Problems with my webcams

[migger]

Hi all

I just started trying out zoneminder on ubuntu desktop 8.10

After a while i finally figured out how to set the program up, allthough i am not sure everything is done correctly

But my question at hand, is that I got two USB webcams, which I would like to use, as the security cameras. At first I could not get eny picture from either one of them, but after some time i discovered, that I could use one of my cams, if I set the capture width to 160 and capture height to 120, but if I make the command

Code: Select all

zmu -d /dev/video0 -q -v

I'll get this info:
Video Capabilities
Name: QCM USB Camera
Type: 1
Can capture
Video Channels: 1
Audio Channels: 0
Maximum Width: 320
Maximum Height: 240
Minimum Width: 160
Minimum Height: 120
Window Attributes
X Offset: 0
Y Offset: 0
Width: 320
Height: 240
Picture Attributes
Palette: 4 - 24bit RGB
Colour Depth: 24
Brightness: 32768
Hue: 32768
Colour :32768
Contrast: 32768
Whiteness: 32768
Channel 0 Attributes
Name: Camera
Channel: 0
Flags: 0
Type: 2 - Camera
Format: 0 - PAL

And for my second camera /dev/video1 I'll get this info:

Video Capabilities
Name: CIF Single Chip
Type: 1
Can capture
Video Channels: 1
Audio Channels: 0
Maximum Width: 352
Maximum Height: 288
Minimum Width: 48
Minimum Height: 32
Window Attributes
X Offset: 0
Y Offset: 0
Width: 352
Height: 288
Picture Attributes
Palette: 0 - Unknown
Colour Depth: 8
Brightness: 1028
Hue: 0
Colour :0
Contrast: 0
Whiteness: 0
Channel 0 Attributes
Name: pac207
Channel: 0
Flags: 0
Type: 2 - Camera
Format: 0 - PAL

So please, can enyone tell me if I made some bad setup, or could it be my hardware?

So to sum up, my first cam works, but only at a low resolution and second cam won't show video at eny resolutions, but they both works fine in Cheese for example.

Please help

[migger]

Are there really no one who can help me?

[newvisionantenna]

What type of usb webcam's do you have for example? I have ton's of them laying around the house and have no problem getting them to work, it's all a matter of the right settings and correct driver.

[nuck]

Your output from running zmu -d /dev/video0 -q -v is telling you everything you should need to know. It's a low resolution (320x240 max) 24 bit rgb camera. Looks to me to be a logitech unit and should work ok if you have it working properly with the kernel..

The report for the camera on /dev/video1 says it's max resolution is 352x288 and you can't be too sure about the pallette since it's not reported so you'll pretty much have to do the trial and error thing. A Google search on that camera (pac207) turns up lots of info.

[migger]

Hey thanks for thelp so far.

I got my my first webcam to work properly (video0) don't no how though, just reinstalled everything from zoneminder til apache and set it up again.

I haven't got the second cam to work yet, but I'll keep trying

[zoneminder]

Make sure you are not being bitten by this issue from the Docs

USB bus problems. If you have multiple USB cameras on one bus then it can appear as if ZoneMinder is causing your cameras to fail. This is because the bandwidth available to cameras is limited by the fairly low USB speed. In order to use more than one USB camera with ZoneMinder (or any application) you will need to inform the driver that there are other cameras requiring bandwidth. This is usually done with a simple module option. Examples are usb_alt=<n> for the OV511 driver and cams=<n> for CPIA etc. Check your driver documentation for more details. Be aware however that sharing cameras in this way on one bus will also limit the capture rate due to the reduced bandwidth.