SecuritySpy - 2.0.2

I used to use this software on my G5 and it worked GREAT!

I'm now trying it on my Intel iMac and it crashes almost instantly ;-(

I would highly recommend the old version on my G5 but this latest 1.6.2 version on my Intel iMac just does not work!

I have never gone out on the web to leave a review of any product, or service. The fact that the software is really good is one reason I write this review, But the extraordinary support is what makes this a 5 Star product. I don't understand all of the reviews on this website stating that people had issues with the software and that Ben or Milo didn't get back with them. I have contacted them multiple times since we started using the software and they have gotten back to me every time within 1 day. As far as I am concerned that is exemplary. I email many different vendors from many different lines of products and am lucky to get a response within a week, let alone ever. I truly believe that these people leaving a bad review and saying that they got no response from the team at SecuritySpy, had fat fingered a key on the email address or didn't really even try to contact them in the first place. I know first hand at least two other people that I have turned on to SecuritySpy and they have never had or told me of any issue where they couldn't contact Ben or Milo. To the people leaving negative reviews, please try to email them before leaving a negative comment. You are throwing people off of a really good product for no reason at all.

We have been using SecuritySpy since 10/2/06, and started with version 1.3.1. We only had an Axis 232D+ installed at that time and didn't have a dedicated computer to use to run SecuritySpy so we ran it for free on each of our computers for monitoring only to test the software until 10/29/07, when we determined that it would be the software we would use and we purchased an unlimited camera license. We sat on that license and we set about installing more camera's in addition to the 232 we already had installed. The following is a list of the installed cameras (all are Axis products):
1) 232D+
1) 233D
1) 223M
2) 212
1) 207MW
20) 207

After all cameras were installed, we purchased a 1.42 Dual G4 Mac and began recording. We purchased Axis products because we were real happy with the 232 that we had and because they simultaneously stream both Motion JPEG and MPEG-4. The MPEG-4 stream would be the stream that the SecuritySpy server used to record both audio and video, and the Motion JPEG would be the stream we would use on our computers for monitoring.

Once the computer that would be used for a server was setup and actually began recording we noticed massive file sizes! We had the compression turned off in SecuritySpy figuring that the Axis cameras would handle all the compression, and overlays and that all SecuritySpy had to do was handle motion detection, and record. That led us to purchase a cheaper computer due to the fact that all of the computer horsepower to handle video processing wouldn't be required due to the fact that it is handled by the cameras. Unfortunately we were incorrect and Ben sent an email back to me telling me that SecuritySpy will only use the JPEG stream from the camera, not the MPEG-4 stream, and in addition it will always decompress the incoming JPEG video because it needs the uncompressed video internally for processing (doing motion detection, adding text overlays etc). Therefore, if you specify no compression in SecuritySpy's Compression Settings window that is exactly what you get: no compression and therefore massive file sizes. This clearly wouldn't work for us and the G4 we purchased was now a brick who's little dual 1.42 processors would never handle doing compression on 26 cameras. I was worried that we would be spending 10,000 on a new 8 core G5 mac.

I emailed Ben and asked for help, THE NEXT DAY I had an email from Ben containing Beta version 1.6.3b3! Now if that's not service I don't know what is! The Beta version came with instructions to set the compression in SecuritySpy to JPEG, and don't enable the text overlay or transformation features in SecuritySpy, then it will capture the raw JPEG data directly from the camera to the movie files. Any way the Beta version has been running for a week now, there is a Terabyte drive hooked to the G4 and the files record onto it, that drive filled up with a couple days video before the Beta version. Now with the Beta version running we have only burned up about 240 gig to motion record on all 26 camera's for 8 days of recording. I couldn't be happier.

Another of the really great things about SecuritySpy is it's set up so that you can purchase a license for the server to run on and still have full functionality on an unlimited number of computers for personnel who need to monitor without recording without the additional cost of multiple additional license purchases. That was probably the initial number one factor in our decision to utilize this software.

There are still things that I would like to see implemented into future versions of SecuritySpy. Things like mouse click PTZ (virtual joystick) on video windows, the ability to capture the streamed MPEG-4 directly from the camera without needing to decompress and recompress back into MPEG-4, and audio support. But I have never had software that did all the things that I thought it should do, and the simple fact that the team at SecuritySpy is so willing to listen, and make improvements to their product based on customer feedback speaks volumes.

To the fine people at SecuritySpy, Thanks for the excellent software, the great support, and please keep up the good work.

To anyone who has personal or business need for Mac based surveillance software, look no further. You have found the best program out there. Download SecuritySpy and try it for free, I think you will be really glad you did.

Well it appears that my issue with SecuritySpy crashing on launch has been resolved with out resulting to a hard drive restore. In preparation for the restore I ran DiskWarrior over the drive and repaired the permissions. I do this religiously before I run a restore to make sure there are no issues with the drive before I run the restore. I then always boot the volume back up to see if the issue was resolved by the diagnostic repair. Much to my surprise SecuritySpy 1.6.2 launched. With all settings in place. This really is a fantastic piece of software that I highly recommend. It is the most affordable and functional security surveillance software available for the Mac and has been for many years. It has become a Mission critical piece of software for our business. So no restore required. I noticed there were some strange privilege issues which DW repaired. Disk Warrior is another piece of software that we could not do with out.

after having to visit my office several times recently for false alarms I decided to set up SSpy;
All done ... I didn't have to resort to the manual and it works superbly!

I like this software ... works great ... most of the time. However, it seems that when I have some particularly important recording ... a long one, perhaps ... that it will generate a file ".unf" of "0 kb". Usually, ".unf" files are the temporary files as it is recording ... but when it doesn't close out and convert to the .mov files that it is supposed to ... I'm left with these. I've turned off the screen saver, changed the energy saver to never shut down for both the screen and the hard drive ... so I'm not sure what is triggering these.

Have searched the web ... tried contacting the developer through their website a few times without any response ... hoping someone might have some suggestion here ... else I'm moving over to give KeyCamX a try.

Lost another very important movie of our research today ... just not acceptable for production stuff. However, when it works ... it works great. Have lots of great files today ... except for one ... the most important and longest one today.

Any ideas, please post here. Thanks ; )