Issues with Ubuntu 10.4 & ZM 1.24.2

bj0nes · Post by **bj0nes** » Wed Mar 24, 2010 8:41 pm

Hi:
I've been running ZM 1.23.3 on CentOS for a while, and I'm testing out Ubuntu Server 10.4 (beta) with 1.24.2 on a new hard drive in the same box. I'm having a couple of issues and I'd appreciate any suggestions. I'm not sure if this is the right place for this, the hardware certainly works fine under 1.23.3 so it might be related to the newer features in 1.24.x.

I've got 6 analog cameras hooked to an 8 port PV-149 card. In the old setup they are capturing NTSC in RGB24 so the images are in color; in the new setup if I choose anything other than NTSC Grey I get nothing. I've tried every other setting for both types of V4L. The other problem is, the cameras which are sharing the video devices (ie. /dev/video0 channels 0 & 1) are splitting the image; basically showing the bottom half of the scene on the top & bottom of the image.

In modprobe.d/bttv.conf I've tried options bttv card=98,98,98,98, options bttv card=2,98,98,98,98, and several other settings, but the problems remain.

Thanks for any ideas,
Bobby

whatboy · Post by **whatboy** » Wed Mar 24, 2010 10:23 pm

Uncheck V4L_MULTI_BUFFER and set CAPTURES_PER_FRAME to more than 1, restart zm after every change...

bj0nes · Post by **bj0nes** » Thu Mar 25, 2010 7:47 pm

That's great, unchecking the V4L_MULTI_BUFFER fixed my split image problem. The images now look better than they do in 1.23.3.

Now all I need is to figure out how to get color back!

Thanks,
Bobby

whatboy · Post by **whatboy** » Thu Mar 25, 2010 8:33 pm

Try V4L2 and RGB24... stop ZM do the changes, start ZM...

bj0nes · Post by **bj0nes** » Fri Mar 26, 2010 2:12 pm

I've tried that, but no luck. The source turns red & stays that way, but as soon as I set it back to grey (even without a restart) they go green & start working again.
Thanks,
Bobby

timcraig · Post by **timcraig** » Fri Mar 26, 2010 5:09 pm

On my PV-155, I am using Video For Linux 2, device format=NTSC and Capture Palette=RGB555

bj0nes · Post by **bj0nes** » Fri Mar 26, 2010 6:12 pm

I think the PV-155 is petty much the same as my PV-149, but I can't seem to get any of the RGB settings to work under Ubuntu. I keep wondering if it's something to do with the way the bttv driver is recognizing the card under Ubuntu; if the driver thinks it can only do grey, that would explain it. But other than the settings I've already tried in the bttv.conf, I don't know what else to try on that front.
Thanks,
Bobby

kwire · Post by **kwire** » Fri Mar 26, 2010 10:16 pm

I know it's a pain but I had trouble finding a palette that worked with mine too. I thought RGB??? should work, but I tried them all and found that BRG24 and some others worked.

Have you tried them all?

mastertheknife · Post by **mastertheknife** » Sat Apr 03, 2010 12:42 pm

Grayscale and RGB24(often called BGR24?) are the only formats ZM supports natively without a need to do conversion, so make sure to try that!

Please upload some lines of your system log (tail -n20 /var/log/messages) so we can see the error.

tlhonmey · Post by **tlhonmey** » Sun Jun 06, 2010 6:05 am

I am having precisely the same problem, (though I only have one camera at the moment,) Ubuntu 10.04, ZoneMinder 1.24.2. The only palette that works is grey.

According to zmu, my card supports a goodly number of palettes, and I have actually tried every one available. xawtv can capture video in colour. /var/log/messages claims the capture has started with no error messages, but nothing shows up in ZM for any palette other than grey.

I have used this same card in a previous installation, but it had an older version of ZM, and an older version of Ubuntu. I can go back to that if necessary, but it would be nice to figure out what is going on.

Since it is neither a critical installation, nor does it currently have any sensitive recordings (I currently have it watching soap-operas for testing purposes) I can pretty well post any information that might be necessary to figure out what is going on. I also have no qualms about trying crazy things that might screw it all up. So, if any of you who know more about how video systems work than I do are up for tearing into it, I'm available to help.

bj0nes · Post by **bj0nes** » Thu Sep 02, 2010 7:37 pm

mastertheknife wrote:Grayscale and RGB24(often called BGR24?) are the only formats ZM supports natively without a need to do conversion, so make sure to try that!

Please upload some lines of your system log (tail -n20 /var/log/messages) so we can see the error.

I'm finally revisiting this - the gray is really ok for our needs but I'd like to figure it out. I have tried all the settings (RGB24, etc), though I couldn't swear that I rebooted between each one. Here are a few lines from tail, but they're not telling me anything...

Sep 2 15:35:20 zoneminder zma_m2[31446]: INF [Hall1: 910000 - Processing at 30.30 fps]
Sep 2 15:35:30 zoneminder zmc_dvideo2[870]: INF [Hall1: 150219000 - Capturing at 29.41 fps]
Sep 2 15:35:51 zoneminder zma_m1[20156]: INF [Lobby: 8637000 - Processing at 30.30 fps]
Sep 2 15:35:53 zoneminder zmc_dvideo3[865]: INF [Lobby: 150220000 - Capturing at 29.41 fps]
Sep 2 15:35:53 zoneminder zma_m2[31446]: INF [Hall1: 911000 - Processing at 30.30 fps]
Sep 2 15:36:03 zoneminder zmc_dvideo2[870]: INF [Hall1: 150220000 - Capturing at 30.30 fps]
Sep 2 15:36:04 zoneminder zma_m3[20157]: INF [Hall2: 1447000 - Processing at 4.98 fps]
Sep 2 15:36:24 zoneminder zma_m4[22797]: INF [Hall3: 1015604 - Gone into alarm state]
Sep 2 15:36:24 zoneminder zma_m4[22797]: INF [Hall3: 1015604 - Opening new event 148236, alarm start]

Thanks for your help!