Coming back to Zoneminder

[sunriseblvd]

I tried ZoneMinder long ago but I ran into many problems because of my low end hardware. I'd like to try again but I have a few planning questions.

Is ZoneMinder still recompressing camera video streams?
If a camera outputs video as H265, why wouldn't Zoneminder just use the raw stream it's being provided instead of wasting CPU/GPU/electricity re-encoding an already compressed stream? I switched to a cheap NVR because it doesn't appear to re-encode the video and I'm sure it's running on a Celeron of some other underpowered CPU. When I download video from it, the video appears to be the original H265 stream. Or, should I accept that I need a GPU to re-encode 8 simultaneous input H265 streams again?

What is a GPU sufficient to do 8x 2k or 4k streams?
4K helps immensely to see faces. I had several occasions where the higher resolution helped immensely to catch perpetrators by face. But I don't want a GPU wasting 500W of power re-encoding if it can be done cheaper.

Thanks for helping me plan this out.

[dougmccrary]

Most (if not all) cameras can do h264.
If not zm can still record, but not play back h265, as I understand.
GPUs have been found lacking - Cores are what you need. 1 per cam at high res.

[geraldbrandt]

ZM can do camera passthrough when saving video files, so no recompressing. H264 is the way to go, since no browsers (except Safari) can playback H265.

[sunriseblvd]

ZM can do camera passthrough when saving video files, so no recompressing. H264 is the way to go, since no browsers (except Safari) can playback H265.

H264 is fine. I've been using H265 with the current NVR. That's the only reason I mention it.

How do you make Zoneminder use passthrough only? Last time I tried it, I couldn't make it do anything except re-encode frame by frame.

Also will all the other features work using passthrough? e.g. can I playback at certain time indices? Does motion detection work?

[sunriseblvd]

Most (if not all) cameras can do h264.
If not zm can still record, but not play back h265, as I understand.
GPUs have been found lacking - Cores are what you need. 1 per cam at high res.

I can do H264.. not a problem. The problem is that of double compressing video unnecessarily. I'm quite certain the NVR I have now is not recompressing anything for a second time. It's just storing the inbound H264/H265 streams.

[geraldbrandt]

ZM can do camera passthrough when saving video files, so no recompressing. H264 is the way to go, since no browsers (except Safari) can playback H265.

H264 is fine. I've been using H265 with the current NVR. That's the only reason I mention it.

How do you make Zoneminder use passthrough only? Last time I tried it, I couldn't make it do anything except re-encode frame by frame.

Also will all the other features work using passthrough? e.g. can I playback at certain time indices? Does motion detection work?

One of the options when you set up the camera is to save video as passthrough instead of encode. You can also not save JPEGs.