1. Four motions, four purposes

All four are configured on the same PTZ page and all four move the head automatically. What separates them is the shape of the movement and what that shape is good at.

Motion	Shape	Best for
Tour	Jump between stored presets	Several discrete points of interest
Scan	Sweep left to right and back	Linear perimeters, corridors, aisles
Pattern	Replay a recorded path	Irregular routes, curved boundaries
Pan	Continuous 360-degree rotation	Open ground, demonstration, deterrence

The mistake most sites make is choosing a tour when a scan would do, or a pan when a tour would do. A tour of five presets across an empty car park produces five good views and five long pauses. A scan across the same car park produces continuous coverage of the line that actually matters.

1.1 The mechanical cost of constant motion

Any automatic motion is a mechanical decision as well as a coverage decision, and it deserves a sentence in the design conversation.

A PTZ that moves all day wears differently from one that parks. Motors, belts and gears have finite life, and continuous tours accumulate movement far faster than occasional manual use. A camera touring every ninety seconds for a year performs hundreds of thousands of moves; the same camera parked on a preset performs a handful per day.

Travel distance matters as much as move count. A tour that crosses the full range of travel between every preset does more work than one that steps between nearby points. This is exactly why the shortest-path tour mode exists: it reduces both time and wear.

Speed is a wear multiplier. Fast acceleration and deceleration stress the mechanism more than slow, deliberate movement. A tour that looks impressive because it snaps between presets is also the tour that produces the earliest service call.

Zoom is part of the cost. Presets include zoom, so a tour that changes zoom at every stop exercises the lens mechanism continuously. On sites where a preset's zoom is rarely needed, saving it wide reduces that load.

None of this argues against motion. It argues for motion that has a purpose: dwell where things happen, travel the shortest sensible path, and park when the site is quiet. A camera that moves constantly but watches nothing is wearing itself out for no coverage benefit.

2. Tour: presets, stay time and speed

A tour is only as good as its presets, which is why the manual lists them as a prerequisite. Build and name the presets first, then assemble them into tour groups.

Creating a group. Open PTZ and select Tour, then add a tour group and select which presets belong to it from the preset list. Repeat for each preset the tour should visit. A site often needs more than one tour group: an opening-hours tour and a closed-hours tour are different designs.

Stay time. Measured in seconds, and the manual gives the range as fifteen seconds to three thousand six hundred — an hour at a single preset. That upper bound is not a mistake: some sites genuinely park a camera on one view for a long period as part of a cycle.

In practice, stay times between fifteen and sixty seconds cover most surveillance tours. Shorter dwell means more movement and less time to observe anything at each point; longer dwell means fewer points visited per cycle.

Speed. The rotation speed between presets. Fast movement looks responsive and stresses the mechanism; slow movement is smoother on video and easier to watch. On a tour that runs continuously, moderate speed plus adequate dwell produces a usable recording; maximum speed produces a blur that nobody reviews.

Starting and stopping. Apply the configuration, then use the start control. The manual notes an important behaviour: the ongoing tour stops if any operation is made to the PTZ. That is deliberate — a human taking control always wins — but it means a tour will not resume until something tells it to.

2.1 Choosing stay time per scene type

Stay time is where most tours succeed or fail. The manual permits anything from fifteen seconds to an hour at each preset, and both extremes are occasionally correct.

Fifteen to twenty seconds suits a scene that changes rarely and only needs a record that the camera looked. Perimeter fence at night, an empty service yard, a rear gate. Short dwell keeps the cycle short, so each point is revisited often. The cost is that a fifteen-second look can easily miss an event that lasts twenty seconds.

Thirty to sixty seconds is the practical middle. It gives an operator time to notice something and act, and it covers most short events. For a site with four to six points of interest, this range produces a full cycle of two to six minutes, which feels responsive without being frantic.

Several minutes or longer is for scenes that are effectively fixed surveillance during a window. A tour with one long dwell is a way of saying "watch this for an hour, then move". Used deliberately it is efficient; used accidentally it looks like a broken tour stuck on one view.

Match dwell to the frame rate of attention. A busy loading bay with vehicles arriving every few minutes needs a longer dwell than a quiet fire exit. The tour should linger where things happen, not distribute time evenly because the interface makes that easy.

Remember the cycle. Total cycle length is the sum of dwell times plus travel time. A tour where one point dwells for five minutes and five others for fifteen seconds is not a six-minute cycle: it is a tour where two of the points are effectively unmonitored for five minutes at a time. If a customer reports that the camera "never looks at the back gate", check whether the dwell at another preset is swallowing the cycle.

3. Tour mode: original path versus shortest path

Some models offer a choice of tour mode, and the difference is practical rather than cosmetic.

Original path visits presets in the order they were added. This is the predictable option: the sequence is the design, and the camera follows it exactly. Use it when the order matters, for example when the sequence mirrors a physical route around a building.

Shortest path rearranges the sequence by distance so the head travels the least between points. This is faster and gentler on the mechanism, but the order becomes unpredictable — and on models where it is available, the manual notes it may not exist on every device.

For most surveillance tours, shortest path is the better default because it reduces movement. For tours that are part of a procedure — a guard's patrol order, for example — original path is the correct choice even though it travels further.

4. Scan: the linear option

A scan moves horizontally between a defined left limit and right limit at a configured speed. It is the right tool for anything linear, and it is underused.

Setting it up. Add a scan and name it. Drive the camera to the left edge of the area and set the left limit; drive to the right edge and set the right limit. Then start the scan.

Where it beats a tour. A fence line, a corridor, a row of loading bays, a jetty, a narrow yard: all of these are lines, and a scan covers a line continuously. A tour of five presets along the same fence covers five points and misses everything between them.

Where it fails. A scan has no vertical movement, so it cannot follow a slope, a staircase or a multi-level space. It also produces a repetitive recording; a reviewer scrolling through hours of a scan sees the same sweep repeated, which makes event review slower rather than faster.

Speed choice. A slow scan gives a watchable image with full detail; a fast scan covers more ground but produces motion blur and makes automated event detection less reliable at the edges of the frame. For sites relying on IVS rules on the same camera, slower is usually better.

4.1 Where to put the scan limits

The scan is only as good as its two boundaries, and there is a temptation to set them at the extremes of the camera's travel. That is usually wrong.

Set limits at the edge of useful coverage, not at the mechanical stop. A camera may pan to a wall, a gutter or the back of its own mounting arm. Including that area in the scan wastes travel time on every sweep and produces a recording that is partly useless. Trim the limits until both ends show something worth seeing.

Consider overlap with adjacent cameras. On a long boundary covered by two PTZ units, a small overlap between their scans ensures no gap appears if one unit is moved or fails. A large overlap simply duplicates coverage.

Check the vertical framing before setting limits. A scan has no tilt component, so the tilt position at the moment you set the limits is the tilt position for the whole sweep. If the terrain rises along the line, a flat scan will lose the far end behind a slope.

Set limits in the same session as the test. Limits set at commissioning and tested later on a different day can drift if the camera has been serviced in between. Set, start, and watch one full sweep before leaving the site.

Revisit limits after any bracket work. A bracket adjustment changes the relationship between the scan limits and the world. A scan that was correct before a repair will be offset afterwards, and the customer will describe it as the camera "looking at the wrong place".

5. Pattern: recording a path

A pattern records a series of operations — pan, tilt, zoom, even preset calls — and replays them. It is the most flexible motion and the easiest to get wrong.

Recording. Start recording, drive the camera along the route you want, using zoom where the route needs it, then stop recording. The camera stores the sequence.

Replaying. Start the pattern and the camera repeats the recorded movement, including any zoom changes. This is genuinely useful for a route that follows a curved boundary, a road, or a diagonal across an irregular yard.

The weakness. A pattern reproduces the operator's hand movements, including their imprecision. A route recorded quickly will be jerky on replay, and a route recorded with too much zoom will spend much of its time showing a wall. Record patterns slowly and deliberately, with the same care you would use when framing a preset.

Maintenance. Patterns are harder to document than presets. A photograph of a preset list is understandable; a pattern is a shape in time. Sites that rely on patterns should keep a short written description of the route and what it covers, or a technician years later will not know what the movement is for.

5.1 Recording a pattern that is actually watchable

Patterns fail in a specific way: they faithfully reproduce a hasty recording, including every wobble. A few techniques make the difference between a useful route and a source of complaints.

Slow down deliberately. Record at roughly half the speed you would use when manually tracking something. The camera replays what you recorded, so a rushed recording becomes a rushed loop that plays dozens of times a day.

Pause at the interesting parts. A pattern does not have a stay time per point, but you can build one by holding position briefly during recording. Those pauses become part of the route, which is often exactly what a site needs: a sweep with short observations along it.

Keep zoom changes few. A pattern that zooms in and out repeatedly produces a disorienting recording and stresses the lens mechanism. If zoom is needed, use one step and hold it for the segment of the route it serves.

Avoid ending mid-movement. Stop recording with the camera settled, not in the middle of a pan. A pattern that begins abruptly breaks the illusion of a surveyed route and looks like a fault on playback.

Document the route in words. One sentence — "from the north gate, along the fence to the east corner, then across the yard to the loading bay" — is enough for the next technician to understand intent. Without it, a pattern is an unexplained movement.

6. Pan: continuous rotation

Pan rotates the camera continuously through a full horizontal circle at a configured speed. It is the simplest motion and the least targeted.

What it is good for. Deterrence and general awareness. A camera that visibly sweeps a yard is a deterrent in a way that a static camera is not, and on an open site it provides a slow rotation of coverage.

What it is not good for. Identifying anything. A continuous pan spends most of its time looking away from any given point, so the chance of capturing a useful frame of a specific event is low. It also produces a recording that is difficult to review.

Use pan when the requirement is presence rather than evidence, and combine it with alarm-triggered presets so that an event interrupts the sweep and frames the area of interest.

7. Choosing by site, not by preference

Site	Recommended motion	Reason
Fence line or long boundary	Scan	Continuous coverage of one line
Car park with several entrances	Tour	Discrete points, each worth dwelling on
Curved access road	Pattern	Follows the route rather than cutting corners
Open yard, deterrence priority	Pan plus alarm presets	Presence, with targeted response
Warehouse aisle	Scan, slow	Linear, detail matters
Mixed site with several zones	Tour plan with multiple scenarios	Different coverage at different hours

7.1 A worked example: one camera, three zones

A mid-sized yard has a gate, a loading bay and a rear fence, and the customer wants coverage of all three without buying two more cameras. This is the classic case for choosing motion carefully.

Wrong approach. A pan covers everything and identifies nothing. The camera spends most of its time looking at empty tarmac or the inside of the mounting bracket, and when something happens at the gate the camera is facing the fence.

Better approach. A tour of three presets — gate, loading bay, fence — with the dwell weighted toward the gate because that is where vehicles arrive. Without dwell weighting, the tour distributes attention evenly across zones of very different activity.

Best approach for this site. A tour during quiet hours, plus alarm linkage to a gate preset so an intrusion rule interrupts the tour and holds on the gate while the event is live. The camera then behaves like a fixed camera when it needs to, and like a patrol when it does not.

What to write down. The three preset numbers and names, the dwell for each, the tour group used, and the fact that an alarm rule overrides it. That paragraph is the difference between a configuration that survives a staff change and one that gets rebuilt from scratch.

The example generalises: for any site with a few discrete zones of unequal importance, a weighted tour with alarm overrides beats both a simple tour and a continuous pan.

8. Tour Plan: scheduling several scenarios

The AI tour plan goes beyond a single tour by allowing different coverage at different times of day.

Enabling it. Select AI and open Tour Plan, then enable the function. Choose a tour mode and an idle interval.

Tour modes. The manual describes two. Scene Priority tours according to the configured duration of each scene. Detection Priority treats detection as the priority: the camera rotates to another scene only when no alarm events are detected in the current scene and the scene switching time has been reached.

Detection Priority is the more interesting option for security work. It means a camera stays on a scene while something is happening there, instead of moving away on a fixed timer. On a site where events are intermittent and precious, that single behaviour change improves the chance of capturing them.

Scenarios. Add scenarios with a stay time, and sort them by priority. Then set the start and end times for the plan and copy the configuration to other days if the pattern repeats.

The idle interval works alongside manual operation: after a user drives the camera, the plan resumes following the configured interval. That is what prevents a single manual adjustment from ending coverage for the day.

8.1 Designing scenarios that reflect the day

A tour plan is most useful when the site genuinely behaves differently at different hours. Three windows cover most commercial sites.

Opening hours. Coverage prioritises entrances, tills, the loading area and the customer-facing frontage. Dwell should be short because the site is busy and each zone changes constantly. Detection priority works well here: the camera stays on a scene while something is happening.

Closing and cleaning. The site empties, staff move through it, and the interesting areas shift to the back of house, the safe, and the exit route. A second scenario set with different presets and longer dwell matches this window.

Closed hours. Fewer scenes, longer dwell, and a bias toward perimeters. This is where detection priority earns its keep: a camera that stays on a fence line while motion is present will capture more than one that moves away on a timer.

Transitions matter. The gap between windows is where coverage is weakest. If the plan switches at 18:00 and the last staff member leaves at 18:05, make the closed-hours plan start earlier rather than assuming the transition is instantaneous.

Copy, then adjust. Configure one weekday carefully and copy it to the rest, then modify Saturday and Sunday. Most sites have a weekday pattern, a Saturday pattern and a Sunday pattern, and treating all seven days identically wastes the feature.

9. Conflicts between motions

Most "the tour stopped" reports are conflicts rather than faults, and the manual describes the two most common ones directly.

Manual operation stops a tour. The manual states that the ongoing tour stops if any operation is made to the PTZ. This is correct behaviour: a human must be able to take control. The camera then needs idle motion, a scheduled task with Auto Home, or a manual restart to resume.

A scheduled task overrides a manual tour. If a scheduled task is active during a window, it performs its task action. Starting a different tour manually may appear to work and then be replaced when the schedule reasserts itself.

Idle motion competes with everything. An aggressively short idle interval will interrupt manual investigation, and an idle motion pointing at a tour will restart that tour every time the camera sits still.

A site should have one intended motion at any given hour, and the configuration should make that unambiguous. Where two motions are both plausible, the operator will not be able to predict which one wins.

10. Ten causes of "the tour does not work"

1. No presets. A tour is built from presets; without them there is nothing to visit.

2. Presets not saved. The tour references list entries that do not exist.

3. Tour group empty. A group was created but no presets added.

4. Tour not started. Configuration applied, start control never pressed.

5. Manual operation interrupted it. Expected behaviour; requires idle motion or Auto Home to resume.

6. A scheduled task is active. The task action replaces the manual tour.

7. Stay time too long. The tour appears stuck on one view.

8. Speed too high. Movement is a blur and the positions look wrong.

9. Rotation limit blocks part of the route. The tour skips or approximates some presets.

10. Two motions configured for the same hours. The result is unpredictable.

10.1 Diagnosing a tour that skips presets

When a tour visibly misses some of its points, the cause is usually one of four things, and they are distinguishable by watching one full cycle.

A rotation limit excludes the point. The tour calls the preset, the head stops at the limit, and the result is an approximation of the intended view rather than the view itself. If the missed presets are all clustered at one end of the range, suspect the limit before anything else.

The preset was overwritten. Someone re-saved a preset while the camera was in the wrong position, which moves that point without changing its name. Watching the cycle shows the camera arriving confidently at the wrong place — a signature that distinguishes it from a limit problem.

Stay time is too short to see the move. With very short dwell and high speed, a tour can appear to skip points because the camera is already moving on by the time the image is legible. This looks like skipping on a monitor but is really a timing problem.

A pattern or scheduled task is interleaving. Two motions active in the same window produce a cycle that follows neither design. Check what else is configured for this hour before editing the tour.

One cycle of observation plus a preset list is usually enough to identify which of the four applies. Adjusting the tour configuration without that observation tends to move the problem rather than fix it.

11. Commissioning checklist

#	Check	Pass
1	Presets exist and are named	Every point identifiable on a sheet
2	Motion type matches the site shape	Justified in one sentence
3	Stay time and speed set deliberately	Watchable recording, no blur
4	Start control used and motion observed	Full cycle completes
5	Manual interruption tested	Resumes as intended
6	Idle motion or Auto Home configured	Recovers without a visit
7	No conflicting scheduled task	One intended motion per hour
8	Rotation limits allow the whole route	No preset clipped

11.1 Tour plan or scheduled task: which do I need?

Both schedule motion, and the overlap confuses people. The distinction is what each was designed to solve.

A scheduled task says: during this window, perform this action. The action can be a preset, a tour, a scan or a pattern. It is the right tool for a simple rule — "run tour 1 from 08:00 to 18:00, park on preset 2 overnight".

A tour plan says: during this window, move between multiple scenes with individual durations and priorities, and behave differently depending on whether events are detected. It is the right tool for a site with several zones of different importance that need continuous attention rather than a fixed loop.

The practical rule: if the requirement can be written as one line with one action, use a scheduled task. If the requirement needs several scenes with different dwell times, or needs detection to influence how long the camera stays somewhere, use a tour plan.

Do not configure both for the same window. Two scheduling mechanisms active at once produce behaviour that neither one describes, and the resulting confusion usually ends with both being disabled and the site left with a static camera pointing at whatever it happened to be facing.

12. FAQ

Do I need presets for a scan? No. A scan uses two limits rather than presets. Tours and many scheduled tasks do need them.

Why does the tour stop when someone moves the camera? By design. Manual operation takes priority. Configure idle motion or Auto Home to resume automatically.

Can I run a tour only during opening hours? Yes, through a scheduled task or a tour plan with a time window.

Which is better, tour or pattern? Tour for discrete points, pattern for a continuous irregular route. A pattern reproduces operator movement, including its imprecision.

Does a pan cover everything? It covers everything briefly and nothing reliably. Pair it with alarm-triggered presets.

Can a tour include zoom changes? Presets include zoom, so a tour will move to each preset's zoom level. A pattern can also record zoom changes.

Why is the tour blurry on playback? Speed is too high for the frame rate. Reduce speed or increase dwell.

What happens at the end of a tour? It repeats the cycle, unless a scheduled task, idle motion or manual input intervenes.

Can two tours run at different times of day? Yes, by creating separate tour groups and activating them with scheduled tasks. Keep the windows explicit in the handover pack, because a tour that runs outside its intended hours looks like a malfunction to anyone who did not configure it.

13. Glossary

Tour — a loop through a set of presets with per-preset stay time and speed.

Scan — horizontal movement between a left and right limit.

Pattern — a recorded sequence of PTZ operations replayed as a route.

Pan — continuous 360-degree horizontal rotation.

Stay time — how long the camera dwells at a preset or scene.

Scene — a coverage point in a tour plan, with its own duration and priority.

Detection priority — a tour plan mode that stays on a scene while events are detected there.

Does a scan work at night? It works, but the value depends on illumination. A slow scan across a dark fence line with IR illuminators produces usable images at each end and a darker middle if the illuminator does not reach; check a full sweep after dark rather than only in daylight, because coverage that looks complete at noon can be uneven at midnight.

14. Sources

• Dahua Network PTZ Camera Web 5.0 User Manual V3.0.1 — §4.5.2 Tour, §4.5.3 Scan, §4.5.4 Pattern, §4.5.5 Pan, §4.5.6 Speed, §10.15 Tour Plan
• Dahua Technology — documentation portal

Related: build and name the positions first with the PTZ preset guide, then schedule this motion with the scheduled task walkthrough. Hardware and mounts are in the PTZ collection and accessories.