SAA7134 card won't work in colour

[Dazzawrx]

Hello All,

My first post along with a big learning curve with linux (newbie). I have an old P4 2.0Ghz, 1 gig ram laying around that i wanted to put to use as a security system. I purchased a "Generic" 8ch dvr card with Philips SAA7134 chips and surprise surprise, the software that came with it was crap and only ran on MS. Enter Zoneminder. I have installed the livecd Ubuntu 10.04 bundled with ZM 1.24.3 and have traveled along ok untill now...
After a clean install, i can install Xawtv, fire it up and select Pal from the config menu and get a nice clean Colour picture displayed. Now over to ZM, i can config the system to capture all channels from the card but only at "320x240 GREY", no matter what i do i can't get any colour? Picture is displaying fine in grey, just nothing else. I have been researching as much as I can on the forum and have tried playing with some settings like memory config and video card settings but nothing really changes, Have i missed something along the way? How do I make ZM “grab” the image in the same format Xawtv is?
Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks.

[bb99]

I'm thinking 1.24.3 started using mmap instead of shared but just in case have a look in /etc/sysctl.conf or determine memory management method the CD used when installed. Reads like it could be a shared memory issue but I'd recheck the palettes. First step is to disable all but one monitor by unchecking enable on the monitor general tab. Next recheck palettes: Start with BGR24 giving the change at least a good 30 seconds after saving to determine if it's working. Post back your results, especially memory management type.

[Dazzawrx]

Hi bb99, Iv'e taken your suggestions on board and kept on trying some other ideas, i have removed any memory config changes within /etc/sysctl.conf and left "options saa7134 card=33,33,33,33,33,33,33,33" at the end of /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf and went through different Pal and Palette settings. Now I have video showing on the one enabled monitor whilst selecting different palettes, some only show grey images, some don't show anything and BRG32 now gives a yellow tint to the image? Not sure if this is progress yet! Also, not sure how to check the memory management method?

[Dazzawrx]

O.k, a bit of an update, I thought i'd try going back to the old ZMLarch live cd (Zoneminder 1.24.2) that I used with great success on my first attempt at this with an old Pico 4ch card. The clean install of ZMLarch was able to “see” every one of the 8 channels on the new card AND in glorious colour (BRG24, PAL even at 640x480) without having to make any modification to any files!!
So the big question now… how do I make an updated ZM 1.24.4 (or even stay at 1.24.2) work like the ZMLarch does (in respect to the video side of things) in a more user friendly environment like Ubuntu 10.04 – 11xx?