better quality captures?

[stzaske]

Okay, I have Zoneminder up and running, and I'm trying to improve the quality of my video captures. Here are my questions:

Is 352x288 usually the highest quality capture people do? My card doesnt seem to like higher. Is there a way to determine what "rez's" my camera and card with support?

My streaming videos (not MPEG) are very interlaced. Does Zoneminder have a way to capture or tranlate to a progressive signal?

Any other suggestions for improving the quality of my shots?

Thank you kindly, -=STZ=-

[zoneminder]

You should be able to use zmu -q to query what the maximum capture size your card thinks it can get it, though this may not be 100% accurate.

Interlacing normally occurs on the card itself, ZM doesn't interlace images at all. You can check this thread for a discussion of interlacing and a contributed patch which may help you (by slowing down capture I think, I've not tried it).

Other than that, the main factor influencing quality of images is usually quality of hardware, particularly cameras which have the largest effect.

Phil

[lazyleopard]

by slowing down capture I think

Yep, it discards at least one frame between captures each time there's an input change, to give the bt8x8 chip time to get the even and odd half-frames of an interlaced image in the correct sequence...

The higher resolutions don't give you all that much if there's a moving target, though.

[stzaske]

Well here is an example of a screen capture from my camera:



Like Lazy, I prefer to have a higher resolution then motion but with poor quality. I'll search the forums, but can anyone suggest a good outdoor nightvision camera with good/great quality? Hopefully without breaking the bank.

-=STZ=-

[Ruler]

I'm using HEAT cameras and they appear to be very good at switching from color to nightvision (a little light goes a LONG way with these cameras), but I'm also having interlacing problems. I don't believe that the cameras are at fault though. I've discussed security cameras with several different individuals who design/install security systems for a living and they all say that the HEAT cameras are their camera of choice currently. (Granted, they're between $200 and $250 each though.)

[Ruler]

Fixed the interlacing problem using lazy's patch (thanks again lazy ) and I can now see why these cameras are the preferred ones by the pros. CVC-637EX and CVC-6800EX are the model numbers. Again, expensive if you have more than a couple of cameras, but awesome technology.

[JasonH]

Is there a way to determine what "rez's" my camera and card with support?

Yes, I've ordered This guys book which comes with a CCTV test chart that you can read the horizontal and vertical resolution from directly. Unfortunately it hasn't arrived yet so I can't tell you if it works but the site is quite an interesting read.

The "Setup and Instruction Manual" PDF file contains more information.

J