Create rules for appearance

Last modified: Tuesday March 17, 2026.

Create a rule to alert your operators when an object (person or vehicle) enters the field of view of one of your cameras.

Alta video will alert you when facial recognition is disabled on a camera that is configured with an appearance rule. An alert will also display when creating the rule for a camera that has facial recognition disabled.

Prerequisites

To use Camera templates or Date & Time Templates settings, make sure you have configured them before creating the rule.

Task — Create the appearance rule

  1. From the toolbar, open new tool button > rules tool button Rules.
  2. Click AddAdd rule.
  3. Type a name for the rule.
  4. Choose Appearance search.
  5. Set the Level of importance.
    High importance rules prioritize the cameras displayed in the Video view when a rule is triggered.
  6. Click Next.
  7. Select the type of object you want to detect: Any object, Person, Vehicle, or Face.
  8. As required, Exclude stationary objects.
  9. Depending on your chosen object, select further characteristics for your rule:
    1. Any object: search for an object detected by Alta Video.
    2. Vehicle:
      1. Select All types or Only this type.
      2. For Only this type, choose one or more from 2 wheeled, Small/Medium vehicle, Large vehicle, or Unknown type.
      3. As needed, select Only this color, or Ignore this color for the vehicle.
      4. For deployments with License Plate Recognition, you can enable license plate matching in vehicle searches:
        1. Select Any plate, Exact match, Matches groups, Starts with, Ends with, or Includes characters from the license plate.
        2. If required, exclude all license plates in a chosen License plate group.

      3. Alternatively, Use an image to define the characteristics of the person or vehicle used in your search.

    3. Person:
      1. If relevant, choose the Gender.
      2. If required, choose With/Without Bag, and optionally, Held, Dropped, or Picked up.
      3. Select Only this color, or Ignore this color for upper and lower body clothing.

      4. Alternatively, Use an image to define the characteristics of the person or vehicle used in your search.

    4. Face:
      1. All faces: All footage where Alta Video detects a person with facial details.
      2. Use a face image: Upload an image of the person of interest that includes a clear view of their face.
      3. Select from a watchlist: Choose a watchlist and select the required profiles. For more information, see Face watchlists.
  10. Click Next.
  11. Select the cameras to be used in this rule:
      1. Use Search to help find the required cameras in the list.
      2. Click Site and device groups icon to filter cameras by site name, device group name, and device name, or click Labels icon to filter by label.
      3. If you have predefined them, use Camera presets to simplify adding the same groups of cameras to multiple rules.
  12. Optionally, define an Area of interest.
    1. Click the Area of interest icon Area of interest button.
      If you have selected multiple cameras, click the thumbnail that corresponds to the relevant view.
    2. In the main camera view, click and drag to draw the rectangular Area of interest box for that view.
      You can define multiple Areas of interest on each camera view.
    3. To create non-rectangular Areas of interest, select the area of interest, and drag the corner markers to the required positions.
  13. If you defined an Area of interest, you can choose how much of an object must be in the area to trigger the rule. Open Advanced settingsAdvanced settings and choose if the rule is triggered when the area contains an entire object, the majority of an object, or any part of an object.
  14. Click Next.
  15. Specify your required Date & Time and RULE ACTIVATION settings.
    If you have predefined them, use Templates to simplify adding the same date and time parameters to multiple rules.
  16. Click Next.

  17. Select automated actions taken by the system when the rule triggers:

    • Pop-up: Show a notification in Alta Video that includes a thumbnail of the rule-triggering video. If required, select Also send a push notification on the mobile app.
    • Email: Send an email message to a system user or user group. You can define an email template and include data from the trigger.
    • External link: Creates a link to the triggering recording that can be shared with non-system users or embedded in an Email or Webhook notification.
    • Webhook: Dispatch a configured webhook including trigger data as the payload.
    • PTZ Cameras: Move pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras to pre-configured positions. This option is only available if PTZ cameras are added to the deployment.

    Alarms are only shown to operators that have access to the cameras that trigger the rule.

  18. To configure Advanced settings:
    1. Click Advanced settings Advanced settings.
    2. Check Trigger alarm per object to have each detected object as a separate alarm.
    3. To record more video at the end of the alarm, specify the Additional recording time.
    4. To merge similar alarms, specify the Merge similar alarms within time.
    5. Select how the triggered rule should behave. To trigger an alarm that shows in the Alarms tool, select Security Alarm (default). To trigger as an event that shows in the Events tool, select Security Event.
    6. Click Done.
  19. Choose to require your operators to acknowledge the triggered rule.
  20. Click Done.