About recording
You can record a channel on Pearl Mini as AVI, MOV, MPEG-TS, MP4, or MP4-Fragmented. Easily stop and start recording using any of the local user interfaces as well as remotely:
- Admin panel
- Touch screen
- Epiphan Live
- Epiphan Cloud
Pearl Mini also comes with APIs so you can setup third party tools to control recording, see the Pearl System API Guide for details.
Using the Single Touch feature, you can control recording of all your channels and recorders with one touch of the touch screen, see About Single Touch streaming and recording.
Recording using Pearl Mini is robust. If an accidental system shutdown occurs while recording is in progress, your recordings are gracefully closed off so they are still playable.
Physically unplugging a video source from the input port or otherwise interrupting the signal does not stop recording. A No Signal image is inserted.
You can set the maximum recording time or file size limit using the Admin panel. The default recording limits are set to 30 minutes or 500 MB, whichever comes first. When the time or file size limit is reached, the current recording is saved and a new recording file starts automatically without losing any content. When the local drive is full, newer recordings overwrite oldest recordings.
Important considerations
- While actively recording a multiple-channel recorder, a new file is created if an additional video input source is added to the recorder.
- An SD card must be installed to record, see SD card installation and file management.
- After an SD card is formatted using Pearl Mini, do not manually change the default file folder structure on the SD card.
- Ejecting the SD card while the recording is in progress may corrupt the SD card and cause loss of data. Power down Pearl Mini before ejecting the SD card. Stop all recording before powering down the system.
- The maximum file size cannot be larger than a quarter of the total available space on the SD card. For example, the maximum file size limit for a 64 GB SD card is 16 GB. A warning appears if you set a file size limit that is bigger than a quarter of the SD card capacity.
- If you set the file size limit and then swap in a smaller SD card, you must change the file size limit to a smaller size using the Admin panel if the file size limit is bigger than the SD card.
- Recording with a file size limit that exceeds the size of the SD card will corrupt the SD card.
- Newer recordings overwrite oldest recordings when the amount of free space on the SD card (or M.2 SSD) is less than the configured recording file size limit.
- If recordings are selected for Automatic File Upload (AFU) while AFU is at maximum upload capacity or when AFU is unavailable, the recordings are added to an upload queue. If there is no available space left in the
- If you create multiple recorders and start recording them at the same time, the SD card will be corrupted if the total of the file size limits for each recorder exceeds the size of the SD card.
- The SD card is formatted for Ubuntu systems and is not compatible with Windows and Mac devices. To download recordings, see Manage recorded files.
- We recommend using large capacity SD cards such as 256 GB or more when using Pearl Mini with a CMS. Do not schedule recordings that are longer than the capacity of Pearl Mini to store the recording to the SD card.
For information about recording to Content Management Systems (CMSs) like Kaltura and Panopto, see CMS recording and webcasting control.
Tested media players
Epiphan has tested recordings with the following players. See Troubleshooting Quick Reference for known player issues.
Tested Media Players
| Operating System | Tested Players |
|---|---|
| Mac OS |
|
| Windows |
|
| Linux |
|
| HTML 5 Browsers (Windows) |
|
Not all media players and editors support all recording formats, such as the more modern MP4-fragmented format. To playback MOV files created by Pearl Mini, we recommend using a newer media player.
