more secure and operating more effectively if multiple people are designated to oversee the system
or have the ability to view the cameras. As always, let us begin at the Control Panel and now find
the Account Management button that looks like this:

Once thats done, a new tab will open. Here you will be
presented with the Account Management page.

Outside of the Super User, which there can only be one of, there are two designations for users on
the system, one being Administrator and one Operator. These designations are also limits to what
can and cannot be done on the system for a particular user. For instance, lets go ahead and hit the
Add User button to see how this works.
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A new dialogue box will

appear that looks like this. Four
fields on the top are the only
information necessary to create
a new user, but much more
depth into the abilities of the
user can be set as well. For
now, lets skip the first box and
look at the second box,
marked Name. Any name may
be entered here, and it may be
multiple words; just be sure to
use something recognizable for
logging in. The third and
fourth fields are for the
password and password confirmation. So long as your password is at least six bits long (******) there
are no other minimum password requirements. Once these are set, we can take a look at the first
field, which asks you to pick between and Operator and an Administrator. Simply put, an
Administrator begins with full rights, all checkbox options checked and all abilities, whereas an
Operator begins with no options checked and no abilities. From this point, you can either begin
adding permissions to an Operator, taking them away from an Administrator, or leaving them as
they are. Not everyone may need the ability to Capture, Record and Backup sensitive
information, but you may want them to be able to at least view the cameras live.

Once all fields have been decided upon, click Save, and thats it. A new user has been added to the
system. If at any time you would like to edit the permissions, name, designation, password,
anything at all, you may return to Account Management, hit Edit User, and do so. You may also
Delete Users as well from the same location.

Keep in mind, this new user, unless assigned the ability to access Account Management, will not be
allowed to do any of these things, even for their own account.
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Part VI:

Toolbar Commands

Though you may not use them often, there are some commands which can be executed via the
toolbar which could help promote the security of your iVMS. Each of them will be simple and
quick operations. Lets start with a look at the Toolbar and the File extension.

As you can see, when we click on File, like all the buttons on the Toolbar, we will get a menu
which will drop down to the contents. File shows us a new way to open capture previously
recorded video, pictures, or log files. I will show you a more efficient way to accomplish these
outside of the program. Next comes the
System button, which reveals two useful features,
the Lock and Switch User buttons. When you
hit lock it does just what it sounds like it does. The
iVMS has a lock put on mouse and keyboard commands
until the user who began the Lock clicks it again and re-
enters their password. It will not work with another password,
even to log in as a different user. This provides a degree of
security for the system if the user is no longer present.
Switch User will not place any sort of bar on the iVMS, but
will allow one user to log out and another to log in easily for a
shift change or what-have-you. This box will look almost
identical to the box you log in with when first booting the
program.

Next is the View button. Under view you will find a number of
aspect ratios you may adjust the iVMS to if your monitor is of a
nonstandard resolution. Your main features (Control Panel,
 23

Main View and Remote Playback) can also be reached from this menu. The most interesting
aspect of this menu, however, is not in its redundancy of useful buttons, it is in the Auxiliary
Screen Preview feature, which is only of use to users with multiple monitor displays. Clicking this
button will not only open a new tab, but will open an entirely new Main View window, marked
Main View (2), which may be dragged to a different monitor to user a multi-monitor setup.
Activate cameras on the Main View just as you did the other. You can use the Auxiliary Screen
feature up to three times, creating up to four independently working screens which can view up to
64 cameras in total. Not everyone has multiple monitors connected to their computer, but for
those that do, this can be invaluable.

The last button I will discuss on the Toolbar is the Help button. The Help button will not actively
help troubleshoot any issues that exist, but within the list you can find the User Manual. The User
Manual found there is an even more in-depth look at the abilities of the iVMS, though written in
more technical jargon. If you choose to though, the PDF may help you to have a secondary source
of information to reference to immediately if any questions arise about the iVMS. It never hurts to
know that you have another potential source of information at the ready, and so long as the
software is open, even if you do not have this guide, the User Manual can quickly be accessed.
 24

Part VII:

Locating Archived Videos and Pictures

Now that you have familiarized yourself with the day-to-day operations of the iVMS and the
process of retrieving data to be used at a later date, we must now find where that data has been sent
to and how to use it for our needs. As aforementioned, all picture and video data has been
programmed to send to a single location, which should be placed on your desktop near the iVMS-
4200 shortcut, and labeled something like Security or Security Cameras. Once you click on
this folder a new set of folders will appear, one for Captured Videos and one for Captured Pictures.

When clicking on either one of these folders, again, a new set of folders will open. Lets take a look
at these.

Here is a file in the Picture folder. The folder that we see here is marked as a number. When files
are downloaded, they assigned to a folder that bears the date of the day they were downloaded, not
when they were recorded by the DVR. This example is folder 20140702, downloaded on
 25

07/02/2014. If you wish to change this, right-click the folder, click Rename, and rename the
folder. The video folder will look exactly the same. When we expand folder 20140702 here is
what we see:

Arranged before us is an example of all the pictures I captured throughout the day. Now that we
have them on the desktop, they act like any other picture file. They can be emailed, burnt to a
disk, saved to a flash drive, whatever is necessary at this point. They are now independent of the
DVR completely and part of your computer. If we look at what the inside of our video folder
looks like, it will be very similar, only in a video folder you will see a pair of files for each
download, one picture and one video.
 26

The picture that you see accompanying the video may be of no use to you, so you may delete
without consequence. The reason the picture is downloaded with the video is due to the fact that
most video files, like the MP4 format the software uses, do not give a preview icon indicating what
the video actually is. All the picture is is the very first frame of the recorded video, a quick
reference guide to know what youre looking at while still providing a timestamp and camera name
in the file title. Once again, these downloads are now entirely separated from the DVR system and
are independent working files on your desktop. They may be treated like any other video file
might.

Once you have arrived at this step you have completed the operations of the iVMS-4200
successfully. You now have the tools at your disposal to start the software, log in, navigate the
Main View and Remote Playback features, as well as find footage, download it, and even add new
accounts. It cannot be encouraged enough to use the iVMS. Given time, you will become adept at
the software and have the ability to quickly execute whatever task you need to accomplish to come
to a quick resolution. In the final section, I will go over a few non-iVMS instructions concerning
the picture and video files now on your desktop. Depending on the operating system, what you see
 27

may not be exactly what I see, or vice versa, but it may be of use to have literature to revert back to
to be certain your files are getting where they need to go and when they need to get there.

Part VIII:

Other Historical Data Operations

While the DVR records its video data in an MP4 format, a common file format for its type, some
users experience trouble viewing the video collected post-download. This means the default media
player on their computer does not have a codec up to date enough to run it. This is an easy fix.
Online, visit http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.html and click Installer Package.
Download and install. Known as VLC Media Player, this media player will play just about any file
format out there and is very easy to use. It has extraordinary functionality, but I will leave it up to
you to explore the software further. For the purposes of playing downloaded video, just find the
file you would like to play, right-click on it, select Open With, and click on VLC Media Player.
VLC will then open and begin playing back the selected files.

Sometimes, instead of attaching pictures and videos to emails, you may want to save them to a CD,
DVD or flash drive to save a physical copy as well. In fact, to attempt to give a brief explanation of
the many ways in which digital data can travel may take a guide that is just as long as this. What we
 28

can provide, however, are some online resources to consult if you have any questions dealing with
burning CDs or DVDs, using flash drives, attaching files or printers for use, etc. Please feel
welcome to use these free online resources to help benefit you in the future. And as always, if you
have any trouble, dont refrain from contacting us.

http://www.gcflearnfree.org/computers

http://www.free-computer-tutorials.net/

http://www.techtutorials.net/

Part IX:

Installing the Client on New Computers

Over time for one reason or another you may either need to replace the computer which currently
uses the client software or add a new one onto the system. So long as the computers share the same
network, there is no restriction to the number of computers which may have access to viewing and
utilizing the features of your iVMS; however, keep in mind that the larger the number of viewers
actively communicating with the DVR at any given time will have a proportional effect of slowing
down the overall speed of your private broadband. The process for adding the client to any
computer is simple, and the process for making the new software replicate the old is equally simple.
The quickest and most convenient way to get the software on any new computer is to visit the
following link: http://www.hikvision.com/en/download_more.asp?id=1235. This is a safe web
address and the official site of the client itself. As of this moment, version 2.00.00.06 is the most
recent version. Click on the blue download link to download the file.

Once you have downloaded this file it may be saved for future use on other machines, placed on a
zip drive or CD, etc. If you wish to open it on the current computer, select to run the .exe file and
install as you would any other piece of software. When you open the client for the first time, you
will be asked to input a Super User and Password. These fields are entirely arbitrary such that
any name you like may be placed here. Ultimately, we will overwrite this Super User and replace it
with The Alarm Co.
 29

As it stands, you now have the client installed, but the cameras and setup do not match that of your
other computers. The process is as follows: on any computer which currently supports the use of
the iVMS-4200, navigate to the software. Now would be a good time to also put a zip drive into
your computer as well. Log in as an administrator and navigate to the System button and click it,
then click Export System Config File. It will ask you to choose a location to save the file.
Choose your zip drive. You may now bring this zip drive to any new computer with the client
freshly installed to mimic the setup of the other computer. This file may also be emailed if you
wish. Either way, the process is the same: on the new computer, run the software and navigate
once again to the System button. This time select Import System Config File. From here,
choose the configuration file you just pulled from the other computer. After a few moments a
message will appear letting you know the transfer was successful. You may now close the software
and run it again. From this point on the software will mimic itself to look and act exactly like the
previous computer without any programming involved. The Super User you just created no
longer applies and may be disregarded. All the information remains the same from the previous
computer. This may be performed any number of times upon any number of computers on the
network. All users and access levels will carry over as well.
 30

We wish to express our gratitude once more for the opportunity to work on these great systems
with you in the first place. Hopefully, with the help of some effort and this guide, you will be fully
versed in the capabilities of the iVMS-4200 before long. As always, this is a resource, a guide to
assist walking you through any questions that may crop up concerning the software. If there is a
subject that you have run into that has not been covered or has not been expressed clearly enough,
let us know, and we will do what we can to improve to make life as simple as possible for both of
us. However, if you ever arrive at a point where you are stuck, or cannot find an answer to your
question, also do not hesitate to call. We would be happy to assist you as quickly as we can in
righting your system again and giving you good information for the future. Thank you once more,
and we hope this guide is of good use.

Thank you,

The Alarm Co.

For technical support, contact Kevin at (863)801-7209 or alarmcokevin@gmail.com

For service, contact Carl at (863)484-0707 or alarmcocarl@gmail.com

For any other questions or concerns, contact our office at (863)357-2004 or

thealarmco@embarqmail.com