ZoneMinder Forums

Which would use less system resources(cpu/memory/etc)?

8 Port Capture card(with non-ip cameras) or 8 IP cameras?

Image would be colour, 640x480

The capture card scenario would use less resources for sure. You're off loading the work to the capture card.

On another note, here is what Lee Sharp (forum regular) says about analog, (non-ip):

"Analog is defined by the NTSC standard, which is 640x480, interlaced. That means that each frame is actually every other line, at 320 lines. The horizontal resolution is whatever you want, as it is an analog stream. But, if you do not keep it 320x240 you get a flat wide image. You can sample at 640x480 but you will not get a clean picture."

Exno wrote:The capture card scenario would use less resources for sure. You're off loading the work to the capture card.

Software compression cards (Which are the only cards supported by Zoneminder) require the processor to do the work.

Hardware compression cards (Which will not work with Zoneminder) do the encoding on the card, thus saving _tons_ of CPU.

We have been developing a V4L2 driver for our hardware compression cards and we can encode 16 camera feeds and only use 8% CPU, compared to around 50-60% CPU for a software compression card.

Ah, I see

curtis.
Really? That is interesting. Is it ready?

jameswilson wrote:curtis.
Really? That is interesting. Is it ready?

The driver currently has working V4L2 for display (MJPEG) and video output. The MPEG4 part should be soon - but I don't believe Zoneminder will be able to make much use of the MPEG4 support.

With that I'll close, since I was really using the capture card example as an example of handling CPU differently based on the card (software vs hardware encoding). The V4L2 MPEG4 support was built into the driver for the next major release of our commercial software and I'm not going to pollute the forums with that information.