Absolutely. Adjust the configured framerate for optimum performance. A framerate of 5 is a "nice" number in most cases. The higher you set the framerate the more load is put on the CPU (this is primarily caused by the cam's driver working harder, and the size of the CPU hit varies widely between brands of cams). Thus framerate should be tinkered with until you find a good balance between stream quality and CPU load.


Framerate setting has global effects. It sets the rate at which images are captured from the cam (more correctly stated, it sets the frequency at which AbelCam "hits the driver" for fresh images). It also controls the rate at which the JavaScript pages hit the server for fresh frames. It also controls the framerate that the Java applet attemts to run at ("attempts" because high framerates will not necessarily run as specified across every network). And it also plays a role in determining what framerates are offered on the Configurable Stream page.


Picture Quality = compression level. The higher you set the quality, the larger each frame is. This has no real impact on the server's performance. The intent of the setting is to reduce the amount of network bandwith used. Personally I like to set it at 60%. Higher numbers make the frames significantly bigger but not much better looking.


Configurable Stream is the same thing as Java Stream, except that the viewer can control some parameters themselves.

Java Stream: best efficiency, smoothest stream. Works great if your visitors have real Sun Java installed. Doesn't work right with some versions of Micro$oft's Java Virtual Machine.

JavaScript: uses more bandwith than Java stream and can be a bit choppy on a slow connection. Works with pretty much any browser without needing Java or other extras.


Somebody else can answer this better than I can. There are people here who have gotten it working with IP cameras, both wireless and wired. They can tell you more. I do know that there is no PTZ support for any IP cams built into AbelCam at this time. If you understand your IP cam well and have some scripting skills it's possible to work around this limitation.


Look on the CAMERAS PAGE. "Test Site" and "The GeekBox" are multi-cam sites running the standard (included) AbelCam pages. For a look at some custom pages powered by AbelCam see my site ("Control Stuff") and "County Broadband", which are also on the Cameras Page.


Okay, you owe me 5 minutes of my life now!

No problem.


Correct on all points. Main Page = still shots, select a cam or refresh the page in the browser to get fresh shot(s).


As far as the video streams and camera controls go, it's fairly simple to do. One approach is to start with one of the pages that are included with AbelCam and modify the appearance to suit your needs. Or design pages fram scratch (as I did) using the AbelCam included pages and the helpfile as guidance for embedding cam stuff. The Java applet - its use and paramaters - are explained pretty well in the helpfile, as are the URLs you need to call to move the PTZ, etc. Feel free to View Source on any of my pages to see how the Java applet and PTZ buttons work. I use an OnClick javascript for my PTZ buttons but all it really does is call an URL. You could do the same thing with a regular link on each button but I used javascript to prevent certain browsers from recording every button click as another entry in the Back button's history. Yeah I'm picky.

That's the basic HTML approach. Personally I use PHP just because it makes life easier with many cams. I really only have one cam page and call it with different values for each cam. Thus I can maintain one file instead of 8 files.

As for the other stuff - lights and so on - I'm using self-written Perl scripts and C programs to do that. They are called up using the AbelCam "Command Feature".