Record a clip from live view

Press Record Clip on any camera tile to capture an event at the moment you see something noteworthy. NovaVMS saves the pre-buffered seconds before your click and continues recording for the configured post-buffer duration.

Note

The Record Clip button is available on every camera — ONVIF, gateway-bridged RTSP, and direct RTSP (decision D49). A clip-in-progress on the same camera is extended, not re-started, so repeated clicks keep the recording going.

Procedure

1. Open Live and click the tile for the camera you want to record.
2. Click Record Clip in the toolbar.

3. A confirmation toast shows the clip duration (pre-buffer + fixed duration + post-buffer).

4. The event appears on the Events page within 5 seconds with event_category: other and trigger_source: manual (D95).

Common variations

• Rate limit: one manual trigger per camera per 5 seconds. A second click within that window returns a warning toast and does not create a new event.
• Extend an active recording: if a motion-triggered recording is already running, clicking Record Clip extends it by the configured duration.
• API trigger: POST /api/v1/cameras/{id}/trigger does the same thing for integrations. See the API reference.

If this didn’t work

• Button is greyed out — your role is Viewer. Operators and above can trigger clips. See Roles and permissions.
• 429 “Too many requests” — wait 5 seconds and retry.
• Event appears but the clip is empty — see Clip export produces empty file.

Related

• Review an event — scrub the clip and read the AI analysis
• Recording pipeline — how pre-buffer and post-buffer work
• Camera recording settings — duration and buffer fields