The arrival of smart phone support for our DVRs is one of the most exciting events to happen to our business in quite awhile. Now anyone with a supported mobile phone can reach into their pocket or purse from anywhere they have cell phone coverage and within a matter of seconds see live video feeds from their cameras.  Not only is the connection made quickly, but the frame rate is quite impressive.  This is all made possible by the phone app taking advantage of the dual streaming feature of our DVRs. Supported by hardware and configured within the DVR's "Encode" menu, dual streaming enables one video stream (usually of higher resolution) to be recorded to the hard disk while a second stream is simultaneously prepared for fast network transmission. Depending upon network speed, the user can optimize performance by independently adjusting frame size, compression, and frame rate.  The end result is that the second stream is sent to the cell phone at a very good frame rate.

Features
  Simple Interface / Easy to Use
  Quickly Switch Between Cameras
  Supports up to 16 Channel DVRs
  PTZ Camera Control: Movement / Zoom Level / Focus / Iris Control
  Can Send a Live Snapshot to the Photo Roll
  Multiple DVRs / Network Connections Can Be Stored In History Area
  Turn the smart phone Sideways and the Picture Doubles in Size Without Slowing Down
  Very Useful For Initially Setting Up All Of Your Cameras:
If you connect your DVR to your local network first, you can use your phone as a mini portable monitor to make camera setup a breeze. Equivalent small monitors for professional installers cost $100 to $200!


Turning the phone back to the vertical position restores the original user interface and picture.


Getting Started: Overview of Main Screen
Below is a sample screen shot of the DMSS app and short decriptions of button functionality.  Notice that this app can control a PTZ camera!  Details about this are covered further down in this web page.



Pan-Tilt-Zoom (PTZ) Camera Controls
One of the really impressive features of this app is the ability to control a PTZ camera. Using the buttons below, one can move the camera, zoom in/out, manual control focus, and adjust the iris (if supported by camera).  If the DVR and PTZ are properly working together, no special activation is needed.  If the current camera is a PTZ, the controls just work.   When a non-PTZ camera is active, these buttons become inactive.



Of course, before the app can connect to the DVR and display video, some basic configuration entries must be made.  First, make handy your DVR's IP address, an account ID (example, "admin") and account passord.  Then hit the "Settings" button above.  It's the one shaped like a gear at the bottom with dashes surrounding its caption.  Typically, most people will use two IP addresses; one while connected within their local network and another for external or WAN communication. This IP address can be discovered by browsing the website www.whatismyip.com while connected to your local network. Please note that if you do not have a fixed IP address, your ISP may change it at anytime (note, there is a solution to this situation by configuring the DVR to use a free DDNS).  Furthermore, for external communications, one must configure the router to "port forward" the DVR's TCP port.  As shown below, the default port is 37777 and only needs to be changed from this if it was previously changed in the DVR's Network setup section.


Setting Video Quality
The frame rate (frames per second), frame resolution, and data transmission rate are NOT configured within the phone app. Instead, they are configured in the "Extra Stream" section of the DVR's "Encode" menu as shown below.  Note that there are a lot of factors that determine video play performance including upload speed from DVR to the internet and factors affecting the cellular phone network.  Because of this, the below settings are made available for you to tweak the peformance according to your personal preferences and phone connection strength. Setting the transmission parameters to their highest posible values will NOT necessarily yield the best performance / viewing experience.  Think of the network as a truck delivering supplies over a mountain range that is different for each user. You can request the packages be big in size and weigh a lot, but then the truck might not be able to make trips frequently enough to meet demand at the destination. Somewhere between empty and overloaded is the ideal transport package.  Experiment with these settings to optimize performance for the terrain of your network.

Notes:
  The resolution option "QCIF" refers to "Quarter CIF" which is 180 x 120 pixels.
  QCIF is a relatively low resolution but allows considerbaly faster frame rates than CIF.
  In general, CIF resolution is crisp but is limited to 3 to 7 frames per second.

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