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This article will show you how to use a heavily tweaked skin folder and setup Devices and Tasks manually. In this example the PSS skin folder has been reduced to 2MB from the original 55MB, and Tasks are used to auto start a device.

Supported DVRs
Supports most Dahua DVRs including some models from:
EyeSurv, QVis, AData, XTS, TechPro, EDGE, ICRealtime, MACE, GEN IV, Q-See, and others.
Contact us to add your DVR to this list. Before you start

Backup your skin folder, PSS_Config.ini, and UserLogin.ini before overwriting with these. Make certain this is not an INSTALLED PSS path, and remove the msiexec file, otherwise it will continue to revert the skin folder back to default - also in win7 it would continue to recreate msiexec.

What are Tasks?

Tasks can be thought of as Groups in this example; a Task can comprise of channels from multiple Devices, and each can have their own individual stream type. With PSS, the only stable way to always auto start a device in extrastream is to create a Task and make that load when PSS starts.

Setup Devices and Tasks

There is no Device list, Device Manager, or Scheme Task config, in fact every setup feature has been removed from this Skin. The only buttons remaining are the multviews (up to 16 way) and full screen.



So you will have two choices for setting up the Devices and Tasks:

1) Use another full copy of the program (4.04) to create/edit Devices, and then create a Task for that device. You will then need to copy device.xml and monitorscheme.xml from that PSS's path to the tweaked version's path.

2) Manually create/edit device.xml and monitorscheme.xml

Manually Create XML Files

This is much easier to do in the full PSS using the GUI, but since this stripped down version is minus Device list, Device Manager, or Scheme Task config, it would be useful to know about it in this case. 

device.xml is the Device file.
monitorscheme.xml is the Tasks file

To create a Task, at least one Device must first exist.

Here is an example device.xml file with one device.
I have made it a 4 channel DVR, using the default admin login.

device.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<Organization grade="1" MaxDeviceId="1001">
    <Device id="1001" title="home" desc="" UseDDNS="0" DDNSIP="" DDNSPort="7070" DDNSDevName="" ip="192.168.1.201" port="37777" manufacturer="Manufacturer1" type="DVR" model="The second protocol" user="admin" password="admin" logintype="0" cardsn="" rights="" alertout="0" channel="4" multiplay="0" alarm="0" AlarmOutputChnlCnt="0">
        <Channel num="1" id="10010000" title="CAM 1" camera="0" />
        <Channel num="2" id="10010001" title="CAM 2" camera="0" />
        <Channel num="3" id="10010002" title="CAM 3" camera="0" />
        <Channel num="4" id="10010003" title="CAM 4" camera="0" />
    </Device>
</Organization>

MaxDeviceId = the last id in this XML file, see below. In this case there is just 1 device.
id = a number starting at 1001
title = name of the Device, make it anything you like
ip = the Device IP address/DDNS name
port = the Device port, the DVR's default port is 37777
type = in this case it is a DVR
user = Device user login name
password = Device user password
channel = number of channels, in this case it is a 4 channel DVR, but PSS will update this xml file with the total number of channels once it connects anyway

I added 4 channels as well, those field values are self explanatory.

Next come the Tasks file. We only use the channel id from the device.

monitorscheme.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<MonitorScheme>
    <Tasks idCreator="1">
        <Task id="1" name="mytask" windows="4">
            <Window wndNO="1">
                <Channel id="10010000" subStream="0" timeSpan="10" presetPos="-1" />
            </Window>
            <Window wndNO="2">
                <Channel id="10010001" subStream="0" timeSpan="10" presetPos="-1" />
            </Window>
            <Window wndNO="3">
                <Channel id="10010002" subStream="0" timeSpan="10" presetPos="-1" />
            </Window>
            <Window wndNO="4">
                <Channel id="10010003" subStream="0" timeSpan="10" presetPos="-1" />
            </Window>
        </Task>
    </Tasks>
</MonitorScheme>

Tasks idCreator = number of Tasks? works with 1, 2 etc so not sure what this is (yet)
Task id = just a number for the Task, in this case we only have one Task
name = name of the Task, we enter this in the UserConfig.ini file for startup
windows = Multiview; 4 is 4 way, 9 is 9 way, etc. 6, 7, 8 way, etc do not work for Tasks.
wndNO = the Multiview's box number
Channel id = the id from a channel in our device.xml file, this sets that camera to this box
subStream = 0 is main stream, 1 is extrastream
timeSpan = the time in seconds before it resets the channel, if you want to drag cameras around, then it is best to set this to some high number; max is 43200 (12 hours), otherwise for example as it is above, every 10 seconds it would change the cameras back to the initial setting.

Then to auto start the Task when PSS loads, edit UserConfig.ini
 

[Login_Info]
......
PSS_AutoStartTask=1
PSS_StartTaskName=mytask
.......

Multiple Tasks

So now the basics are covered, here is an example Task file with two Tasks. They both use the same DVR Device, but one Task is main stream, the other is extrastream, and the timespan is 12 hours.
monitorscheme.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<MonitorScheme>
    <Tasks idCreator="1">
        <Task id="1" name="mytask_highres" windows="4">
            <Window wndNO="1">
                <Channel id="10010000" subStream="0" timeSpan="43200" presetPos="-1" />
            </Window>
            <Window wndNO="2">
                <Channel id="10010001" subStream="0" timeSpan="43200" presetPos="-1" />
            </Window>
            <Window wndNO="3">
                <Channel id="10010002" subStream="0" timeSpan="43200" presetPos="-1" />
            </Window>
            <Window wndNO="4">
                <Channel id="10010003" subStream="0" timeSpan="43200" presetPos="-1" />
            </Window>
        </Task>
        <Task id="2" name="mytask_lowres" windows="4">
            <Window wndNO="1">
                <Channel id="10010000" subStream="1" timeSpan="43200" presetPos="-1" />
            </Window>
            <Window wndNO="2">
                <Channel id="10010001" subStream="1" timeSpan="43200" presetPos="-1" />
            </Window>
            <Window wndNO="3">
                <Channel id="10010002" subStream="1" timeSpan="43200" presetPos="-1" />
            </Window>
            <Window wndNO="4">
                <Channel id="10010003" subStream="1" timeSpan="43200" presetPos="-1" />
            </Window>
        </Task>
    </Tasks>
</MonitorScheme>

And if you want it to start in low res, in UserConfig.ini:
 

[Login_Info]
......
PSS_AutoStartTask=1
PSS_StartTaskName=mytask_lowres
.......

Final Note

If you use the menu in the system tray it may crash the program because those menu features are missing. However, if you have a list of Tasks, the Tasks part of that menu will work. So you do not even need to put a Task on PSS load if you do not want to, instead you could just open the tweaked version, then using that menu select the Task to start, pause, or switch between them.

Another thing that does cause some delay in painting the video boxes are the icons in each box. I wish Dahua would release a public version of the video box control (VideoWindow.ocx) without those icons, or at least give us that in the SDK. Otherwise there is no publicly supported way to remove the icons.

If you find any error with this method please contact us and let us know.

Also see:
Search Results for Dahua
Dahua PSS Software
Dahua's Website