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XProtect and Siemens Siveillance VMS Integration

XProtect and Siemens Siveillance VMS Integration

Introduction

The information published on these pages is intended to supplement the document published elsewhere on this site, focusing on how to setup and configure the XProtect integration modules in Witness and the changes that need to be made to XProtect, or Siemens Siveillance, to support this.

Unless specifically noted, references to the XProtect application or XProtect also apply to the Siemens Siveillance solution.

Contents

Background

Both the Witness and XProtect applications need to be, separately, setup and configured with the cameras they expect to be controlling / using. In many cases these will be the same PTZ cameras. Additionally, a UI Stream will need to be setup in Witness which is then added to XProtect as a “camera”.

Integration Setup Steps

The following outlines the steps to setup the integration.

  1. Add the PTZ camera to Witness.

  2. Add the Witness user to XProtect (if not using an existing user).

  3. Checking the PTZ camera setup in XProtect.

  4. Setup the UI Stream in Witness.

  5. Add the UI Stream from Witness as a camera in XProtect.

  6. Map the XProtect camera to the Witness camera.

Add the PTZ camera to Witness

Refer to the Witness Adding Cameras documentation for adding and setting up the PTZ camera.

Add the Witness user to XProtect (if not using an existing user).

Users that are local to the XProtect application are referred to as Basic Users.

In this example. a Basic User called Witness has been setup:

Add Witness user to Administrators Role.

The Witness user needs to have permissions to read the name of the cameras setup in XProtect and create bookmarks for those cameras. This can be achieved by adding the Witness user to the Administrators role or creating a role specifically for the Witness user and granting that role the required permissions.

If an existing user is being used, then that user should also be added to the Administrators role or the Witness specific role.

Checking the PTZ camera setup in XProtect

For the PTZ camera(s) configured in XProtect to be visible to Witness, the Witness user in XProtect needs permissions to read the read the names of those cameras and create bookmarks for those cameras. If the Witness user is in the Administrator role, no further action is needed.

Granting the required permissions to the Witness user

In this configuration we see one PTZ camera (Redvision) and the Witness UI “camera” (which we will come to later):

Within XProtect, cameras are referred to as “recording servers”.

We have also setup a Witness role, which our Witness user is a member of:

Granting the role the required permissions can either be done at the Overall Security level:

Or on an individual camera basis:

The required permissions (Read, Read bookmarks, Edit bookmarks, and Create bookmarks) are shown in grey as the permissions have been granted via Overall Security. If granted directly at the Device level, they would not be greyed out.

Setup the UI Stream in Witness.

Refer to the Witness documentation for setting up and enabling the UI Stream in Witness.

Add the UI Stream from Witness as a camera in XProtect.

The UI Stream from Witness now needs to be added to XProtect as a Universal 1-channel camera. The following will take you through the steps to do that in the XProtect Management Client.

  1. Right Click, Add Hardware:

     

  2. Add Hardware, select Manual. Click Next:

     

  3. Username and password. Select any (or all) of the defined users. Click Next.

     

  4. Select only the Universal 1 channel driver.

     

  5. Enter the IP address, or domain name, of the Witness server and the port being used for the UI stream (by default, 8090). Click Next.

     

  6. Click Next.

     

  7. Click Next.

     

  8. Click Next.

     

  9. Add the camera to the appropriate group. Click Next.

  10. The UI Stream Camera has been added. The configuration of the camera needs to be changed before it will work correctly.

     

  11. Select the UI Stream Camera, click on the Info tab and enter “Witness UI” in the Name dialogue box. Save the changes (File → Save).

     

  12. Click on the symbol to the left of “Witness UI” to expand the configuration. Click on the Settings tab. Within Video stream 1 configuration settings ,change Codec to MJPEG, Frames per second to 5, and streaming mode to HTTP.

The completed configuration.

Map the XProtect Witness UI camera back to Witness.

Refer to the Witness documentation for an explanation of the different options within the XProtect Plugin configuration.

With the initial XProtect Plugin setup, no cameras have been mapped. Authentication issues will cause the XProtect Plugin to stop, with details logged in the Navtech Management Server_Error.txt file.

Once the UI Stream from Witness has been setup within XProtect as a camera, that camera needs to be mapped back to the UI Camera within the XProtect Plugin along with the other PTZ cameras.

The Witness UI camera is mapped to the UI Camera; and the individual PTZ camera(s) in Witness and XProtect are individually mapped.

Related Information

Safety is everything.