Live view and playback
Live view shows the cameras your account may access. Open a camera for a larger view. Return to the wall with the back arrow beside the camera's name, the Escape key, or the browser's Back button. Operators and administrators can arrange the wall and use PTZ on supported cameras. Available action buttons run the rules configured by an administrator. When the open camera has a light, siren, or relay output that an administrator has found (see deterrence outputs), a Deterrence panel beside the PTZ controls offers Light 30 s, Siren 10 s, or Output 10 s; each switches that output on for that long, the button then reads Light off (or Siren off, Output off) to end it early, and the recorder switches it off on time whatever happens to the page.
Talk through a camera
When the open camera has a speaker EverNVR can use (see talking through a camera), operators and administrators get a Hold to talk button in the same panel, which is headed Talk or Deterrence and talk. Hold it and speak; let go to stop, like a radio. A quick tap instead keeps the microphone on, with the button reading Talking · tap to stop, until you tap it again. The button turns red while your voice is going out.
The first time, the browser asks to use the microphone. It allows that only on a page opened over HTTPS with a certificate the device trusts, so install the recorder's certificate authority first (Trust this recorder on the sign-in page). Your voice goes to the recorder, which passes it to the camera; the camera never needs to be reachable from your device. One person talks on a camera at a time; anyone else who tries is told who has it.
The recorder ends a talk after five minutes, or after ten seconds in which no sound arrives from the page, and opening another camera or leaving the page ends it at once. Each talk appears on History → Camera changes as Talked through the speaker, with who talked and for how long. While someone is talking the camera carries one more connection than usual; a camera that has none free refuses, and the panel says so.
When an administrator has saved spoken messages, a Message… menu and Play sit beside Hold to talk: choose one and play it through the camera's speaker. The recorder plays it whole, so leaving the page does not cut it short, and nobody can talk live on that camera until it has finished.
Live view does not play the camera's own sound yet; recorded audio plays back as described under review recordings.
The viewing and detection stream is shared by the wall and larger camera view. Opening more browser viewers does not create a new RTSP session on the camera for each viewer. Browser and recorder limits still apply.
Layouts
The layout menu on the wall lists saved layouts first, then Auto fit, which sizes a grid to show every camera. Operators and administrators can choose New layout… to build one: drag cameras onto the grid, drag a tile to move or swap it, and pull its corner to span cells. Each tile shows a recent snapshot from its camera so you can tell the views apart. Saved layouts are shared by every user of the recorder, and the chosen layout is kept in the page address so a wall monitor can be pointed at one.
Picture-in-picture
In Chrome or Edge, an open camera has a Picture-in-picture button in its toolbar. It puts that camera in a small floating window that stays on top of other tabs and applications, and it stays open while you move to Events, Playback, or another page of the recorder. The floating window shows the camera's privacy masks and detection boxes, and goes blank when the picture stops, just as the wall does. Press the button again, or close the window, to end it.
The window holds one camera at a time. Choosing picture-in-picture on another camera moves that camera into the open window. The window closes when you sign out, or when the camera is removed, paused, or no longer shared with you. Picture-in-picture needs the recorder's HTTPS address; the button does not appear over plain HTTP or in browsers without it, such as Firefox and Safari. To keep several cameras on a second screen, open a saved layout in its own browser window instead.
When a picture stops
A reconnecting or stale picture is not evidence that the camera is recording. Check the camera status and the recorder's alarms. The application covers its controls after a sustained connection loss and reconnects when the recorder returns.
In Cameras → Setup, an administrator can choose automatic live video with snapshot fallback, or snapshots only. Codec support depends on the browser; test HEVC cameras on the actual client devices.
Review recordings
- Open Playback and choose a camera and time, or open footage from an event.
- Use the timeline to find recorded ranges and gaps. Along the foot of each camera's row, the activity band shows how many visits began in each slice of the window: people, vehicles, animals and other objects in their own colors, taller where more happened. Click a slice to jump to its first visit, ten seconds early. It follows Hide events with the markers.
- Play the interval and check its time and camera. Detection overlays are available where track data was recorded. The keyboard drives the shared transport: Space plays or pauses, ← and → (or J and L) move ten seconds, a minute with Shift, , and . move one second, and 1 to 4 pick the speed. Keys are ignored while a field or the export dialog has focus; the hint under the transport lists them.
- Every time shown is the recorder's, in the recorder's time zone. When the browser is in another zone, Playback, Events, Alarms and History say so and name both zones; Settings → This recorder shows the recorder's zone.
- Export footage when it must be retained or shared, subject to your account's export permission.
Save a clip or an image
Save beneath a playback camera opens a dialog that asks what to take from the recording: a video clip, or a still image of the frame under the playhead. Both need your account's export permission.
Video clip
A clip is described before anything is written:
- Clip length, from 30 seconds to 1 hour. The recorder refuses a single pull longer than an hour.
- Where the playhead sits: start the clip at the playhead to keep what happened next, center it to keep half the clip either side, or end it at the playhead to keep the lead-up to the moment on screen.
The dialog states the clip's start and end in local time and then checks the recording. A clip stops at the first break in the recording, so if the requested window runs past the end of the footage or across a gap, the dialog says where the recording stops and how long the saved file will actually be. Where nothing was recorded at the chosen start, or the recording is still being written, it says so and the clip cannot be saved until you choose another length or anchor.
Still image
A still has nothing to choose: it is the one frame at the playhead. Choosing Still image cuts that frame from the recording and shows it, with its size in pixels and the size of the file, so you can see the picture before deciding to keep it. Save image writes the picture on screen; the recording is not read a second time. The frame is saved at the resolution it was recorded at, not the resolution of the playback window.
The frame is cut from the recording, so the moment must be recorded and written. Where it is not, the dialog says so in the recorder's own words and offers to try again.
Saved files
Saved files are named for the camera and the moment in UTC, for example
front-door-2026-09-22T10-03-12Z.mp4 and front-door-2026-09-22T10-03-12Z.jpg,
so clips and stills from a site sort together.
On a camera with privacy masks, the dialog says the masks are burned into the saved file. A masked clip is re-encoded rather than copied, so it takes longer to produce than its length suggests. A masked still carries the masks in its pixels; there is no overlay for a recipient to remove.
Playback starts muted. Use the speaker button beneath a camera to hear its recorded audio. Only one camera plays audio at a time; unmuting another camera mutes the previous one. The selection stays in effect when you seek or pause, and removing that camera turns its audio off. Sound is available only where audio was recorded. Event previews marked no audio are silent; the speaker button becomes available when playback uses the main recording.
A camera set to Watch only keeps no EverNVR footage. A gap can also mean a storage outage, retention expiry, a recording policy that did not retain that interval, or an ingest failure. Events and footage have separate retention settings, so an event may outlive its video.
Use the detection-box button in Events or Playback to show or hide saved boxes. This preference is shared with the live view in the same browser. When boxes are enabled, a clip with no saved tracks says No saved detection boxes for this clip. This does not prove that nothing happened: the video may exist without detection tracks. An error fetching tracks is reported separately. Existing event records and thumbnails do not contain the frame-by-frame tracks needed to restore missing boxes.
In an event clip, use Maximize video in the upper-right corner to enlarge the video with its detection boxes, privacy masks, and enabled recording clock. Use Restore video or Escape to return to the event. Browsers without fullscreen support enlarge the player within the page.
Use the clock button in Events or Playback to show or hide the recording date and time on the video, including while paused. This preference is shared between both pages in the same browser.
Review and export permissions
Access to a camera permits recording pulls of up to 120 seconds per request. Longer pulls and downloads require footage export permission and are audited. Retrieving a still from a recording older than the 120-second review window also requires export permission.
Timeline playback stays inside that window for every account, administrators included, so ordinary review never appears in the history as an export. Saving footage goes through the Save dialog, which is the audited path. A clip that stops early because the viewer scrubbed or left the page is how most playback ends and is not recorded as a failed request.
Exported evidence archives may include whole recording segments extending beyond the requested interval. Review an archive before sharing it. For long-term retention and incident holds, see investigation.
See accounts and access and storage and retention for configuration.