Video Motion Detection is a critical feature to ensure you start and stop recording at the right times, when there is motion in front of the camera. By dialing in this configuration, you won't get recordings when the wind blows a tree, and you won't miss recordings when someone walks by and an incident occurs.
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The video motion detection settings allow you to configure the motion settings for where to detect motion in an image as well as the motion sensitivity for each channel.

The Motion Settings can be accessed from "Settings" on the device details which you can reach through Devices and clicking on your device.

This will open up our motion setting page. Here you can start to dial in what is important to your scene.

Changes made in the motion settings dialog is applied immediately every time an input is made.

Start by selecting the grid dimensions for the channels field of video. The grid allows you to block out parts of the field of view that you do not want motion to trigger recordings.

Selecting the 4x4 gives you the least granularity while 32x32 grid will allow the most granularity to block out parts of the imageThe correct grid dimension will depend on the type of scene (ie. office) and your desired recording schedule.   For this example we will use 16x16.

To ignore motion in certain parts of the image, simply click in a grid block and drag your mouse over blocks you want to ignore. The red blocks indicate where motion will be ignored. To start over, click the Clear button. In this scene, we have blocked out the trees and bushes in order to reduce motion we don't care about. The visible areas will still catch a person or vehicle that passes by.

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As a general rule, best practice is to set these in the following order:

The reason behind this is because of how each setting influences the other. The higher the detail sensitivity, the more the motion level bar will move. Generally we recommend leaving light sensitivity set to automatic.

Specify whether the full image or a selected percentage of the image should be analyzed. For example, by specifying 25%, every fourth pixel is analyzed instead of all pixels, reducing the system resources used and offering less detailed motion detection. Your options are 12%, 25%, 50%, 100%. This is going to be greatly determined by the depth of the field of view, and how far away from the camera do you want to consider something motion.

In the example above, if we care about detecting vehicles, and people on the near side of the street, 50% would be sufficient.

If we wanted to catch events across the street, or at the end of the street, moving up to 100% would be best.

Note the difference in the motion level bar between the 50% and 100% detail settings.

Adjust the motion level slider so that motion detection is only triggered by the required level of motion. Alternatively, specify a value between 0 and 2000 in the field on the right to control the motion setting.

The more you drag the slider to the left, the more positive motion detections you see because less change will be needed to trigger a positive motion detection. The number of positive motion detections may also affect the amount of video you record, the amount of notifications you receive and more.

In the above example, I have set the motion level at 250, so it is a little above where the ambient motion level is for the scene. Anything above that marker will get recorded.

Note : To activate recordings, motion detections must meet the "motion level" setting. If the motion detections don't meet this level, recordings won't be activated.

With Automatic enabled under light sensitivity, the system calculates and optimizes the sensitivity level automatically and suppresses the motion detections that come from noise in the images. Automatic sensitivity improves motion detection at nighttime, where noise in the images often triggers false motion.

​Note for People/Vehicle in Region: We strongly recommend setting up the Record Video action in addition to your desired action types, as these analytics work separately from Video Motion Detection. Otherwise footage may not be available when these analytics are triggered. For more information check out our Cloud Video Analytics article.