Settings
Settings
Access the settings panel from the toolbar button "Settings". Within Settings you can set a variety of options including security, storage management, color schemes, youtube account information, storage limits and timeouts. There are some other options that are only accessible from the context menu of the iSpy Surface - like "Fullscreen" and enabling and disabling the file menu, toolbar and status bar.
Languages
Thanks to a small army of volunteer translators iSpy is available in quite a few different languages. Feel free to choose the language you are most comfortable with either on the Getting Started panel (Help-> Getting Started) or within Settings (Options-> Settings). The language will be applied immediately. If you notice any translation mistakes and want to help correct them please let us know (click "Help Translate iSpy").
FFMPEG Logging
iSpy uses FFMPEG to convert your captured ".avi" movies to ".mp4" or ".flv" files. FFMPEG generates a lot of output information as it runs. By default iSpy doesn't keep track of this stuff in the log files but if something is going wrong and videos aren't being generated or are distorted in some way then this information can be very useful. Check this box to enable FFMPEG logging.
Password Protection
iSpy sits in your system tray when minimised to be as unobtrusive as possible. If you don't want other users of your computer to be able to control iSpy then set a password here. You can also change the tray icon text here to be something more innocuous than "iSpy".
Opacity
On systems with hardware accelerated graphics you may be able to set an opacity for iSpy - this is useful if you want to watch cameras without other people around you noticing it on your screen.
Codecs
iSpy supports a variety of Codecs for recording video. We recommend using either Windows Media Video Codecs or Full Frame Uncompressed (.dib). The conversion to .mp4 by ffmpeg is the best place to look to fine tune quality settings. By default iSpy deletes the AVI file after it has finished converting it (to save disk space). You can change this on the recording tab when adding or editing a camera.
Colors
You can modify nearly all the colors in iSpy to create your own theme using the Colors tab in settings.
Storage Management
When left for a long time with a lot of cameras iSpy can end up taking up a lot of disk space. Storage Management enables you to set a limit on the size of the directory and automatically delete files to free up space. This does incur some overhead in processing - so we recommend manually using iSpyConnect to bulk delete media files.
YouTube Synchronisation
iSpy supports both manual and automatic upload to YouTube. This is a great way of backing up your captured content and ensuring that even the theft of your computer won't remove the video of the theives in the act. The movies that are uploaded can be automatically set to private so you won't be broadcasting yourself over the web every time you walk past the camera.
Please note that iSpy doesn't verify your YouTube login information after you enter it here, so please make sure you have entered it correctly. If files are not appearing in YouTube then check the log file as failed uploads will appear in there, along with a reason for the failure.
Timeouts
This section deals with timeouts for MJPEG and the inbuilt iSpy web server. If you are getting frequent timeout errors in your log files then try increasing the relevant value here.
Allowed IP Addresses
This is a list of IP addresses on your network that are allowed to access the local iSpy server bypassing the authentication token system. This is used for integrating iSpy with third party devices like trip wires and IP cameras with motion detection software built in. See HTTP Access for more details.