Help with Perspective 8.1 Video Player and IP Camera

Ignition
1

Hello,
I am looking for some troubleshooting help with the video player on perspective 8.1.36.

I have a HANWHA PNM-8082VT IP camera.
I can successfully view the MJPEG stream via a web browser on the gateway as well as my client PLC using the following link (details removed for security)

http://1.1.2.3/stw-cgi/video.cgi?msubmenu=stream&action=view&Channel=0&CodecType=MJPEG&FrameRate=1&CompressionLevel=10

When using this link in the video player (livefeed set to true) i get the "Error Loading Media: File not valid" error message and looking for some assistance to further troubleshoot.

When viewing the image in the browser it appears it's not embedded in another page. I've done a wget to the URL above and outputted to a file to provide additional information:

--SamsungTechwin
Content-Type: image/jpeg
Content-Length: 150773

����^@^PJFIF^@^A^A^A^@`^@`^@^@��^@C^@^K^H
        ^G^K

^M^L^K^N^Q^]^S^Q^P^P^Q#^Y^Z^U^])$,+)$('.3B8.1>1'(9N:>DFJJJ,7QVPGVBHJG��^@C^A^L^M^M^Q^O^Q"^S^S"G/(/GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG>^K��^@�^P^@^B^A^C^C^B^D^C^E^E^D^D^@^@^A}^A^B^C^@^D^Q^E^R!1A^F^SQa^G"q^T2���^H#B��^UR��$3br�
^V^W^X^Y^Z%&'()*456789:CDEFGHIJSTUVWXYZcdefghijstuvwxyz����������������������������������������������������������������>^K��^@�^Q^@^B^A^B^D^D^C^D^G^E^D^D^@^A^Bw^@^A^B^C^Q^D^E!1^F^RAQ^Gaq^S"2�^H^TB����        #3R�^Ubr�
^V$4�%�^W^X^Y^Z&'()*56789:CDEFGHIJSTUVWXYZcdefghijstuvwxyz�������������������������������������������������������������>?�Z(�aڊ(�AE^TP^@=�Q@��^@JQIKH^B��G�M1�j>��^D�@^E^TR�S^A?�^T^?�������aA����^X��ih��IR ���IE^@-^TRP^AJ))i����*�^F��x�=i*Y>��^G8�^MjY��i�p�kcp\^@^

Any help or suggestions greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

2

Small update. It appears the video player in perspective does not support any authentication of any kind - meaning if you embed the username and password in the url (basic authentication) it will not be passed to the camera/web server.

I think this feature was requested a few years ago and looks like it is still not implemented.

3

Following up with my workaround - in case this helps anyone in the future.

I created a batch file which ran part of a gateway script. The batch file uses CURL to connect to the camera and download the snapshot of the image. I then installed NGINX web server on port 81 and used that to serve the downloaded images to my perspective clients.

4

Its not that this feature isn't implemented - its that having the username and password as URL parameters is obviously a huge security issue, so no modern browser allows it anymore...

5

Yes, but the video player in ignition 8.x doesn't support ANY authentication other than basic with user and pass baked into URL. My cameras don't even support basic authentication so i needed to use digest, which CURL supports well. I am asking inductive automation to add authentication into their video player, like they had in their 7.9 IP camera viewer. It's gone backwards in terms of capability.

6

Can you show an example of a curl call that you're making (obviously obfuscated)? Also, it sounds like you're retrieving individual snapshots using the curl requests, sent at some interval and not a continuous stream - is that right?

7

This is what I am using:

C:\curl\curl -S --connect-timeout 5 "http://1.2.3.4/stw-cgi/video.cgi?msubmenu=snapshot&action=view&Profile=6&Channel=2" --digest -u username:password --output "C:\nginx\html\camera1.jpg"

Note that the the trick is finding out the URL and syntax that your camera requires to output the jpeg image.