ZM Bandwidth help needed

[rpuffd]

Hello all,

I am looking for some help in configuring ZM in relation to the image size sent to the browser. I am using the AirLive OD-600HD and if I use the web interface built into the cam, all looks great, works great. Each frame is about 65kbytes in size and streams very nicely over the internet, see the BlueCherry live cam for an example.

However, when this is all up and running in ZM, for some reason, the image size per frame is almost 6MB in size and is the exact same quality as what you see via the built in web server in the cam at about 65Kbytes/frame. I have played with settings till I am blue in the face, but have yet to be able to get the image size down. As you may have guessed, this steams VERY poorly over the ineternet. Here are my cam settings :

Protocol : HTTP
Method : Simple
Remote Host : admin:password@10.1.1.100
Remot Host Port : 80
Remote Host Path : /mjpg/video.mjpg?resolution=vga
Image Colours : 24 bit colour
Width : 640
Height : 480

Some simple math on 640x480x24 bit depth puts the image size at about 7MB which is what I am seeing, but my only other choice in the drop down is 8 bit grayscale which does not work at all, just a black image.

I guess I am just looking for suggestions on what I can check to get this to where it is usable over the internet. It just seems odd that the cameras built in streaming takes so much less bandwidth than ZM for the exact same image and quality. I am stumped.

Thanks in advance.

[jfkastner]

"my math" tells me it's about 900kByte per frame

640 x 480 = 307200 pixel

times 24 = 7372800 bits

devided by 8 = 921600 byte (since there are 8 bits per byte (where i live))

anyways too big to stream - jpg compression can cut it down to 50-70kbyte per frame in good quality

looks like you use mpg streaming though, so check everything that has to do with ffmpeg (console/options) - also try playing with the swf/asf settings (mpeg live format)

[rpuffd]

Yup, I forgot the divide by 8, my error.

I just don't understand why the cam's internal web server can do the job, but ZM cant. I have tried all the setting posted at BlueCherry(where I bought the cam), none makes any difference whatsoever.

/mjpg/video.mjpg?resolution=vga (30FPS)
/mjpg/video.mjpg?resolution=sxga (15FPS)
/mjpg/video.mjpg?resolution=qvga (30FPS)
/mjpg/video.mjpg?resolution=qqvga (30FPS)

One other note, I think the reason I forgot the divide by 8 is that the actual saved image is about 6.5Mbytes when I pause ZM, then do a save image as from Firefox.

I dont fully understand the settings above provided by BlueCherry. I searched the entire file system for any references to mjpg and video.mjpg and found nothing, so I am wondering what these settings really mean. I know that changing them makes no difference whatsoever.

I did try playing around with the swf/asf stuff, no change there either.

Thanks for your input.

[jfkastner]

try changing the settings in options/high bandwidth/WEB_H_VIDEO_BITRATE and see what/if you get a change, those are the input parameters for ffmpeg afaik

possible your ffmpeg doesn't work right, yet i think bluecherry does great work usually

how much bandwidth do you have/want? thru a WAN it's difficult to get anything above a few Mbit (residential service at least)

btw if i try to save the videostream FF saves something till i interrupt - the videostream, so the file grows continously a few hundred Kb per sec - that's not really an indicator for the thruput. use taskmanager/performance counters or something else

[curtishall]

One other note, I think the reason I forgot the divide by 8 is that the actual saved image is about 6.5Mbytes when I pause ZM, then do a save image as from Firefox

A single JPEG image from the OD-600 is 120k (ish). I'm not sure where you are getting this 6.5Mb number. MJPEG is just a bunch of JPEG's attached together in a container (like an AVI). If you save the single jpeg file to disk you'll notice it's not large at all.

Note:

The default file size is 126k for a single image from the OD-600HD, because it pulls a 640x480 image:

HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 126549 (124K) [image/jpeg]
Saving to: “image.jpgâ€

[rpuffd]

Curtis, here is what I do know.

I have done some bandwidth testing and at about 5 frames/sec at 640x480, it is utilizing a consistant 12.5% of my 100Mbit connection through ZM. If I go to the web server built into the cam and view the same stream, the bandwidth used on my 100Mbit connection is less than .3%.

There is something fishy about my ZM setup, I just dont know what. I have played around with a bunch of ffmpeg settings, none that I have tried make a difference. Most of what I tried was the h264 settings, and yes, my version of ffmpeg was built with --enable-libx264.

When viewed over the internet, it is completely useless, you can watch the frames paint, they take about 5 seconds each, and PTZ functions are spotty at best. On the local network where the server is, everything works well. If I pause ZM in FF, then dos a view image, then do a save image as, the image is about 6.5 mega bytes, that is where I got the number from.


I will play around a bit more later today based on the inputs to this post.

[curtishall]

You are probably saving the MJPEG stream, not a single image...that's why the file size is 6.5mb

[rpuffd]

Pretty sure it is not the stream. I can tell when it is the stream as the image file size just keeps growing and never stops, I stopped it at 50mb. If you pause ZM, then right mouse on the image and click view image, it will open another browser tab/window with just the image, no stream. Then a righ mouse/save image as results in the 6.5MB file, and when you open the file, you see the image you saved. So I am pretty sure it aint the stream.

For some reason I have yet to figure, each image frame is huge. I will play around more tonight, see if any of the suggestions in this post make a difference.

[rpuffd]

Curtis, you guys have one of these cams in your Inventory room. Do you have the ability to set it up on ZM(1.24.x) and see if you get the same results ? I am on Fedora Linux(v10).

[rpuffd]

Finally, I have things working properly, almost. On the options page, I set the STREAM_METHOD to MPEG and set the FFMPEG_INPUT_OPTIONS to

-vcodec libx264 -vpre hq -threads 0 -8x8dcd -b 3072

Now the bandwidth on my 100Mbit connection is down to about .15% utilization, way below the previous 2.5%.

The only issue now is the digital zoom no longer works. Any ideas ?

Thanks for all the posts.

[rpuffd]

Well, I spoke too soon. Althougth I got the streaming to work at an acceptable bandwidth, now the motion detection is not working. It captures the event, and you can view the stills one at a time, but you can watch the captured stream. I get tons of errors in the log files, here are some details. Any help is appreciated.

02/02/10 18:27:14.760980 zmdc[13791].INF ['zma -m 5' starting at 10/02/02 18:27:14, pid = 13980]
02/02/10 18:27:15.039793 zmdc[13791].INF ['zmtrack.pl -m 5' starting at 10/02/02 18:27:15, pid = 13985]
02/02/10 18:27:15.463420 zmdc[13791].ERR ['zmtrack.pl -m 5' exited abnormally, exit status 255]
02/02/10 18:27:15.463923 zmdc[13791].INF [Starting pending process, zmtrack.pl -m 5]
02/02/10 18:27:15.465899 zmdc[13791].INF ['zmtrack.pl -m 5' starting at 10/02/02 18:27:15, pid = 13991]
02/02/10 18:27:15.953811 zmdc[13791].ERR ['zmtrack.pl -m 5' exited abnormally, exit status 255]
02/02/10 18:27:20.095698 zmdc[13791].INF [Starting pending process, zmtrack.pl -m 5]
02/02/10 18:27:20.102158 zmdc[13791].INF ['zmtrack.pl -m 5' starting at 10/02/02 18:27:20, pid = 14001]
02/02/10 18:27:20.372740 zmdc[13791].ERR ['zmtrack.pl -m 5' exited abnormally, exit status 255]
02/02/10 18:27:30.073708 zmdc[13791].INF [Starting pending process, zmtrack.pl -m 5]
02/02/10 18:27:30.075884 zmdc[13791].INF ['zmtrack.pl -m 5' starting at 10/02/02 18:27:30, pid = 14004]
02/02/10 18:27:30.356797 zmdc[13791].ERR ['zmtrack.pl -m 5' exited abnormally, exit status 255]
02/02/10 18:27:50.057694 zmdc[13791].INF [Starting pending process, zmtrack.pl -m 5]
02/02/10 18:27:50.059798 zmdc[13791].INF ['zmtrack.pl -m 5' starting at 10/02/02 18:27:50, pid = 14007]
02/02/10 18:27:50.332667 zmdc[13791].ERR ['zmtrack.pl -m 5' exited abnormally, exit status 255]
02/02/10 18:28:28.038706 zmdc[13791].INF [Starting pending process, zmfilter.pl]
02/02/10 18:28:28.040800 zmdc[13791].INF ['zmfilter.pl' starting at 10/02/02 18:28:28, pid = 14010]
02/02/10 18:28:28.522756 zmdc[13791].ERR ['zmfilter.pl ' exited abnormally, exit status 9]
02/02/10 18:28:30.022708 zmdc[13791].INF [Starting pending process, zmtrack.pl -m 5]
02/02/10 18:28:30.024773 zmdc[13791].INF ['zmtrack.pl -m 5' starting at 10/02/02 18:28:30, pid = 14012]
02/02/10 18:28:30.294375 zmdc[13791].ERR ['zmtrack.pl -m 5' exited abnormally, exit status 255]
02/02/10 18:29:50.099677 zmdc[13791].INF [Starting pending process, zmtrack.pl -m 5]
02/02/10 18:29:50.101940 zmdc[13791].INF ['zmtrack.pl -m 5' starting at 10/02/02 18:29:50, pid = 14016]
02/02/10 18:29:50.400555 zmdc[13791].ERR ['zmtrack.pl -m 5' exited abnormally, exit status 255]

Thanks.

[rpuffd]

Sorry, should have said "can't" watch the captured stream, no "can"