Issues with saa7134 quad capture card - possible code fix?

[deldued]

I've been having constant problems with cameras timing out when using a generic quad SSA7134 card.

Looking at the logs, I constantly see:

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05/16/10 20:32:47.121708 zmc_dvideo2[-1].DB1-zm_monitor.cpp/1814 [Loaded monitor 4(Path), 1 zones]
05/16/10 20:32:47.121718 zmc_dvideo2[-1].INF-zmc.cpp/188 [Starting Capture]
05/16/10 20:34:49.535480 zmc_dvideo2[-1].WAR-zm_local_camera.cpp/1520 [Capture failure, possible signal loss?: Input/output error]
05/16/10 20:34:49.535554 zmc_dvideo2[-1].ERR-zmc.cpp/260 [Failed to capture image from monitor 4 (0/1)]

The camera feed will then go blank, the main ZM web page will show the feed in red, and I usually see an invalid date in the capture logs.


Looking at the source code, I see that it's this bit that fails (zm_local_camera.cpp):

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               if ( vidioctl( vid_fd, VIDIOC_DQBUF, &vid_buf ) < 0 )
                {
                    if ( errno == EIO )
                        Warning( "Capture failure, possible signal loss?: %s", strerror(errno) )
                    else
                        Error( "Unable to capture frame %d: %s", vid_buf.index, strerror(errno) )
                    return( -1 );
                }

Does anyone know of a simple solution, if not, would it be a good idea to modify the code with a retry loop rather than quitting out?

I've tried all the normal fixes, I don't think it's performance related since it makes little difference on what frame rate etc I set.



For reference, my modprobe options are:

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alias char-major-81 videodev
alias char-major-81-0 saa7134
options saa7134 card=97,97,97,97

Machine is Ubuntu 10.04, 64bit quad AMD, 4 GB Ram.

Thanks in advance for any help

[danisam]

HEllo Deldued,

I have the same error message with a ETHER9890 with 8 chip SSA7134.

Did you find a solution?

Best regards

[deldued]

I've sort of found a solution, but it may not help you..

I tried my above idea, but after several hours of trying to get Zone Minder to build from SVN on Ubuntu 10.04, I gave up.

Then things went really bad - and I had to clear every trace of Zone Minder from my machine before it would install properly from the Ubuntu repository.

Now, for some amazing reason, it seems to work.

I've just done the minimal setup so far - all I changed was to set the device path, format = PAL I, size = 384,288, palette = BGR24

I now have 4 cameras working with no errors at 25fps, in modect mode.

I will gradually start adding zones and tweaking the settings - each time I change something I'm leaving it a day to see what (if anything) breaks it.

I hope that is of some help, but probably wont be...