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ONVIF & RTSP Explained: How Coram’s Universal NVR Works with Any IP Camera

Coram’s Universal NVR works with nearly any IP camera using ONVIF or RTSP, enabling AI search, PTZ control, and cloud access without replacing existing hardware. It simplifies setup, supports specialty cameras, and unifies everything under one dashboard while saving costs and future proofing your surveillance.

Stu Waters

Jun 3, 2025

When organizations plan to modernize their video-security stack, the first question is usually budget related: Do we need to rip out and replace every camera? Thanks to open standards like ONVIF and ubiquitous protocols such as RTSP, the answer is almost always no. In fact, with a standards-aware Network Video Recorder (NVR) like the one offered by Coram, you can unlock advanced AI search, alerting, and cloud access on virtually any IP camera already bolted to the ceiling.

Advantages of ONVIF

ONVIF (Open Network Video Interface Forum) publishes a set of specifications called profiles that ensure IP cameras, video recorders, and software can work together reliably. The most widely used are:

Profile S for basic live video streaming
Profile T for advanced video formats like H.265 and metadata such as motion detection
Profile G for video storage and playback directly from the camera (edge recording)

Over 30,000 products have passed ONVIF conformance tests, which is double the number from just a few years ago. This means almost every IP camera today includes built-in support for ONVIF standards.

Because both the camera and the NVR speak the same language, the NVR can:

Discover the camera automatically.
Negotiate the optimal stream (resolution, frame rate, codec).
Pull metadata such as motion regions, analytic events, and health status.
Send commands to specialty hardware such as PTZ movement, optical zoom, I/O relays, and multi-sensor selection without proprietary plugins.

RTSP: The Universal Fallback

Some vendors (Ubiquiti, Cisco Meraki, Verkada, Rhombus, Ava, and others) lock advanced settings behind closed APIs, but they still expose an RTSP (Real-Time Streaming Protocol) URL. RTSP is the language of raw video transport; if you can read an RTSP stream, you can record and analyze it.

Coram’s NVR treats RTSP streams as first-class citizens. Point the system at a camera’s RTSP URL, supply credentials if required, and the NVR will ingest, index, and analyze the footage just as it does for ONVIF devices. That means you can keep specialty or cloud-managed cameras in place while unifying everything under a single dashboard.

What Coram’s Universal NVR Adds

Zero-Rip Retrofit

Drop the appliance on-site, auto-discover ONVIF cameras, bulk-import RTSP streams, and you’re online in minutes, not weeks.

Edge AI, Cloud UX

Object detection, license-plate recognition, and natural-language video search run locally for low latency, while management lives in the cloud for anywhere access.

Full PTZ & Sensor Control

ONVIF Profile S commands pass straight through, so operators can pan, tilt, zoom, or switch multi-sensor views from the web or mobile app.

Future-Proofing

Firmware updates add new ONVIF profiles and AI models without swapping hardware, protecting today’s investment against tomorrow’s requirements.

Specialty cameras? Covered

Need to steer a 30x PTZ lens during an incident? Coram passes through ONVIF Profile S commands so operators can pan, tilt, and zoom directly from the web or mobile app. Want dual-sensor stitched panoramas or thermal overlays? Multi-sensor controls are likewise surfaced because the metadata rides the same ONVIF channel. Even edge-recording cameras that follow Profile G can keep a local SD backup that the NVR can retrieve after a network outage.

Business impact

CapEx savings – Reusing existing cameras avoids a rip-and-replace bill that can dwarf the VMS investment itself.
Rapid rollout – Auto-discovery shaves weeks off large-site deployments.
Operational continuity – Keep specialty units (LPR cams, thermal imagers, PTZ domes) online while gaining unified search and alerting.
Risk reduction – Standards compliance mitigates vendor lock-in and simplifies future expansions or replacements.

Final Takeaway

Coram’s Universal NVR uses ONVIF and RTSP to repurpose your existing cameras, launch in minutes, add edge-AI search, preserve PTZ and thermal functions, cut upgrade costs, and keep you future-proof with over-the-air updates. Ready to turn every legacy lens into a smart, cloud-managed sensor? Book your Coram demo today.