Mac Home Automation

The JPEG Refresh plugin makes regular http requests to load an image and stitches them together into a pseudo video stream in XTension. This is useful for older cameras that did not use a standardized video streaming method, when you only need a frame a second or less, or when you are pulling from a device or source that is not a video camera at all but that you wish to watch or record from.

For setup options that are the same for all the Video plugins please see the main video page.

Many older cameras require that you include the user and password in the URL as shown in the screenshot. If you wish to also use a camera control API make sure to also check the Send Authentication checkbox and fill in those fields as well. These older cameras are not as good at auto selecting the authentication type for the API functions as newer ones are so please also make sure to select the correct type of authentication from the Authentication Popup. The default is “Basic” which works with some cameras. If you have an HD Foscam, Amcrest or if you get an error when connecting please switch to the Digest authentication type and try again.

To find the snapshot URL for a camera for which no documentation exists it is usually enough to click the Take Snapshot button in their web interface, see what link the browser is displaying and use that.

Most of the cameras I’ve seen are not capable of generating a snapshot very quickly. The best you can expect to do from even a newer camera is a frame a second or maybe a tiny bit more. Older cameras may be able to go faster because the images they take are so much smaller.

The Video Plugin has no other options that are different from the rest of the plugins so all other information on the main video documentation page will apply to setting up this plugin.