About motion detection

Motion detection settings are linked to the Recording properties settings for the camera under which you can enable and configure motion detection for the selected camera. Motion detection configuration is a key element in your system: your motion detection configuration determines when the system generates motion events and typically also when video is recorded.

Motion detection is enabled as default. Disabling it improves the CPU and RAM performance of your system, but can also affect your motion detection, event and alarm management.

Time spent on finding the best possible motion detection configuration for each camera helps you avoid unnecessary recordings. Depending on the physical location of the camera, it may be a good idea to test motion detection settings under different physical conditions such as day/night and windy/calm weather.

Before you configure motion detection for a camera, Milestone recommends that you have configured the camera's image quality settings, for example resolution, video codec and stream settings. If you later change image quality settings, you should always test any motion detection configuration afterwards.

In the following two tables, you can see the differences between enabling (table 1) and disabling (table 2) built-in motion detection for a camera.

Enabled motion detection

Recording properties setting	Recordings	Motion-based events	Non-motion based events	Sequences
Always	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Never	No	Yes	Yes	No
Built-in Motion Detection	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Built-in Motion Detection & Event or Event only	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Disabled motion detection

Camera's recording settings	Recordings	Motion-based events	Non-motion based events	Sequences
Always	Yes	No	Yes	No
Never	No	No	Yes	No
Built-in Motion Detection	No	No	Yes	No
Built-in Motion Detection and Event or Event only	Yes (depending on settings)	No	Yes (depending on settings)	No

Motion detection sensitivity

Motion detection is per default set up for dynamic sensitivity. However, you can also adjust the sensitivity level manually under Motion Detection properties.

Milestone recommends that you do not enable manual sensitivity because:

With dynamic sensitivity, the system calculates and optimizes the sensitivity level automatically and suppresses the motion detections that come from noise in the images.
Dynamic sensitivity improves motion detection at nighttime, where the noise in the images often triggers false motion.
The system is not overloaded from too much recording.
The users are not missing results from too little recording.