Can't get video stream

jondecker76 · Post by **jondecker76** » Wed Sep 29, 2010 12:59 am

Trying to move from Motion over the ZM...

I have a Vivotek VS7100 IP server connected to a PTZ camera.
I can easily access the MJPEG stream from anywhere on the network at
192.168.100.200/video1.mjpg

I set up a new monitor in ZM, and set it to be a remote source type in the General tab.
On the source tab,I used the settings:
Remote Protocol: HTTP
Remote Method: Simple
Remote Host Name:192.168.100.200
Remote Host Port: 80
Remote Host Path:/video1.mjpg

I have also tried both 24-bit color and greyscale

While trying to view the monitor within ZM - but it is just black, and shows 0 FPS.

Any suggestions?

edit: Also, just to be more clear, both the IP camera and the computer running ZM are on the same subnet

jondecker76 · Post by **jondecker76** » Wed Sep 29, 2010 9:24 pm

bump...

Surely someone knows what the problem could be?????

kp4djt · Post by **kp4djt** » Thu Sep 30, 2010 3:21 am

Can you access it directly from the browser? I.e.
http://192.168.100.200/video1.mjpg

On my cameras, I can do so and see the video stream in the browser. Also
you may need to put the login:password in front of the URL like this:
http://login:pwd@192.168.100.200/video1.mjpg

In your source panel you will have it like this:
Remote Host Name:login:pwd@192.168.100.200

The rest appears to be OK>

jondecker76 · Post by **jondecker76** » Thu Sep 30, 2010 2:02 pm

Thanks for your reply.

Yes, I can view the MJPEG stream directly in Firefox.
I have tried both authenticated and unauthenticated (with and without username:password@ip_address)

I have also tried it with the path to a still jpg image with no results as well.

Perhaps its something with my setup?

I installed Zoneminder from the repositories on an Ubuntu 10.04 server edition box 64 bit(that doubles as my fileserver).
Apache, PHP, MySQL and OpenSSH server were already installed prior to installing Zoneminder. I also manually copied cambozola.jar unto /usr/share/zoneminder, and enabled it in the optiosn.
This server is also headless, and I only access it from other desktops on the network (they are all on the same subnet)
On any desktop on my network, I can get a full videostream at 192.168.100.200/video1.mjpg
Using the same settings in ZM setup (as shown in my first post), I still get no video in ZM.
My ip camera doesn't require authentication, but just to try it, I did set up authentication on the IP camera, and tried it with the user:pass@host in ZM setup, and that didn't work either.

Is there a log somewhere that might help me out?

jondecker76 · Post by **jondecker76** » Thu Sep 30, 2010 2:15 pm

Still having no luck, I just tried making sure i had enough shared memory, and entered:

Code: Select all

sudo echo "256000000" > /proc/sys/kernel/shmmax
sudo service apache2 restart
sudo service zoneminder restart

But I still get a blank screen trying to view the camera.

I have been searching online, and keep seeing references to making sure that Device Format and Capture Pallet are correct, but I don't see those options anywhere in the monitor setup (I'm running ZM 1.24.2)

jondecker76 · Post by **jondecker76** » Thu Sep 30, 2010 2:26 pm

Hmm... I finally found some logs in /tmp

zmwatch.log is filled with:

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09/30/2010 10:20:09.325054 zmwatch[21486].ERR [Can't get shared memory id '7a6d0001', 1: No such file or directory]
09/30/2010 10:20:19.326601 zmwatch[21486].ERR [Can't get shared memory id '7a6d0001', 1: No such file or directory]

so Its looking like a shared memory issue.. What to do now?

kp4djt · Post by **kp4djt** » Thu Sep 30, 2010 3:22 pm

I am running 8 cameras all but one are 640x40 (one is 1280x720), here is
my settings.

kernel.shmmax = 402653184
kernel.shmall = 268435456

That is the one that always gets me I find out. I have to watch that I do not
forget to set these things.

jondecker76 · Post by **jondecker76** » Thu Sep 30, 2010 6:18 pm

kernel.shmmax = 402653184
kernel.shmall = 268435456

I just tried these same settings and I still get the same blank screen while trying to view the camera.

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jondecker76@fileserver:~$ sudo -i
[sudo] password for jondecker76: 
root@fileserver:~# echo 268435456 >/proc/sys/kernel/shmall 
root@fileserver:~# echo 402653184 >/proc/sys/kernel/shmmax
root@fileserver:~# sudo service apache2 restart
 * Restarting web server apache2                                                apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1 for ServerName
 ... waiting apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1 for ServerName
                                                                         [ OK ]
root@fileserver:~# sudo service zoneminder restart
Stopping ZoneMinder: success 

Starting ZoneMinder: success

I couldn't imagine that I should be having shared memory problems anyways, as I'm only trying to grab one single camera at a measly 320x240 resolution

any more suggestions?

kp4djt · Post by **kp4djt** » Thu Sep 30, 2010 8:15 pm

Yes you should not for one cam. I went through the same sort of thing with
the ACTi cameras, seems several others had tried it to and were not able
to get it to work then I realised that I had not put something quite right in
the addressing, as soon as a changed it, the whole thing worked. I am just
trying to remember what it was, it was with the login/pwd, I recall that.

jondecker76 · Post by **jondecker76** » Fri Oct 01, 2010 5:22 pm

Well, I've been trying for a few days now, and I'm about ready to just give up and go back to motion.

No matter what shmall/shmmax settings I use, zmwatch.log is still just filled with

Code: Select all

0/01/2010 13:18:39.283469 zmwatch[9085].ERR [Can't get shared memory id '7a6d0001', 1: No such file or directory]

Again, this was trying for just one single camera at 320x240, with a ring buffer size of 40... This should be well under 10MB of shared memory and the default of 100 should have worked without a hitch. Top shows that I have over 500MB of free memory.

Does anyone have any other suggestions before I pull the plug?

Also, I followed everything here as well:
http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.ph ... 2C_etc.%29 as I'm also running Ubuntu 10.04 server 64 bit

bb99 · Post by **bb99** » Fri Oct 01, 2010 11:18 pm

Apparently it will work: http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewto ... tek+vs7100. But no settings are given. We will need to see how you set the server up in detail to sort through the settings, http://support.apexcctv.com/Downloads/V ... manual.pdf . This bugger is highly configurable! One wrong tick or value will cause what your getting. Forget the camera, ZM is married to the 7100 and it's settings. I'm not familiar with Motion at all, but it probably needed a certain path to access the video stream so please post it; we'll have a look.

jondecker76 · Post by **jondecker76** » Fri Oct 01, 2010 11:42 pm

Thanks for your help

Yes, I can access the stream just fine through firefox (and motion) at
192.168.100.200/video1.mjpg
(this is the actual MJPEG stream)

I'm confident that my problem isn't path related at all (I'm very experienced with IP cameras, and this VS7100 IP video server as well - I have been using it under motion for years)\
I'm getting the "Can't get shared memory id" error in zmwatch.log, which is normally fixed by adjusting shmall/shmmax settings (which I've tried again and again) - so I know 100% that is the problem - but I can't figure out why changing shmall/shmmax on my system (with restarts to apache and ZM) won't fix the problem.

The server that ZM is running on only has 1GB of memory, but Top does show 500+MB free, so I can't imagine that could be the issue.

I'd gladly give ssh access to my box to anyone that would be willing to help!

thanks

bb99 · Post by **bb99** » Sat Oct 02, 2010 12:44 am

Shared memory probably isn't your problem. I think ZM tries to access shared memory at the base address and nothing is there (check your base address in options against what is reported in error); this is your problem. "Can't Shmget" would be 100% shared memory values but your error can be nothing to get without other tell tale symptoms. By your posts, I can tell you've done your home work and are familiar with your equipment so maybe it's time to move out of the box such as using regexp instead of http, or you could email the manufacturer for stream and port information; they often provide the break through clue.

jondecker76 · Post by **jondecker76** » Sat Oct 02, 2010 2:39 am

The reason I use the IP serveris because of its awesome documentation - they hide absolutely nothing, and they even have an HTTP API to access most anything on a low level.
http://www.vivotek.com/downloadfiles/do ... manual.pdf

I read another post a few minutes ago with a similar problem, and they changed to regexp mode and it fixed his probelm. I'll try the same when I get home in the morning.

kp4djt · Post by **kp4djt** » Sat Oct 02, 2010 3:21 am

Can you give a public IP to access the camera, perhaps some of us could try
to access it and see what our results are?