CamGrabber Photo Reports

CamGrabber is a camera device installed at the screen that automatically photographs the physical screen while ads play. Each photo is linked to a specific ad play, providing photographic proof of play.

This page covers the CS Play side: licenses, device registration, and photo-report settings. Where to view the photos is described in Photo Captures and Proof of Play.

Camera selection, camera-to-frame binding and capture settings are configured in the CamGrabber application itself, not in CS Play — see the CamGrabber application documentation.

Prerequisites: licenses and quota

CamGrabber licenses are counted per organization. Check usage in Settings > Subscription:

  • Cam Grabber licenses — used / total, and the license type.

  • Disk quota for photo captures — how much photo storage your organization has used. The quota grows with each paid CamGrabber license.

To add licenses, contact your CS Play provider.

License type determines what a device may photograph:

License Behavior

Free

The device photographs only platform programmatic campaigns (CS Context). Photo reports for your own campaigns are rejected.

Paid

The device photographs your organization’s campaigns, including scheduled photo reports and per-campaign full coverage. Consumes one license from the pool.

Registering a device

A CamGrabber device is registered on the player it films: Players > select the player > CamGrabber tab (administrator and partner accounts only).

  1. Start the CamGrabber application on site — it displays a PIN.

  2. On the CamGrabber tab click Add device.

  3. In the "New CamGrabber device" dialog enter the PIN shown by the device, choose the License type (Free / Paid), and optionally a name and description.

  4. Click Register.

The device receives its credential and starts uploading photos. Photos survive network outages — the device queues them locally and retries.

Device management on the same tab:

  • Register / Unregister — bind or unbind a device by PIN; unregistering revokes its credential.

  • Activate / Deactivate — temporarily pause a device. Activating re-attaches a license; if the paid pool is exhausted you get "You have no more licenses".

  • Edit / Delete — rename or remove the device record.

How a capture is taken

Every capture is triggered by an ad play: the CamGrabber application follows what the player it is paired to is showing and photographs the physical screen while a tracked ad is on it. What you configure in CS Play decides how many of those plays are photographed and for whom.

Four conditions have to hold before a photograph exists at all:

Paired

The record is bound to a physical device. A record in the Not paired state has a name and a licence and captures nothing; the only action it offers is pairing a device to it.

Active

The device state is Active. Inactive keeps the record and its licence but stops all capture — use it to park a device without giving up its place in the licence pool.

Licensed for that campaign

A free-licensed device photographs only platform programmatic campaigns; your own campaigns need a paid licence — see the licence table above.

Shots still owed for that ad

Each ad has a remaining-shot counter for the current round. When it is spent, further plays of that ad are not photographed until the next round resets it — unless the campaign asks for every play.

A change to the settings policy takes effect when the player next collects its configuration.

Scheduled photo reports

How many photos are taken and when is controlled by the player settings policy (Players > Player settings; see Settings Policies):

  • Chart of CamGrabber photo reports — weekly day-and-time entries. Each entry starts a new photo-report round by resetting the per-ad shot counters.

  • Number of photo captures of CamGrabber ad outputs — how many plays of each ad get photographed per round.

For example, a schedule entry every Monday 00:00 with a counter of 3 yields three photos of every ad, every week.

Scheduled photo reports require a paid CamGrabber license — for free-licensed devices the schedule is ignored.

Photographing every play of a campaign

To get full photographic coverage of one campaign regardless of the counters, enable the Photo report of each ad play checkbox in the campaign settings ("Photo report" section). Every play of every ad in that campaign is then photographed.

Use this for campaigns where the client requires complete proof of play, and keep the scheduled counters for routine monitoring — full coverage fills the disk quota quickly.

Where the photos go

  • Photo Captures — the gallery of all photos, organized by campaign and ad, with filtering, ZIP export and deletion.

  • Proof of Play — per-play access from the ad play statistics table (camera icon), plus photo URLs in statistics exports.

  • Campaign card > Photo captures tab — the same gallery pre-filtered to one campaign, convenient for client reporting.

See also