Viewtron Security DVR NVR: Backup Video Events to USB Drive
Watch this video to learn how-to backup video surveillance events recorded on a Viewtron DVR / NVR to an external USB thumb drive. There are many way to search for and backup video surveillance recordings on Viewtron DVRs and NVRs. In this video, I focus on the search by event feature which allows you to quickly browse a list of alarm events. Viewtron recorders support the following types of alarm events: motion detection recording, AI object detection recording (NVRs only), manual / panic recording, point of sale transaction recording, external alarm sensor triggered recording.
In this video, I will focus on AI human detection / intrusion detection recording, which is a kid of advanced motion detection recording that is much more reliable. The process to find any type of alarm / event recording is the same. Also, the process is the same for Viewtron IP camera NVRs and BNC / CCTV camera DVRs, however, only Viewtron NVRs are integrated with Viewtron AI security cameras. This is how it works.
Insert USB Drive into NVR / DVR
All Viewtron DVRs and Viewtron NVRs have a USB port on the front and back panel. I use the front USB port the mouse. You can see above that I inserted my USB thumb drive into the rear port on the 32 channel NVR at CCTV Camera Pros.
Format USB Drive
Viewtron recorders are compatible with almost all of the common file formats that come pre-installed on USB thumb drives, except for the exFAT file system, (Extended File Allocation Table). exFAT is a file system developed by Microsoft and is NOT compatible with Viewtron recorders. Fortunately, there is a very easy way to re-format USB hard drives on Viewtron recorders.
If you need to format your thumb drive, select Disk Management from the main menu.
On the disk management screen, you will see the main hard drive for the DVR and the USB thumb drive. BE CAREFUL so that you DO NOT accidentally format the DVRs hard drive. The USB drive will be labeled UDisk-1. Click on the Format button to begin, then confirm by clicking OK.
Video Search and Backup
With a properly formatted USB thumb drive inserted into your Viewtron recorder, select Search and Backup from the main menu.
Video Search by Event
On the Search and Backup screen, do the following.
- Click on the By Event link.
- Select the Start Time and End Time for your event search.
- Select one or more cameras that you want to include in the search.
- Select the type of event(s) that you want to search.
- Click on the Search button. A list of events will appear.
- If you want to preview and of the recorded video events, click on the playback button next to the event.
- Click the check box next to one or more events that you want to backup to your USB thumb drive.
- Click on the Backup button.
Please note that if you click on the Playback button next to any of the events, a small video playback window will pop up, as you can see above. Also please note, that if you click on the Playback button next to the Backup button, this will open the full size video playback screen.
When you click on the Backup button, the Record Backup window will pop up. This will let you browse to the location on your USB drive where you want to backup the video event(s). You can also create new directories on the drive. There are 3 video file types that Viewtron NVRs can export: Private, AVI, and MP4. Private is a proprietary video format that also exports a Windows video player. For maximum playback compatibility, I recommend that you choose the MP4 file type. This file type can be played on Windows and Macintosh PCs using Windows Media Player, Quicktime, and VLC player. VLC player is an open sources video player that is available for Mac and Windows. CCTV Camera Pros has found this player to be the most reliable. You can download the VLC player for free here.
Video Playback on Mac and Windows
This is what the exported video playback looks like on my Macbook using the free VLC video player.
AI Camera Videos
You can watch additional demo videos using Viewtron alarm cameras and AI cameras here.
Video Transcript
Here is a complete text transcript of the video at the top of this webpage.
Hey guys. Mike from CCTV Camera Pros here. This is a real quick and easy way to search for events on your viewtron DVR or NVR and export recorded video segments to a USB thumb drive so you can share them with law enforcement or with whoever needs to play this back on a Windows or a Mac PC. So we’re going to be using our Viewtron 32 channel NVR that we have here at the office. And the first thing I’m going to do is I’m going to plug a USB thumb drive into the rear USB port. And now I’m going to log into the NVR and show you how to search and export video.
Here’s the live view on the viewtron NVR. And to access the search and playback screen, I’m going to click the menu here and then select Search and Backup. And you can see there’s a number of ways to do search and backup, but we’re going to focus on by event for this video. So I’m going to click on the By Event tab up here and then you can select a date range to search. I’m just going to search today. So you can select the start time and an end time and then you can select the camera or multiple cameras that you want to search. And then you can select the type of event you want to search for. So I’m going to select motion detection and AI just to show you that you could select more than one type of event.
But I really just want to search for AI events. So I’m going to disable that motion detection and do the search again. And then there’s a few AI object detection events from today. I have this camera set up to detect cars and people out front in front of the office. So from this screen you could just use this little mini video player to quickly look at the events that were detected. So I’ll just play back a few of the events from the list here. And then when you’ve decided which event or event you want to export, you could check that box and actually you could do a full screen playback first if you’d like. So this is what the full screen video playback looks like.
And this Viewtron 180 IP camera records at 20 frames a second. That’s why it’s, it’s not, I wouldn’t say choppy, but it’s not as fluid as the other AI cameras that record at 30 frames. So I’m going to export that event. I checked that. And then click on the backup button. And then I already have the thumb drive inserted, but I’m going to create a new folder on that thumb drive and I’m just going to name this folder Backup. And then after I add that folder, I’m going to navigate to it by double clicking on it. And then you could select the file type.
I’m going to select MP4 because those playback well on both Windows and Mac PCs and I’m not going to use any encryption or password and I select ok. And then the process starts of exporting that recorded video surveillance to that USB thumb drive and then backup successful. After it’s done I could close that. I’m back at the live view. So the last thing I want to show you, I’m going to switch over to my MacBook now and I have that USB thumb drive inserted into the port and I’m going to navigate to that backup folder and then I’m going to play back this MP4 file on the VLC player. That’s an open source video player that you could download for free. It tends to work better than QuickTime. So this is what the video playback looks like on Mac.
It would look exactly the same on a Windows PC and you can see that nice high resolution. This is actually a 4K 180 camera, but the process is the same for any of the Viewtron IP cameras or BNC cameras.
Guys, I hope this video has been helpful. That search and playback screens one of the most common ways to playback video and export it to a USB drive on the Viewtron NVRs and DVRs. There’s other ways to do it that I’ll cover in additional videos. If you have any questions about this or anything related to security camera systems, you can always email me directly at mike@viewtron.com. If you want to learn more about our Viewtron DVRs, NVRs and cameras, please visit www.viewtron.com.
Thank you for watching.
