Frigate 0.14 FAQ

[hawkeye217]

This FAQ is maintained by the Frigate developers to help answer some of the common questions with Frigate 0.14. If you have a question that's not answered here, be sure to read the release notes, the official documentation, and search the recent discussions first. If you still need help, open a new discussion.

Updated September 4, 2024

Upgrade issues

1. I'm seeing "add mask expects relative coordinates only" in my logs.
   This is usually caused by a mask or zone having coordinates larger than the camera's detect resolution. The easiest fix would be to remove the mask/zone, restart Frigate, and use the new mask/zone editor to recreate it.

2. What happened to all my events?
   An entirely new way of reviewing camera footage has been implemented in Frigate 0.14, so any "events" from any previous versions of Frigate will not be migrated and will not be visible in the new UI. This includes any favorited/starred events. Recordings can still be viewed in the new UI using the recordings viewer (From Live view, click/tap on a camera and select the History button at the top left).

3. I'm seeing "Preview Not Found" in the UI a lot. Why?
   Frigate 0.14 now generates "previews": bandwidth-optimized, low frame rate, low resolution videos for your camera footage. These previews are not generated for any footage from older versions of Frigate. Historical full recordings are still viewable from your cameras, however. From Live view, click/tap on a camera and select the History button at the top left.

4. What happens to my older events now that I've upgraded? Do I need to clean them up?
   Events on your storage and in Frigate's database are just not surfaced in the UI in the same way in 0.14. Event and recording retention will continue to function in the background just the same as it has in previous versions.

5. I use Portainer, and I'm getting a "tempio: command not found" error when I try to upgrade.
   See [Support]: tempio: command not found #11755 - this is caused by a bug in Portainer. The easiest solution is to simply create a new container.

6. OpenVINO was working fine in 0.13, but now I can't get Frigate to start with 0.14. Why?
   OpenVINO was upgraded for 0.14, as documented in the release notes. Some configurations require the device type to be set to CPU rather than GPU now. If you're having trouble starting after upgrading, change your device type to CPU.

7. Frigate won't start after I update to 0.14 and I get "Camera <camera_name> has a required_zone for alerts <zone_name> that is not defined". How can I fix this?
   In your 0.13 config file version you probably had required_zones defined at the global level:

   record:
     events:
       required_zones: ...
   

   Frigate's config migration tool removed this and set up these zones as required for alerts. At the global level, these zones are applied to all cameras, and Frigate 0.13 would not complain if any of these zones were undefined on your cameras. A check was added in 0.14 to ensure the validity of zone names for each camera. You should remove the new review: section that was added at the global level of your config file and use the UI (Settings → Camera Settings) to specify zones for alerts on each of your cameras.

8. I just upgraded, but I am not seeing anything in the Review pane under Alerts or Detections. Do I need to change my config?
   Yes. As the release notes indicate, you need to enable recordings in your config file:

   record:
     enabled: True
   

   Previews are generated for recorded footage based on your recording mode and retain settings.

Usage

1. Are there any tutorials or videos on how to use the new version?
   Yes, see a helpful walkthrough video from a user.

2. Can I make the cameras take up more space on my dashboard?
   Yes you can, on desktop screens only. Create a camera group, and then use the edit layout button (bottom right) to resize/reposition your cameras on the dashboard.

3. Where is Birdseye view in the new UI?
   Birdseye is accessible by creating a camera group and adding the Birdseye camera to the camera group. Birdseye is also accessible by navigating directly to frigate_ip:port/#birdseye.

4. Why are there black bars and empty space around my cameras in the new Live dashboard?
   Cameras are kept in a standard 16x9 aspect ratio grid layout. If your camera's aspect ratio is not 16x9 (or a multiple of 16x9 like a wide angle 32x9), black bars may appear on any of the sides of the camera image. One solution would be to adjust your camera's resolution in firmware to fit any multiple of the 16x9 aspect ratio. You could also use Birdseye, which is Frigate's solution for an automatic live view layout without black bars. See the Birdseye docs for ways to configure Birdseye's resolution, aspect ratio, and layout preferences.

5. It doesn't seem like my cameras are streaming on the Live dashboard. Why?
   On the Live dashboard, your camera images will update once per minute when no detectable activity is occurring to conserve bandwidth and resources. As soon as any motion is detected, cameras seamlessly switch to a full-resolution live stream.

6. Can I export footage from the review screen?
   Yes, right click (desktop) or long press (mobile) to choose item(s) you want to export, then press the export button in the header.

7. What happened to the timelapse export feature?
   It's not in the UI, but the API is still available. Most users were using that feature to create videos to manually review each day. One of the main focuses of the new UI was to ensure that isn't necessary. The only remaining use cases we are aware of are for very long periods of time. Having frigate do long exports on high resolution recordings on the server is a really inefficient way to accomplish that.

8. How can I view snapshots with bounding boxes?
   Snapshots as a main way of reviewing detected objects have been deprecated in favor of the new review item format. To understand why, consider the situation where two people, one with a dog, walked past your house. At the same time, a car drove by on the street behind them. In this scenario, Frigate would have tracked 4 "events". One for each person, the dog, and the car. In 0.13, you would have had 4 separate videos to watch, even though they would have all overlapped. In 0.14, these separate objects are combined into a single review item which represents the period in time where these objects were active on the camera. Reviews for a single camera cannot overlap. Displaying separate snapshots for this scenario in a way that shows they are connected is not only difficult, but also less helpful than having a combined thumbnail and easy to view video preview that quickly shows what exactly happened. Even though snapshots are no longer available in the 0.14 UI review pipeline, they are still available in the Frigate+ view, on the filesystem, and viewable through Home Assistant's media browser. A screen to help debug review items and answer the question "why was this review item created?" has already been implemented for Frigate 0.15.

9. How can I tune what I see in alerts and detections?
   You can restrict alerts and detections to specific objects/labels or exclude a camera entirely. See the review docs. You can also restrict alerts and detections to objects entering zones. The Camera Settings screen in the UI provides a lot of granular control. See the zone docs.

10. How can I switch the live view type?
    In Frigate 0.13, a dropdown menu in the UI allowed users to select between jsmpeg, MSE, or WebRTC. In 0.14, Frigate intelligently selects the best type of live view method for the cameras on your dashboard based on network conditions and features, so this is no longer user selectable.

11. Can I "star" or "favorite" events like in 0.13?
    No, that feature has been removed in 0.14 in favor of Exports. If you have footage you'd like to "favorite" or retain in 0.14, use the export tools. Unlike favorite events in 0.13, exported footage in 0.14 can be given a label/name and is searchable from the Exports page.

12. Are there any keyboard shortcuts in the UI for desktop devices?
    Yes. In the Review pane, Ctrl/Cmd-A selects all of your review items. On Live camera view, you can use the arrow keys along with + and - to control a PTZ camera. In the Logs view, page up/page down and arrow up/arrow down will scroll the logs. Wherever video controls appear (History view, Motion Review), the left and right arrows will seek the video backwards and forwards by 10 seconds. The up and down arrow keys will seek the video by 1 second. The "f" key toggles fullscreen, "m" toggles muting, and the space bar toggles playback/pause.

13. How can I set the format of the time (12 hour/24 hour) in the UI?
    Use the config file option:

    ui:
      time_format: 24hour
    

14. I'm having trouble using the mask/zone editor, I can't click points.
    This is due to Brave Browser's underlying extreme anti-fingerprinting code. To use Brave Browser with Frigate, you should disable Brave Shields.

15. I see a strange diagonal line on my live view, but my recordings look fine. How can I fix it?
    This is caused by incorrect dimensions set in your detect width or height (or incorrectly auto-detected) that don’t match your camera, causing the jsmpeg player's rendering engine to display a slightly distorted image. See this discussion and this discussion. You should specify the correct dimensions in your config file. However, if you've done this and are still having issues, some users have reported success with ensuring that either of the dimensions (width or height) are numbers that are divisible by 4 (example: 800x443 becomes 800x444). This is a quick fix, and we highly recommend using go2rtc for live views as it provides a superior experience with much more fluent and clear video.

16. Why doesn't my live view load?
    This is often caused by using a codec on your camera that your browser doesn't support - either a video or audio codec. For the most compatibility, you should change your camera's firmware to output your stream as H.264 video and AAC audio, or transcode the stream using go2rtc. Browser support for various codecs is a little crazy due to copyrights/patents. Check out this chart in go2rtc's readme.