Channels

Channels are resources that contain video data from the Macula server. Depending on the channel capabilities and configuration, each channel may consist of main video stream (hi-res), secondary video stream (substream, lo-res), audio, motion and video analytics metadata, text from configured data sources (e.g., POS transactions), and external service data (e.g., facial recognitions).

All the channels from connected servers are listed in the Channels section of the Resources section on the left. If the server connection has the Merge resources option ON, all resources will be shown together without per-server grouping. Note that channels are displayed according to the logged user privileges.

Channels are loaded with visual groups, if there are any; otherwise, they are simply listed under the relevant server name. You can create any hierarchy of visual groups and define their contents via Macula Console. Use the Search filed above the channel list to quickly find a specific channel.

Double-click or drag and drop desired channels onto the layout viewports on the main live/playback window to view stream contents. For secondary displays, use drag and drop method only.

When you double-click channels in live/playback view, they fill viewports in the following manner:

• first, all the empty viewports are filled - from top to bottom, and from left to right;

• then, the filling sequence starts again from the very first viewport.

To remove any channel from live view, click the overlay control X button next to the camera name in the upper-left-hand corner of the viewport.

Crosslink Channels

Crosslinks are a special case of channels. It provide interactive and non-interactive website contents packed as video for both live streaming and playback. You can use them for monitoring web services with UI and dynamic contents. Read more about different kinds of webpages in Macula Monitor here.

To display the Crosslink channel in the Macula Monitor application, locate it in the channel list on the left, then double-click (to pop it up on the first free viewport) or drag and drop it onto the desired viewport.

Webpages possess some of the regular channels' properties. For each one, you will see stream properties (bitrate, resolution, frame rate, recording status), and also have overlay buttons for controlling aspect ratio, applying digital zoom, adding bookmarks, and creating snapshots. If the Crosslink stream is set to be recorded, you will be able to access the recordings in the playback and instant playback modes.

Apart from Crosslink channels, there are also non-recordable (direct) webpages. You will find these it the Crosslink (Webpages) section of the Resources panel.