ZoneMinder Forums

Hi,

If I want to concentrate in a 4 camera solution, is there any page / site in which I could read some type of comparison between video boards (four inputs) supported by zoneminder ?

For example xxxx is better in quality than zzzz , or the chip ssss it is recommended because bla bla .

thanks !

Nope. You need to decide what resolution you need, and at what frame rates. That will dictate the rest of your requirements.

Nope. You need to decide what resolution you need, and at what frame rates. That will dictate the rest of your requirements.

OK , I agree with you, I'll change my question. Is there any list /page /site with boards supported by zoneminder with the characteristics of each one , in order to choose the appropriate board for my project ?

thanks again

Nope again. The Blue Cherry store has a lot of good stuff. Not only does it work with zoneminder, the company supports it with zoneminder. There are also a number of cheap cards that have varying degrees of success. How about telling us what you want to do?

well .. thanks again

actually I can tell you what I was doing. We were making test with a pico 2000 compatible card from local market (45 USD) and with one from Linux Media Labs ( 79 USD + shiping) and we didn't note any difference.
Because of that we want to learn more about cards and their qualities.

In general we are very happy with the possibilities of zoneminder but we feel that the video quality is poorer than some solutions using windows, and we need to compete with them. In this sense I can't understand why the quality of the image using for example xawtv is better than the quality of the same camera viewed on zoneminder.

thanks and sorry by my mixed opinions

Now this we can answer!

A lot of cards are crap. If your video quality is poor, that may be the case. We have found the video quality of zoneminder to be much better than other solutions. Note that we have sold Geovision (real and clone) SkyVision, LuxRiot, and a hand full of other trash not worth mentioning. So, some cards;

ProVideo - Solid cards with very good support. They can get hot, so I slap heat sinks on them. They are more expensive than the ebay stuff, but there is a reason. They work with ZoneMinder and LuxRiot, so you have a Windows option if you need it.

The "Chinese 240 fps 8 port" - This is a Conxient based card. A lot of talk on this one. Seems to be on ebay often. The hard part is knowing what you are getting, as something may look like a supported card, but not be one. This one has mixed reviews. Stock, they get hot as hell, and start to fail soon. I have been in touch with a factory, and they just sent us a spec run. (We had them address a number of concerns) They seem rock solid so far. We might offer them to forum members after testing.

The "Chinese 240 fps 16 port" - This one is a ssa based card. No one seems to be able to get channel 2 working. That and it has bad bleed between channels. Junk.

My advice is to get a solid card for testing to see what ZM can do. Something like http://store.bluecherry.net/4_port_vide ... pv-149.htm will show you ZM as good as it gets. After you know good, you can try to find cheap. That can be an expensive quest. (Wanna buy 10 GV-800 copies that don't work in Linux? And not well in Windows?)