Glossary: Overlay

When using an IP camera you may want to have text displayed within the pictures the camera produces.  This can be done by using an overlay.  An overlay will impose different information on top of the current image.  The overlay is usually set up within the camera’s web interface, which contains options to configure which text you want displayed and in which format.

The time and date are a popular image overlay.  This allows the user to see exactly what time and date the image was taken.  This can have advantages in security monitoring in that a user can tell what time a photo was taken.

Another popular overlay that is often used is the location of the camera or the camera name.  Having this information on a picture can be useful as you can tell where the picture was taken just by glancing at it.  A combination of both the date and the location is often used so that an image viewer knows exactly when and where the image has been taken.
A more complicated overlay can be achieved by using environmental variables held in the camera .  This type of overlay can display lots of different information held in the camera.  Another image overlay that can be used is an image.  This can be extremely useful for a company who wants to show their company logo over a camera image.

Published on July 17th, 2008 by James Drinkwater