FFMPEG & RTSP Blue Screen

[tyler_h]

Good day everyone,

I have an RTSP ONVIF protocol camera that I have connected successfully to Zoneminder 1.28.0. Everything works fine most of the time. It seems about once per week my FFMPEG source type camera will crash with a blue screen. It was quite a bit worse on FFMPEG builds in the past, the latest build seems to be able to keep me up for a week where the previous builds I'd get about 2-3 days. I used to use the LIBVLC source but I found it was too choppy and would set off too many false alarms.

The log has this error through out:

zmc_m2 22799 ERR Unable to read packet from stream 0: error -1606004923 zm_ffmpeg_camera.cpp

I believe the line was 251, not sure why it didn't copy when I had the log open, upon trying to revisit the log, the web interface is brutally slow and after about 10 minutes, the log will not load.

Any suggestions on what to do ?

[bbunge]

RTSP uses UDP by default. Force TCP by adding ?tcp at the end of the Source Path. Might also lower the key frame interval and frame rate (in the camera settings).

bb

[river100]

A note on adding the ?tcp at the end of the source path.
i am testing two installs of ubuntu with ZM 1.28.0.
One of them is a few weeks old the other done around feb 12th, 2015.

Putting the ?tcp at the end of the source path works with the older 1.28.0 vers, but not with the newer vers done in feb 2015.
On the newer vers if put at the end I loose the video stream from the cam.
Both installs have the same camera .
Adding the ?tcp to the Options section below the source path works with the newer ZM vers. This might vary on camera models, not sure.

The cameras are Dahua IP cams using H264 and RTP/RTSP or RTP/Unicast as stream type and ffmpeg as source.

[SteveGilvarry]

Current method of selecting tcp over up in ffmpeg source is in Source Tab of the camera, change Remote Method to RTP/RTSP, this uses TCP and stops packet loss on ffmpeg UDP connections. But most people with UDP packet loss see half complete images that trigger motion, not sure if blue screen is a symptom.