HOW TO: Remotely Control MovieRecorder 4

In this article, we will use two notions:

• the Remote computer (or MovieRecorder) is the one that you want to control
• the Control computer (or MovieRecorder) is the one you use to control the Remote Computer

Make sure that you have enabled the remote control in the Settings

On the Remote Computer (see definition above), go to the preferences and make sure that you have enabled the Remote Control option:

You may also want to change:

• Name: is the name that will be displayed when you'll try to connect to it
• Port Number: is the port number that will be used to communicate with it. Depending on your FireWall configuration, you may want to change that, but otherwise leave it to the default value (8080)
• Single Viewer HTTP UI: when you want to use the built-in web page of MovieRecorder and only have one source to control. The webpage will have just one Viewer instead of multiple ones.
• Password: you can require that a password is entered in order to control your recorder. This ensures that only the persons with the password can take control of your recorder. The default password is 1234.
• Web Pages Folder: If you have created one or several web pages to interact with MovieRecorder, you can select the folder containing those pages and it will be hosted by MovieRecorder. If I had a page called "Custom.html" in a folder selected, it could be reached at 127.0.0.1:8080/Custom.html

Remote control directly from MovieRecorder

You can control multiple remote computers directly from the MovieRecorder user interface. You can use a demo version of MovieRecorder if you want only to control remote MovieRecorders.

You can watch the MovieRecorder tutorial video about sources for more info.

Add "Remote Controlled" recorders to MovieRecorder

If you want to control remote MovieRecorders, simply click on the + icon at the bottom of the sources pane in the "Control MovieRecorder":

A popover window will show up with the list of remote MovieRecorder that are available on the network (with the name that was set in the preferences). Select the computer that you want to control:

Alternatively, you can add remote recorders using an IP address. for that, click on "Add by Address..." button.

Once it is added, if we can connect to the remote recorder, the name or IP address will be white, and it will be greyed out if we can't connect to it.

When a Remote recorder is "online" (we can connect to it), you will see the list of sources that are enabled on that remote recorder. In the example below, the remote recorder "MacPro_MovieRecorder1" shows 4 available sources:

You can use the disclosure triangles to show or hide the list of sources.

Assign Sources to Viewers

These remote sources are now available as any other sources to be assigned in the Viewers. You can assign remote sources exactly the same way you assign "Local" sources to Viewer:

• Either click on the top left of the Viewers and select the source from the drop down menu:

• Or you can select them from the list of sources, and drag and drop them on to a viewer. If you drag and drop multiple sources at once, you will see a green outline on all the viewers they will be assigned to (they will replace other sources that were eventually assigned):

• Once Remote sources are added to the Viewers, note that their name is in Italic:

Specifics of "Remote Sources"

Remote sources are controlled the same way as Local sources, but with some differences:

• You can not edit the sources settings, nor the destinations settings. This is by design, because we wanted to make sure that an "admin" user could do a setup in the Remote MovieRecorder while the users could only control it, but not change the important settings.
• You can not trigger VTR batch captures on Remote sources.

Remote control with the web UI

Since MovieRecorder 3.1, you can control a remote computers from any browser, on any type of computer, Mac, PC, iPad, ...

IMPORTANT NOTE: The web UI offers "basic" controls that can already help you in most cases. Otherwise, it is meant as a startup point for you to modify. If you want to have more options and controls, you should get in touch with a web developer who will be able to adapt it to your specific needs. This is the beauty of the REST API.

For that open a web browser such as Safari and enter the IP address of the computer followed by the port number 8080, for example:

http://127.0.0.1:8080/index.html

You will then be able to control the multiple local sources available on that computer.

Note that you will only be able to control the Local sources of that MovieRecorder, not the eventual remote sources that it might be connected to.

About the Single Viewer UI

Starting with MovieRecorder 4.4 and later, the single viewer is available without the needed option in MovieRecorder's Settings. You just need to go to the following address:

http://127.0.0.1:8080/index_single.html

With MovieRecorder 4.3.9 and under...

If you enable the "Single Viewer UI" option on the Remote MovieRecorder:

 

Then instead of showing 9 viewers, the web interface will show just one "adaptive" viewer:

You can show or hide the left pane, so the viewer can be full screen and thus fit perfectly on an iPhone or iPad. 

Remote control the Schedule

Introduced in MovieRecorder 4.5, there is now a scheduled recordings webpage available at http://127.0.0.1:8080/schedule/index.html. This page supports multiple sources, multiple destination assignments, workday/weekday viewer settings, and much more. There is an explainer video available here: Watch on YouTube 

Remote control with the REST API

In order to do the remote control using a web browser, we use a REST API. If you are interested to develop your own webpage to control MovieRecorder (for example if you want to be able to control multiple computers from one page), contact us through the support desk to ask for the documentation on that REST API.

Alternatively, on the computer that runs MovieRecorder, you can enter the following url in a Browser:

http://127.0.0.1:8080/api.html

Remote control with AppleScripts

MovieRecorder is also AppleScriptable. You can create AppleScripts that control a "local" MovieRecorder (see sample AppleScript below), but also a distant MovieRecorder. But the best would be to go for the REST API.