ZoneMinder Forums

Sorry to bother everyone, hopefully this is something easy I am just missing. I set up zoneminder twice now, first using the debian repo to do it automatically, and then later using the source to compile it from scratch. I can get it up and running and recording and playing back just fine.

However, motion detection seems to be useless. I set it to 'Modect' and it will immediately register an event and start recording. The score information will be all zeroes for the most part. On occasion, it will register an alarm frame here or there when there is a big change on the screen, and I can go in and view the debug frame and it will have it highlighted nicely. However, it will continue recording until i do a 'disable events' for that monitor. How do i get it to only record when there is an actual motion event, and stop not long after?

You likely need to tune your zone(s) for your cams field of view.
http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.ph ... ning_Zones

There is not one magic setting that works for all as a setting for a cam thats inside a 20x20 room with a 4mm lens is going to be different than a cam in a 30x40 room with a 8mm lens.

cordel wrote:You likely need to tune your zone(s) for your cams field of view.
http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.ph ... ning_Zones

There is not one magic setting that works for all as a setting for a cam thats inside a 20x20 room with a 4mm lens is going to be different than a cam in a 30x40 room with a 8mm lens.

I have messed with these settings to no end. The problem is that the diagnostic info doesn't match up with what actually happens. The problem has now inverted on me, after I cleaned up my debian install and re-built zm more carefully. After finally getting it running, it will not sense any motion at all, even when the high sensitivity preset is used. The camera is watching a driveway and there are cars driving in and out of frame and it decides that there's not enough motion to warrant an alarm.

I am having no luck at all getting this to work right. The highest sensitivity setting with a full screen zone shows no motion detected, unless there is an event where the camera gets unplugged. However, in MODECT it will still record nonstop. I gave up on motion detection and set it to record only, because it uses a lot less CPU.

If there is an experienced member of the forum who could lend me a hand by logging in to my ZM web interface and looking over my settings, it would be much appreciated!

Well just in case anyone is following this topic, the issues I was having seem to have been cleared up by a manual wipe of all zoneminder material from my machine, and a source install. The debian package seems very unreliable in its install/remove procedure, the only good thing about it is that it left behind the zoneminder script in /etc/init.d so I don't have to worry about manually using zmpkg.pl. Compiling by hand, although a pain the first time around, is now my preferred method.

The situation now is that the motion detection is *extremely* insensitive. My camera watches a driveway and there are cars going across the top half of the screen all day long. I started with the 'best- high sensitivity' preset and have been whittling the settings down gradually. After basically halfing all the settings, it still only detects about one frame of a car going by, and it highlights the spot where the car *was*, not the car itself.

What are your buffers set to?

Image Buffer, Warmup Frames, Pre/Post, and Alarm Frame Count

Also, when it "records forever", you probably have your image blend % set too low. This variable acts as a sort of "attack/decay" of the image recording. Too low and it records forever, too high and it doesn't record at all.

Also, are you only using the single "default" zone no this camera? If so, I think you'll find you'll have a lot more luck with accuracy by breaking this up into 3 or more zones, even if it just means cutting the screen range in 1/3 sections.

darkpaw wrote:What are your buffers set to?

Image Buffer, Warmup Frames, Pre/Post, and Alarm Frame Count

Also, when it "records forever", you probably have your image blend % set too low. This variable acts as a sort of "attack/decay" of the image recording. Too low and it records forever, too high and it doesn't record at all.

Also, are you only using the single "default" zone no this camera? If so, I think you'll find you'll have a lot more luck with accuracy by breaking this up into 3 or more zones, even if it just means cutting the screen range in 1/3 sections.

may i know where to set the image buffer ??

click the source on the zoneminder console, then the buffers tab.