zmc exit status 255 - driving me crazy

[tcsmith314]

Admitedley I'm new to zoneminder, but I spent a great deal of time getting my card so that I can get tvtime and xawtv to display video from my cams. The card is a generic Kodicom 4400r. BUT ZONEMINDER KEEPS EXITING FROM MONITORING, with "exit status 255".

The error log shows...

10-06-14 23:42:45.001518 zmdc[8657].INF [Starting pending process, zmc -d /dev/video0]
10-06-14 23:42:45.002735 zmdc[8657].INF ['zmc -d /dev/video0' starting at 10/06/14 23:42:45, pid = 8695]
10-06-14 23:42:45.025100 zmdc[8657].ERR ['zmc -d /dev/video0' exited abnormally, exit status 255]

I have zmu output... (check end of message).

I"m running the latest version of Ubuntu, and the video does show in tvtime, and xawtv just fine. I'm running zoneminder 1.24.2build3.

Can anyone provide some suggestions on how to fix this? The card I'm using is the same as .... http://cgi.ebay.ca/120-fps-NTSC-4-chann ... 2307b8586e

PS
...it took some tweaking to get the bttv driver to work with the card... I needed to add the following to a module.conf file...

alias char-major-81 bttv
options bttv card=0x85,0x84,0x85,0x85 radio=-1 tuner=4 pll=0

Thanks

zmu -q -d /dev/video0 -v

Video Device: /dev/video0
General Capabilities
Driver: bttv
Card: BT878 video (Kodicom 4400R (sla
Bus: PCI:0000:02:0c.0
Version: 0.9.18
Type: 0x5000015
Supports video capture (X)
Does not support video output
Supports frame buffer overlay
Supports VBI capture
Does not support VBI output
Does not support sliced VBI capture
Does not support sliced VBI output
Does not support video output overlay
Does not have tuner
Does not have audio in and/or out
Does not have radio
Supports read/write i/o (X)
Does not support async i/o
Supports streaming i/o (X)
Standards:
NTSC
NTSC-M
NTSC-M-JP
NTSC-M-KR
PAL
PAL-BG
PAL-H
PAL-I
PAL-DK
PAL-M
PAL-N
PAL-Nc
PAL-60
SECAM
SECAM-B
SECAM-G
SECAM-H
SECAM-DK
SECAM-L
SECAM-Lc
Formats:
8 bpp, gray (GREY)
8 bpp, dithered color (HI24)
15 bpp RGB, le (RGBO)
15 bpp RGB, be (RGBQ)
16 bpp RGB, le (RGBP)
16 bpp RGB, be (RGBR)
24 bpp RGB, le (BGR3)
32 bpp RGB, le (BGR4)
32 bpp RGB, be (RGB4)
4:2:2, packed, YUYV (YUYV)
4:2:2, packed, YUYV (YUYV)
4:2:2, packed, UYVY (UYVY)
4:2:2, planar, Y-Cb-Cr (422P)
4:2:0, planar, Y-Cb-Cr (YU12)
4:2:0, planar, Y-Cr-Cb (YV12)
4:1:1, planar, Y-Cb-Cr (411P)
4:1:0, planar, Y-Cb-Cr (YUV9)
4:1:0, planar, Y-Cr-Cb (YVU9)
Crop Capabilities
Bounds: 838 x 504
Default: 768 x 480
Current: 768 x 480
Inputs: 16
Input 0
Name: Composite0
Type: Camera
Audioset: 00000001
Standards: 0xffbfff
Power on (X)
Signal detected (X)
Colour Signal detected
Horizontal Lock detected
Input 1
Name: Composite1
Type: Camera
Audioset: 00000001
Standards: 0xffbfff
Power on (X)
Signal detected (X)
...etc

And ... it took some tweaking to get the bttv driver to work with the card... I needed to add the following to a module.conf file...

alias char-major-81 bttv
options bttv card=0x85,0x84,0x85,0x85 radio=-1 tuner=4 pll=0

[tcsmith314]

Saved myself a tone of grief, and just bought an all in one box from China... order to my door in less than a week, $100 and works right out of the box. Highly recommended to anyone else who is frustrated with zoneminder. If only I did this from the start - I could have saved myself hours of "friggin'", lol

[bb99]

Sorry for your bad experience. Good luck with your box! Should've checked the wiki on shared memory, or read up on actual resolutions available from analog cameras and your card, or even captures per frame from the basic (setup) documentation... But whatever gets your system up and running for you, that's what counts!

[tcsmith314]

Actually... I did put in the time... read on the shared memory, set the kernel parameters, and did get a higher resolution going... all this without anyone responding to my request for help... still very unstable though.

[bb99]

Unstable how? Did you look at the frames per capture?

[tcsmith314]

I've turn down the box now, so it'll just be academic and a waste of your time to troubleshoot now... but...

Once I got through the jungle of config quirks (which imho aren't documented), what I found was most likely a driver/hardware issue. The card has 4 separate bt878a chips, and 4 ports. Everything worked fine on one port, but when I added the second camera... settings kept conflicting with the first... both would display the same video stream, and (if I remember correctly) within a few minutes the monitor connection tot he driver would puke with the 255 error.