Recovering recorded camera videos from my PC

[Don N]

It takes a long time to recover recorded camera videos on my PC.  It generally, it takes 2-5 minutes to recover the videos for viewing.  It doesn't seem to matter whether there are multiple videos or whether videos are 30 seconds or 5 minutes in length.  The camera videos are recorded and stored on an HP Media Center PC, running XP version 2002.  The videos are stored in C:\My Images\Videos.     

I recover the camera videos by selecting VIEW, then select STORED MEDIA and finally highlight VIDEO.  At this point, it takes 2-5 minutes before the recorded video is viewable.  My question, is this normal?  Or is it possibly caused by my AHP setup or is it a function of my PC?       

[PajamaGuy]

...don't know if it's normal, but it takes a couple of minutes for me to be able to view videos too!  Always has.

[steven r]

I sometimes right click, go to the file location and then play my videos outside of AHP.

[Don N]

steven r ---  Where are you when you right click?  You say you are outside of AHP ... but where?  Sorry I may be a little dense this A.M.

[steven r]

While in AHP, instead of left clicking a video to play it right click on it. Pick the choice "Open Containing Folder". From there you can play the videos with your choice of player. My player lets me fast forward though my videos skimming then to see if I want to keep them.

[Don N]

steven r -- Perhaps I didn't make myself clear.  Once I have a video to view, it starts to play right away.  That's no problem.  What I was asking is, "why does it take so long to recover/retrieve a video?"  As I said, it takes 2-5 minutes to retrieve the video.  But, maybe this is normal with the AHP software.   

[BaBaLou.]

Hi Don N,
Go to Preferences/video settings and should like this pic, try a doing a search in the forum for the compression setting and such and see if that will help speed things up. Just try and change some of the compression settings to help match your system to speed up the video processing. Hope that might help.

[Don N]

BaBaLou -- that was a good suggestion, but I guess I would rather live with the slow retrieval than to change my settings.  I have Quality set at 100% and Frame Rate set a 6fps.  Both of these settings give me good quality video and up to 5 and 1/2 minutes of recording (before it creates another video -- I've talked about this in previous forum topics).  And the Microsoft Video 1 Codec doesn't crash my system like some of the other Codecs.  So I'm a little hesitant in changing these settings.

I'm starting to agree with PajamaGuy, in that it's just the inherent nature of the AHP "beast."

[BaBaLou.]

Safe is always good. The setup for me always seemed to work well, I do short recordings clips, 2 min to 12 min throughout the day. I get a video clip and any snapshots with very little wait. Xp and windows media does a nice job of viewing and organising the clips, clean them up once a week.

[steven r]

...Go to Preferences/video settings...

What does the "Video File Sizing" option do? i.e. If you set it for CD, will it keep files small enough to fit on a CD?

[Don N]

Maybe someone else can answer the question as to what it is supposed to do ... but I've never been able to select any of "Video File Sizing" options.  If I select an option, then close the window and reopen the window, the option I selected is no longer marked.

[BaBaLou.]

I assumed in the past that AHP will allow it to save files to the size selected in cases of 24/7 recording but just like Don N I have never been able to select anything in file sizing. The default of Radius compression is working well, did unchecked the pic every 15 frames in configuration of radius, it would always create a video file and then with it a crap load of pics in the same video folder.