CONTROL4 HIKVISION: Video not showing but driver tests are passing.

CONTROL4 HIKVISION: Video not showing but driver tests are passing.

How to diagnose

This is usually caused when Hikvision stream encryption is enabled.  You can confirm if this is the case with the following two methods:
  1. In Composer by double clicking on the Hikvision driver and selecting H264 from the Image View drop-down and you can see the frame rate increasing (note that if our driver fails to get the stream there would be a black window with the C4 logo in it):
  2. In VLC, play the driver's video test url. You will see a scrambled, grey stream.

How to resolve

You can un-tick this feature using one of the following:
  1. Auto update the setting using the Advanced Hikvision driver
    1. Under the Actions tab in the driver, press the Turn OFF Stream Encryption button (this does not always work depending on device firmware)
    2. Under the Actions tab i nthe driver, press the Device Test button
    3. Select the Lua tab and look at the Lua Output to confirm that everything passes
  2. Via the NVR's OSD (this will always work and is fool proof)
    1. Using the OSD via an external monitor and mouse (You can't use the webui to change this setting), navigate to Menu > Configuration > Network > Advanced > Platform Access and untick Enable Stream Encryption
    2. If the stream is still encrypted, you will have to untick Stream Encryption in the webui, under Configuration > System > Security > Security Service.
  3. On a standalone camera
    Open the webui for the camera and navigate to Menu > Configuration > Network > Advanced > Platform Access and make sure that 'Enable Stream Encryption' is not ticked.
    Note that the option may be located in a different menu depending on the firmware
With most available firmware, the options in the web interface don't work. Option 2. above is the only reliable way to disable stream encryption however, it requires you to be onsite.

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