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NovaVMS Manual

Watch a live camera

Watch a live camera

Open any camera to watch live video in real time. NovaVMS streams over WebRTC when your browser supports the camera’s codec and falls back to an MSE player for codecs your browser cannot decode directly.

Procedure

  1. Sign in and click Live in the left sidebar.
  2. The Live page loads your most recently used grid layout and shows each camera as a tile.

  1. Look at the connection badge in the top-right of each tile:

    BadgeColourMeaning
    P2P OKGreenDirect peer-to-peer — best quality and lowest latency
    RELAYYellowRelayed through a TURN server — slightly higher latency
    (spinning)GrayConnection is still being set up; wait a few seconds
    RetryYellowConnection dropped; NovaVMS is reconnecting
    OfflineRedCamera is unreachable — check with your admin

  2. Click a camera tile to expand it. The video switches to the higher-quality main stream and playback controls appear.

  1. To see the expanded tile fullscreen, use your browser’s fullscreen control (usually a button on the video tile or the F key if the player has keyboard focus).
  2. To return to the grid, click the minimize button or press Escape.

Common variations

  • Multi-camera grid layouts. Click the layout selector in the toolbar to pick a different grid (1x1, 2x2, 2x3, 3x3, or 3x4). Larger layouts use lower-quality sub-streams to keep bandwidth reasonable. NovaVMS switches to the main stream when you expand a tile.
  • Switching between saved grids. If your admin or an operator has saved named grid layouts, pick one from the grid selector dropdown in the toolbar.
  • Pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras. If a camera supports PTZ, an operator can drive the camera using preset positions. The viewer role can watch live but cannot move the camera. Ask your admin if you need PTZ control.
  • Audio. Tiles are muted by default. Click the speaker icon on a tile to unmute if the camera has audio.

If this didn’t work