grey video capture at beginning of modect event

[jb2017]

Hi All,

I have just setup a new VM (Manjaro) for Zoneminder (v1.36.33), and have setup 3 MODECT monitors. The VM has 8CPU core and 8GB RAM allocated. The Monitors are:
1 x local USB webcam (passed through form the host machine to the VM).
2 x remote feeds using ffmpeg source type.
All monitors are configured to capture 1280x720p at 15fps.
All monitors "storage" is setup to use video writer=encode, output codec=h264, encoder=libx264, crf=23, save JPEGs=disabled.

The issue I'm having, with all monitors is that when I replay event videos the first second or two is just showing grey blocky video and you can't see whatever it is that triggered the event. The grey blockiness goes away after the first second or two, but in some cases the thing that triggered the event has gone ...

I've tried playing around with all sorts of settings for the monitor setup, and the zones for each monitor, but I'm struggling to resolve the issue. Anybody got any ideas what could be causing this? Happy to provide more info on request.

Thanks in advance.
Justin

[Magic919]

Where you’re setting the crf=, remove all the other text from that box.

[jb2017]

Thank you - that seems to have actually worked. I'm surprised, as the box does say that any line starting with a # is a comment so i assumed comments were allowed. Is this a known bug? Or did you just have a magic "hunch"? Happy to have it fixed!

[Magic919]

It was the cause last time someone posted the same problem. I put ‘grey’ into the search box as I couldn’t remember how it was fixed.

[iconnor]

Its not the comments that cause the problem, it's the lack of crf setting.

[liliana89]

The grey blockiness at the beginning of the event recordings may be due to the pre-buffer length being too short. Increase the pre-buffer length in the Zoneminder settings to ensure that the recording captures the complete event, including the initial trigger.