FIRMWARE RELEASE NOTES ====================== Products affected: AXIS 211M Network Camera Release date: 2007-12-21 Release type: Service Firmware version: 4.41.1 File name: 211M_4_41_1.bin Preceding release: 4.41 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ UPGRADE INSTRUCTIONS ==================== The firmware can be upgraded using Axis Camera Management 2.0, HTTP or FTP. Please follow the instructions from the user's manual, the web page at http://www.axis.com/techsup/cam_servers/how_to_upgrade.htm or the file named howtoupgrade.txt. RELEASE 4.41.1 ============== Modifications: ============== 4.41.1:M01 The parameter 'Noise Color Reduction' is enabled by default, causing the image to gradually lose color as the lighting conditions darken. It can be disabled in Plain Config -> ImageSource by setting the parameter to 0. 4.41.1:M02 Adjusted DC-iris activation to increase image sharpness. 4.41.1:M03 Improved the white balance and color correction behaviour in low light conditions and at startup of the product. Corrections in 4.41.1 since 4.41 ================================ 4.41.1:C01 Corrected a stability issue that caused reboot of the product. 4.41.1:C02 Corrected a security issue when using QuickTime. 4.41.1:C03 Corrected a problem where you could receive frames that were not rotated despite having set the rotation to 180 in the Live View Configuration. See limitation 4.41.1:L15. 4.41.1:C04 Switching between Flicker-free mode 50Hz and Flicker-free mode 60Hz will now reinitialize the exposure. Known limitations ================= 4.41.1:L01 If you choose to rotate the image in the Video & Image setup, be aware that the coordinates for motion detection windows created in the Motion Detection setup will not be rotated. Workaround: When defining motion detection windows, temporarily configure the image for 0 degrees of rotation. Change back to the desired rotation again after having defined the motion windows. 4.41.1:L02 If you set compression to 0% the frame rate may decrease substantially for Motion JPEG for certain scenes. This is because the image size may not exceed 256 kB. Workaround: Set the compression to 10% instead. The image quality will not suffer noticeably, but the image size will be much smaller. 4.41.1:L03 Including format field #r, #R, #b or #B in the text overlay will show an incorrect frame rate and bandwidth usage when the frame rate is limited for Motion JPEG. 4.41.1:L04 Viewing full screen and sequencing through different external video sources with different video streams in a sequence will switch the full screen mode off. 4.41.1:L05 The AXIS Media Control may stop displaying the MPEG-4 stream after the screen saver has been active, or when the computer has been locked. Workaround: Reload the Live View page. 4.41.1:L06 Using dual screens and moving the AXIS Media Control window from one screen to the other can result in unexpected behavior. Workaround: Reload the Live View page. 4.41.1:L07 If viewing the image stream on Mac OS X with Mozilla Firefox using the AXIS Media Java Applet, a third party plug-in may be needed to get the browser to use the correct Java version. The Java Embedding Plug-in can be found at http://javaplugin.sourceforge.net/. 4.41.1:L08 When saving a snapshot image, some Web browsers (e.g. Mozilla) will fetch a new picture and the saved picture will not match the displayed snapshot. 4.41.1:L09 The Mozilla Web browser does not always close the image stream properly when leaving the Live View page. Restarting the stream can sometimes fail as well. Restarting Mozilla solves these two problems. 4.41.1:L10 Storing multiple parameters simultaneously (with ACM) can trigger unexpected behaviour. One case of this is if the RTSP port is changed together with the RTSP server being enabled. The workaround in most cases is to restart the camera. 4.41.1:L11 Simultaneous use of different video formats, e.g. 16:9 and other resolutions or a partial resolution with any other, or simultaneous use of normal and inverted video rotation, will cause the frame rate to drop. Note that motion detection always uses an uncropped video stream with the selected video default rotation. The image formats that can be used with motion detection enabled with no frame rate penalty due to this effect are 1280x1024, 1280x960, 1024x768, 800x600, 720x576, 704x576, 640x480, 480x360, 352x288, 320x240, 240x180, 176x144 and 160x120, when using the configured default rotation. 4.41.1:L12 Setting the AMC microphone volume slider to 0 may still allow some sound to be heard. To completely mute the microphone use the 'Mute microphone' button. 4.41.1:L13 Using the LiveView AMC downscale feature will reduce the image quality of the image displayed on the client. This is a client side effect and the images delivered from the AXIS 211M are not affected. 4.41.1:L14 AMC will get a long audio delay after a stream loss and reconnect event, as caused, for example, by losing the network connection. This only affects MJPEG streaming when using the G.711 and G.726 codecs. Stop and start the audio stream to remove the delay. 4.41.1:L15 When retrieving two (or more) video streams with differing rotations, some frames may be of incorrect rotation. 4.41.1:L16 When using Flicker-free mode 50Hz, the exposure time cannot go below 1/100s despite having set Max Exposure Time to a faster exposure time. The reason is that there are no flicker safe exposure times below 1/100s for this flicker-free mode. The same applies to Flicker-free mode 60 Hz where the exposure time cannot go below 1/120s as this is the fastest flicker safe exposure time. Application Developer Information ================================= The AXIS VAPIX API - Application Programming Interface (available at www.axis.com) is supported by the AXIS 211M. The following groups are supported by the AXIS 211M. For more information, please refer to the AXIS VAPIX HTTP API specification version 2, part of the AXIS VAPIX API, available at www.axis.com Group Exceptions ===== ========== General Image and Video Video status Motion Detection I/O IP filter Audio Built in templates for dynamic parameters: Template Group ======== ===== 'event' Event 'external_video' ExternalVideo 'ftpaction' Event.E#.Actions 'ftp_config' EventServers.FTP 'httpaction' Event.E#.Actions 'http_config' EventServers.HTTP 'hwaction' Event.E#.Actions 'motion' Motion 'smtpaction' Event.E#.Actions 'source' Sequence.S0.Source 'tcpaction' Event.E#.Actions 'tcp_config' EventServers.TCP Supported AXIS VAPIX API Image Resolutions: Resolution Exceptions ========== ========== 1280x1024 1280x960 1) 1280x720 2) 1024x768 1) 1024x768_CROPONLY 3) 1024x576 2) 800x600 1) 800x600_CROP 4) 800x450 2) 720x576 1) 704x576 1) 704x480 1) 640x480 1) 640x480_CROP 4) 640x360 2) 480x360 1) 480x270 2) 352x288 1) 352x240 1) 320x240 1) 320x180 2) 240x180 1) 240x135 2) 176x144 1) 176x120 1) 160x120 1) 160x90 2) 1) Not equally scaled 2) Vertical crop to 16:9 aspect ratio 3) Vertical and horizontal crop, delivers 20 FPS in MJPEG 4) Vertical and horizontal crop to 900x675 then scaled to 800x600 or 640x480, delivers 30 FPS in MJPEG