After lots of playing around and experimentation I've managed to get 2 Hauppauge ImpactVCB cards working in the same system, with 4 ports on each card. The problem is bttv autodetects the card as Card=10. After looking through the bttv gallery at http://www.bttv-gallery.de/ I found this card also listed as an Osprey card, Card=82. The card also works as a 4 port Grandtec
Card=77. All use the same 878A Capture chip.
For multiple cards add this to your /etc/modprobe.conf
options bttv card=82,82 tuner=4,4
Also I think bttv has a limit of 4 cards per system, although I haven't actually tried this many.
Make sure all of the cameras connected to one card are set to the same resolution, and the same "Capture Palette". ie: B&W Cameras on one card, colour on the other.
If you are looking for a reliable source for these cards in North America, try fgeng.com. Cards are $69USD, plus taxes and shipping.
For Canadians, they ship from within Canada, and the last one I ordered arrived in 4 days.
Don't expect top of the line performance from this card, as there is only one capture chip.
Hauppauge ImpactVCB 4-Port Card (You can use all 4 ports)
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zoneminder
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jameswilson
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Yes it is. Webmin has a java text editor. Click on Other and Filemanager. Go through the tree to /etc and select modprobe.conf
In the app's tool bar you will see edit.
The rest should make since.
You could also just ssh into it as well and use what ever text editer you have loaded on the machine.
Regards,
Cordel
In the app's tool bar you will see edit.
The rest should make since.
You could also just ssh into it as well and use what ever text editer you have loaded on the machine.
Regards,
Cordel
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perspectoff
- Posts: 5
- Joined: Tue Apr 10, 2007 4:41 pm
ImpactVCB half-height card
I bought the Impact VCB card but it doesn't fit in a standard case. It fits in a PCI slot, but the case adapter (the piece that holds it in the case and which you screw down with a small screw) is only half-height.
What kind of cases are you using for this card?
I ended up returning it and buying an AverMedia card instead.
What kind of cases are you using for this card?
I ended up returning it and buying an AverMedia card instead.
The one I bought from Amazon
Came with both the half and full brackets.
I needed the half bracket as my linux box is a SFF format PC... Not alot of cards out there...Hopefully I'll get it to setup ok.. (Fingers Crossed)
I needed the half bracket as my linux box is a SFF format PC... Not alot of cards out there...Hopefully I'll get it to setup ok.. (Fingers Crossed)
I set the card options to the OP's settings, an Ospray card and it solved my input assignment problems, I now have four inputs, three composite and one s-video/composite. But still stuck with 2.5 fps per channel.
Another big problem I am having is I need two video signals to get this thing to work. A single camera connected to my test system yields a flash of an image and then quickly fades to white. If I plug in another video source, say a dvd player, the white picture fades into a clean video signal. Unplug the dvd player and again the cameras picture fades to white. It makes no sense and prevents me from using this card with a single camera. The picture also jumps a bit and looks like it wants to fade to white causing alarm events.
To me it appears this card is junk. Shame since its a Hauppauge. I will try one of those 878a based quad BNC Chinese made card on eBay and see if I have the same problems.
Another big problem I am having is I need two video signals to get this thing to work. A single camera connected to my test system yields a flash of an image and then quickly fades to white. If I plug in another video source, say a dvd player, the white picture fades into a clean video signal. Unplug the dvd player and again the cameras picture fades to white. It makes no sense and prevents me from using this card with a single camera. The picture also jumps a bit and looks like it wants to fade to white causing alarm events.
To me it appears this card is junk. Shame since its a Hauppauge. I will try one of those 878a based quad BNC Chinese made card on eBay and see if I have the same problems.
You have to under stand what is happening.
Disable the other configurations or remove the unused inputs from ZM.
The bttv driver is trying to adjust the white balance for the unused inputs and will try to average them out among all the inputs that are configured.
Since the chip can only process 30 fps. It has to switch between inputs to capture a frame. Each switch it loses up to 2 frames, one for the switch and one to resync with the new input.
This is why the white balance is averaged between all inputs and why a single chip using all four of it's inputs will get a low frame rate.
Disable the other configurations or remove the unused inputs from ZM.
The bttv driver is trying to adjust the white balance for the unused inputs and will try to average them out among all the inputs that are configured.
Since the chip can only process 30 fps. It has to switch between inputs to capture a frame. Each switch it loses up to 2 frames, one for the switch and one to resync with the new input.
This is why the white balance is averaged between all inputs and why a single chip using all four of it's inputs will get a low frame rate.
Thank you for the response! For some reason I thought this chip could do 120 fps. I also did not know about the white balance issue or the dropped frames from switching between the inputs. I deleted the three other inputs and I am now recording at 20 fps, perfect for my test rig. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.cordel wrote:You have to under stand what is happening.
Disable the other configurations or remove the unused inputs from ZM.
The bttv driver is trying to adjust the white balance for the unused inputs and will try to average them out among all the inputs that are configured.
Since the chip can only process 30 fps. It has to switch between inputs to capture a frame. Each switch it loses up to 2 frames, one for the switch and one to resync with the new input.
This is why the white balance is averaged between all inputs and why a single chip using all four of it's inputs will get a low frame rate.
Impact VCB max resolutions
Hi Everyone-
I setup a new box (new comer to zoneminder, some BTTV experience w/ Hauppauge TV tuner cards in mythtv and such and 7 years back w/ a WinTV card on very old video4linux on 2.2 kernels!).
The Impact VCB is cool so far -- getting 5.5 FPS on 2 ports and I set the config to not do "multiple" samples so I always get the right image from each port etc. It does about 30 fps no problem single channel.
I found that YUYV and BGR24 are the only two pallettes that seem to work.
Does anyone know of any advantage of one over the other? Right now I'm using YUYV.
Also -- I can only get a good picture at 320x240 on NTSC. Is that the maximum resolution I can expect? I was hoping for more, but 640x480 doesn't work and I'm not sure what other resolutions to try (I think I tried 720x480 but have yet to try 720x576 which I thought I read somewhere is the max res for the card). I'd like to get a little higher res so if we need to try and zoom in on a license plate of a car on the property we're monitoring, we have a decent amount of pixels to work with. The modect mode is perfect for what we plan to use it for, so I'm not worried about disk space.
I'm using Fedora 14 with latest "updates" kernel -- it has the jpeg-turbo library everyone was talking about and it seems to work great.
Zoneminder is awesome by the way. I'm very impressed with the web based ajax reviewing capabilities like the timeline and such -- very easy to review lots of events quickly. I also tried the export to MPEG video via ffmpeg and also WMV video and that is great too -- will make it very easy if we have to show an event to someone if there are any "issues" on the property!
I setup a new box (new comer to zoneminder, some BTTV experience w/ Hauppauge TV tuner cards in mythtv and such and 7 years back w/ a WinTV card on very old video4linux on 2.2 kernels!).
The Impact VCB is cool so far -- getting 5.5 FPS on 2 ports and I set the config to not do "multiple" samples so I always get the right image from each port etc. It does about 30 fps no problem single channel.
I found that YUYV and BGR24 are the only two pallettes that seem to work.
Does anyone know of any advantage of one over the other? Right now I'm using YUYV.
Also -- I can only get a good picture at 320x240 on NTSC. Is that the maximum resolution I can expect? I was hoping for more, but 640x480 doesn't work and I'm not sure what other resolutions to try (I think I tried 720x480 but have yet to try 720x576 which I thought I read somewhere is the max res for the card). I'd like to get a little higher res so if we need to try and zoom in on a license plate of a car on the property we're monitoring, we have a decent amount of pixels to work with. The modect mode is perfect for what we plan to use it for, so I'm not worried about disk space.
I'm using Fedora 14 with latest "updates" kernel -- it has the jpeg-turbo library everyone was talking about and it seems to work great.
Zoneminder is awesome by the way. I'm very impressed with the web based ajax reviewing capabilities like the timeline and such -- very easy to review lots of events quickly. I also tried the export to MPEG video via ffmpeg and also WMV video and that is great too -- will make it very easy if we have to show an event to someone if there are any "issues" on the property!
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punch-card
- Posts: 39
- Joined: Thu Nov 25, 2010 10:29 pm
- Location: St Peters MO
Hauppauge 558
malk315,
I assume you got your card to capture image, I am having some real issues with getting in going. I am running RHEL 5.4 so I figure not too diff that your fedora. I can run xawtv and "motion" and am able to see the card and cameras are working fine. "Motion" work for one camera, but a little simple.
So here is my question, could you look at my settings, and see what you have different?
I have applied a timeout patch I found for the stream.php, but I am still getting some other errors in the httpd log that according to some other post it looks like that not all the data is being captured.... But I figured it sounded like you had tested several setting and worked thru may of the issues. Some of the image settings I changed based on ffmpeg posting which looked like it might have been an issue.
Thanks, If you could give me setting differences that might help.
Mike
I assume you got your card to capture image, I am having some real issues with getting in going. I am running RHEL 5.4 so I figure not too diff that your fedora. I can run xawtv and "motion" and am able to see the card and cameras are working fine. "Motion" work for one camera, but a little simple.
So here is my question, could you look at my settings, and see what you have different?
I have applied a timeout patch I found for the stream.php, but I am still getting some other errors in the httpd log that according to some other post it looks like that not all the data is being captured.... But I figured it sounded like you had tested several setting and worked thru may of the issues. Some of the image settings I changed based on ffmpeg posting which looked like it might have been an issue.
Thanks, If you could give me setting differences that might help.
Mike
punch-card-
Your camera settings are identical to mine.
I can't check the 'images' config page because the box is not up right now -- I'm going to deploy it tonight or tomorrow. I can check it next time I bring it up -- I'll try to remember to look, but looking at it from memory it looks sane to me. I remember I changed the ffmpeg path from /usr/local/bin to /usr/bin like you have and I was able to create AVI, and MPEG videos from my events no problem. I didn't think ffmpeg was required to just capture JPG images from the Impact cards for modect or monitor mode, but I could be wrong. ffmpeg isn't standard on fedora due to patent rules perhaps, so I added AtRPMs to my repo list and installed the pre-built version for F14 from there w/o a hitch.
One silly question -- since all of the ZM stuff runs as user apache who has like no privileges, did you make sure your /dev/video0 device node is world readable? The zm-fix tool did that for me. You can manually just do:
chmod 666 /dev/video0
As the root user to achieve this. Then restart zoneminder services with the same settings and see if you get a picture.
I found out to go to 640x480 I had to increase shared memory per the documentation. I was getting the "combing" effect since it interlaces the frames when above 320x240 IIRC, but I turned off "multi frame capture" and set the number of frames to capture to 4 I think and that got me like 2.5 FPS per channel and very little of the combing -- I wanted the hi res to catch license plates perhaps when cars go by the cameras.
If I go back to 320x240 for each channel and enable multi-frame capture with the number of frames to capture set at 2 (my current settings I think) I get like 6-7 FPS from each channel and everything looks stable and clear. No combing or shakiness or one channel showing up on the other etc.
Note however, I'm using 2 impact VCB cards and 2 channels on each -- I realize from other posts I could get the 3rd RCA jack working (and s-video for that matter) by playing with card config, but I like using the 2 cards with 2 cameras each and enjoying the close to 7 fps. This is how I'm going to deploy and I'll switch back to 640x480 only if the detail is required after testing at site.
Next build of this or an upgrade for this box, I think I'll try one of the 4 port with 4 chips and BNC connectors on the back BT848a cards that Kodicomm makes, but doesn't seem to sell direct on their website. I found a link to a guy who resells these via his own simple Paypal shopping site and I think he wanted like $70 for one of these. This way I can get up to like 30 fps on each channel for really nice event recording in modect mode. Put in 2 and you have an 8 channel setup.
This was my first setup and I'm really excited about this.
I built a $200 headless box from parts at Newegg (AMD Athlon 2 dual-core for about $50, Foxconn MB for about $50, WD green 0.5 TB drive cheap, and the Impact cards for $39 each. Add $25 worth of 1 GB of RAM with Fedora 14 loaded by pxeboot (no boot media on CD or whatever needed!) and boom -- I've got a 4 channel DVR that rivals the $500 - $1000 kits you can buy. I'm using the Videsecu Bullet cameras I can find for $35-$45 from Amazon.
Lastly -- I bought my 100', 75', and BNC to RCA converters and couplers from monoprice.com You can to 100' BNC cable for $13 single qty and $12 for 2 or more. Use USPS priority mail for shipping and you can put together a pretty cool setup on the cheap. The cable from them is RG-59 75 ohm and it's got a strong jacket on it (fairly thick for RG-58/59 cable) and I can't wait to start watching the web interface remotely once this is setup.
I've already got a second "customer" for this, so I will have no problem helping people out on the cheap by building zoneminder setups that are internet accessible -- especially when they use the custom embedded linux wireless/wired routers I build for indoor and outdoor use. Those are PC-Engines Alix boards with high power radios to do 2.4, 5.8, 900mhz etc. By combining these two fields, you can do a ton with this stuff!
Good luck.
Your camera settings are identical to mine.
I can't check the 'images' config page because the box is not up right now -- I'm going to deploy it tonight or tomorrow. I can check it next time I bring it up -- I'll try to remember to look, but looking at it from memory it looks sane to me. I remember I changed the ffmpeg path from /usr/local/bin to /usr/bin like you have and I was able to create AVI, and MPEG videos from my events no problem. I didn't think ffmpeg was required to just capture JPG images from the Impact cards for modect or monitor mode, but I could be wrong. ffmpeg isn't standard on fedora due to patent rules perhaps, so I added AtRPMs to my repo list and installed the pre-built version for F14 from there w/o a hitch.
One silly question -- since all of the ZM stuff runs as user apache who has like no privileges, did you make sure your /dev/video0 device node is world readable? The zm-fix tool did that for me. You can manually just do:
chmod 666 /dev/video0
As the root user to achieve this. Then restart zoneminder services with the same settings and see if you get a picture.
I found out to go to 640x480 I had to increase shared memory per the documentation. I was getting the "combing" effect since it interlaces the frames when above 320x240 IIRC, but I turned off "multi frame capture" and set the number of frames to capture to 4 I think and that got me like 2.5 FPS per channel and very little of the combing -- I wanted the hi res to catch license plates perhaps when cars go by the cameras.
If I go back to 320x240 for each channel and enable multi-frame capture with the number of frames to capture set at 2 (my current settings I think) I get like 6-7 FPS from each channel and everything looks stable and clear. No combing or shakiness or one channel showing up on the other etc.
Note however, I'm using 2 impact VCB cards and 2 channels on each -- I realize from other posts I could get the 3rd RCA jack working (and s-video for that matter) by playing with card config, but I like using the 2 cards with 2 cameras each and enjoying the close to 7 fps. This is how I'm going to deploy and I'll switch back to 640x480 only if the detail is required after testing at site.
Next build of this or an upgrade for this box, I think I'll try one of the 4 port with 4 chips and BNC connectors on the back BT848a cards that Kodicomm makes, but doesn't seem to sell direct on their website. I found a link to a guy who resells these via his own simple Paypal shopping site and I think he wanted like $70 for one of these. This way I can get up to like 30 fps on each channel for really nice event recording in modect mode. Put in 2 and you have an 8 channel setup.
This was my first setup and I'm really excited about this.
I built a $200 headless box from parts at Newegg (AMD Athlon 2 dual-core for about $50, Foxconn MB for about $50, WD green 0.5 TB drive cheap, and the Impact cards for $39 each. Add $25 worth of 1 GB of RAM with Fedora 14 loaded by pxeboot (no boot media on CD or whatever needed!) and boom -- I've got a 4 channel DVR that rivals the $500 - $1000 kits you can buy. I'm using the Videsecu Bullet cameras I can find for $35-$45 from Amazon.
Lastly -- I bought my 100', 75', and BNC to RCA converters and couplers from monoprice.com You can to 100' BNC cable for $13 single qty and $12 for 2 or more. Use USPS priority mail for shipping and you can put together a pretty cool setup on the cheap. The cable from them is RG-59 75 ohm and it's got a strong jacket on it (fairly thick for RG-58/59 cable) and I can't wait to start watching the web interface remotely once this is setup.
I've already got a second "customer" for this, so I will have no problem helping people out on the cheap by building zoneminder setups that are internet accessible -- especially when they use the custom embedded linux wireless/wired routers I build for indoor and outdoor use. Those are PC-Engines Alix boards with high power radios to do 2.4, 5.8, 900mhz etc. By combining these two fields, you can do a ton with this stuff!
Good luck.
malk315:
Try 560*420 for the default shared memory value or increase (150 - 200%) the shmall and shmmax values for higher. Any higher resolution, for me, results in noticeable interlace (using analogue 1/3 inch ccd cameras). I also use the BGR24 palette for no other reason other then I've had no issues; If it ain't broke...
Also -- I can only get a good picture at 320x240 on NTSC. Is that the maximum resolution I can expect? I was hoping for more, but 640x480 doesn't work and I'm not sure what other resolutions to try (I think I tried 720x480 but have yet to try 720x576 which I thought I read somewhere is the max res for the card). I'd like to get a little higher res so if we need to try and zoom in on a license plate of a car on the property we're monitoring, we have a decent amount of pixels to work with.
Try 560*420 for the default shared memory value or increase (150 - 200%) the shmall and shmmax values for higher. Any higher resolution, for me, results in noticeable interlace (using analogue 1/3 inch ccd cameras). I also use the BGR24 palette for no other reason other then I've had no issues; If it ain't broke...