After a while, only 100% grey is captured from some but not all cameras

[KenR]

Not sure if this will help you or not but I have been where you are and not had much luck getting the Zoneminder RTSP, FFMPEG or LIBVLC code to tolerate errors in the feed. Lots of grey images and tearing within bottom half of image. Many invalid alarm events. What I do it run an instance of live555ProxyServer to "condition" the feeds from my cameras before Zoneminder. Then I use RTSP in Zoneminder with my live555 URLs and it's 100% reliable. Depending on your cameras you may need to increase OutPacketBuffer::maxSize in
proxyServer/live555ProxyServer.cpp.

[flyvert]

...What I do it run an instance of live555ProxyServer to "condition" the feeds from my cameras before Zoneminder...

Thanks! I will take a look at this if I can not get a stable feed from my cams. With my fingers crossed, I've not seen any grey outs after reducing the video compression in my cameras...

[vegitate]

Here is the solution that will fix the issue for good. It is caused by Acti injecting extra code into the stream and Zoneminder locking up on that information and not recovering. Go under settings on the camera and go network. Click on the RTP and disable RTP B2 Frame. That is all you have to do . I hope this helps.