Text Features

This is how the overlayed text is located.

You are allowed to put the text in quotation marks. This allows you to use leading spaces. By combining spaces and new lines '\n' you can place your text anywhere on the picture. Experiment to find your preferred look. When setting the text using http remote control the text must be URL encoded. The browser does this for you. If you need to set it with a command line tool, use a browser first and let it make the encoded URL for you. Then you can copy paste it to your script file or cron line or whatever you want to use.

Below are the options that controls the display of text. The 'locate' option is not a text feature but described here because it is related to information overlayed on the output images.

The text_event feature is special in that it defines the conversion specifier %C which can be used both for text display and for filenames.

locate

• Type: Boolean
• Range / Valid values: on, off, preview
• Default: off
• Option Topic

Locate and draw a box around the moving object. Value 'preview' makes Motion only draw a box on a saved preview jpeg image and not on the saved mpeg movie.

The value 'preview' only works when 'output_normal' is set to either 'first' or 'best'.

text_changes

• Type: Boolean
• Range / Valid values: on, off
• Default: off
• Option Topic

Turns the text showing changed pixels on/off.

By setting this option to 'on' the number of pixels that changed compared to the reference frame is displayed in the upper right corner of the pictures. This is good for calibration and test. Maybe not so interesting for a greater public. Set it to your personal taste.

text_double

• Type: Boolean
• Range / Valid values: on, off
• Default: off

Draw characters at twice normal size on images.

This option makes the text defined by text_left, text_right and text_changes twice the normal size. This may be useful when using large picture formats such as 640 x 480.

text_event

• Type: String
• Range / Valid values: Max 4095 characters
• Default: %Y%m%d%H%M%S
• Option Topic

This option defines the value of the speciel event conversion specifier %C. You can use any conversion specifier in this option except %C. Date and time values are from the timestamp of the first image in the current event.

The idea is that %C can be used filenames and text_left/right for creating a unique identifier for each event.

Option text_event defines the value %C which then can be used in filenames and text_right/text_left. The text_event/%C uses the time stamp for the first image detected in a new event. %C is an empty string when no event is in progress (gap period expired). Pre_captured and minimum_motion_frames images are time stamped before the event happens so %C in text_left/right does not have any effect on those images.

text_left

• Type: String
• Range / Valid values: Max 4095 characters
• Default: Not defined
• Option Topic

User defined text overlayed on each in the lower left corner. Use A-Z, a-z, 0-9, " / ( ) @ ~ # < > , . : - + _ \n and vertical bar and conversion specifiers (codes starting by a %).

text_left is displayed in the lower left corner of the pictures. If the option is not defined no text is displayed at this position.

You can place the text in quotation marks to allow leading spaces. With a combination is spaces and newlines you can position the text anywhere on the picture.

Detailed Description

A conversion specifier is a code that starts by % (except newline which is \n). The conversion specifiers used has the same function as for the C function strftime (3). The most commonly used are:

• %Y = year
• %m = month as two digits
• %d = date
• %H = hour
• %M = minute
• %S = second
• %T = HH:MM:SS

These are unique to motion

• %v = event
• %q = frame number
• %t = thread (camera) number
• %D = changed pixels
• %N = noise level
• %i = width of motion area
• %J = height of motion area
• %K = X coordinate of motion center
• %L = Y coordinate of motion center
• %C = value defined by text_event

With a combination of text, spaces, new lines \n and conversion specifiers you have some very flexible text features.

For a full list of conversion specifiers see the section Conversion Specifiers for Advanced Filename and Text Feature.

text_right

• Type: String
• Range / Valid values: Max 4095 characters
• Default: %Y-%m-%d\n%T
• Option Topic

User defined text overlayed on each in the lower right corner. Use A-Z, a-z, 0-9, " / ( ) @ ~ # < > , . : - + _ \n and vertical bar and conversion specifiers (codes starting by a %). Default: %Y-%m-%d\n%T = date in ISO format and time in 24 hour clock

text_right is displayed in the lower right corner of the pictures. If the option is not defined no text is displayed at this position.

You can place the text in quotation marks to allow leading spaces. With a combination is spaces and newlines you can position the text anywhere on the picture.

A major difference from text_left is that if this option is undefined the default is %Y-%m-%d\n%T which displays the date in ISO format YYYY-MM-DD and below the time in 24 hour clock HH:MM:SS.

Detailed Description

A conversion specifier is a code that starts by % (except newline which is \n). The conversion specifiers used has the same function as for the C function strftime (3). The most commonly used are:

• %Y = year
• %m = month as two digits
• %d = date
• %H = hour
• %M = minute
• %S = second
• %T = HH:MM:SS

These are unique to motion

• %v = event
• %q = frame number
• %t = thread (camera) number
• %D = changed pixels
• %N = noise level
• %i = width of motion area
• %J = height of motion area
• %K = X coordinate of motion center
• %L = Y coordinate of motion center
• %C = value defined by text_event

With a combination of text, spaces, new lines \n and conversion specifiers you have some very flexible text features.

For a full list of conversion specifiers see the section Conversion Specifiers for Advanced Filename and Text Feature.

-- KennethLavrsen - 12 Dec 2005