ZoneMinder Forums

I've searched and searched and searched and all I come across is information about interlacing. I know what interlacing is and how it works. What I am seeing does not appear to be interlacing.

What I am seeing is horizontal lines accross the image when there is motion, but outside the field of motion. When the issue happens it happens across all cameras. If I set all cameras to 30fps I will without a doubt see it. If I lower the framerate OR disable some of the cameras the issue will go away. It's almost like there is a bandwith limitation on the PCI bus.

I am using 8 chip/8 port BT787-based card with various analog cameras.

My setup is as follows:

ASUS P5BV-C mainboard
HP E200 SAS-RAID controller (PCI-E) -- OS on RAID 1, ZM data on RAID 0, but I had run this with a single disk, OS on PCI RAID-1 Adapatec controller w/ same results
openSUSE 11.3 (tested CentOS 5.5 w/ same results)
Generic 8 port/8 chip 878 card
Some PCI sound card (added later, doesn't affect the problem)

# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 3200/3210 Chipset DRAM Controller (rev 01)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 3200/3210 Chipset Host-Primary PCI Express Bridge (rev 01)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 1 (rev 01)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GR/GH/GHM (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 01)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GR/GH/GHM (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 6 (rev 01)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev e1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GB/GR (ICH7 Family) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH7 Family SATA AHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family SMBus Controller (rev 01)
01:01.0 PCI bridge: Hint Corp HiNT HB4 PCI-PCI Bridge (PCI6150) (rev 04)
01:02.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB Live! EMU10k1 (rev 07)
01:02.1 Input device controller: Creative Labs SB Live! Game Port (rev 07)
01:03.0 VGA compatible controller: XGI Technology Inc. (eXtreme Graphics Innovation) Z7/Z9 (XG20 core)
02:08.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Video Capture (rev 11)
02:08.1 Multimedia controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Audio Capture (rev 11)
02:09.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Video Capture (rev 11)
02:09.1 Multimedia controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Audio Capture (rev 11)
02:0a.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Video Capture (rev 11)
02:0a.1 Multimedia controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Audio Capture (rev 11)
02:0b.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Video Capture (rev 11)
02:0b.1 Multimedia controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Audio Capture (rev 11)
02:0c.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Video Capture (rev 11)
02:0c.1 Multimedia controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Audio Capture (rev 11)
02:0d.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Video Capture (rev 11)
02:0d.1 Multimedia controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Audio Capture (rev 11)
02:0e.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Video Capture (rev 11)
02:0e.1 Multimedia controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Audio Capture (rev 11)
02:0f.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Video Capture (rev 11)
02:0f.1 Multimedia controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Audio Capture (rev 11)
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8056 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 12)
04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8056 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 12)
06:00.0 PCI bridge: Broadcom EPB PCI-Express to PCI-X Bridge (rev b4)
07:04.0 PCI bridge: Broadcom BCM5785 [HT1000] PCI/PCI-X Bridge (rev b2)
07:08.0 RAID bus controller: Hewlett-Packard Company Smart Array E200i (SAS Controller)

This is usually the result of a power supply issue. Try swapping out power supplies and seeing if the issue goes away

Well the reason I've switched from CentOS to openSUSE and Adaptec to HP RAID controllers was because the server was a work in progress. During that time it also went from 430 watts Antec ATX 1.x power supply to a brand new 550 (or was it 650?) watts Antec ATX 2.3 power supply.

The server itself is only using about 130 watts measured at the 120 volts power supply input.

I had the same issues with my 16 port, 4 chip BTTV card as well. I was using RGB24 when I was having the problem. When I switched to RGB555, the lines went away.

Try using some other capture pallets that give a clear picture and see if you continue to have those lines.

I am using BGR24. Will using RGB555 cause any increase in CPU usage? Anyways I have set it and will see tomorrow during the day if it looks any better.

Oh and already I have set in my modprobe.conf (well /etc/modprobe.d/50-tv.conf in openSUSE)

options bttv gbuffers=16 radio=-1 tuner=4 card=102,102,102,102,102,102,102,102

And that seemed to make things a little better from the recordings I am watching. I had already added Enzotech BCC9 copper heatsinks a few weeks ago as a first reaction.

I didn't see any difference in CPU usage when I changed changed to rgb555.

An offtopic question, can you setup all your 8 channels to 640x480 resolution at the same time? It doesn't cause any problems beside that lines, or any freeze or hard lockups on your machine?

At very first I was when I stuck the card in CentOS without any config, but I never saw this again after I set the modprobe options and also I had a PCI winmodem that was to be used with Asterisk PBX. When the driver (DAHDI + wcfxo) was loaded I got constant FXO PCI Bus Master Abort Errors... but I don't think that was related to the crashing. I removed the modem and replaced it with Linksys SPA3102.

But right now I only have 6 channels setup. Also I feel if I add another of these PCI cards I will have IRQ issues like I did with the modem... I can't figure out how to change the IRQs despite with different OS I get different IRQ.

I did see some little bit of these lines today but not as bad as I was seeing on almost all motion with BGR24.

I have 6 cameras:
* 2 modect 5fps / 12fps alarm frame skip 4
* 2 mocord 18fps / 30fps alarm frame skip 8
* 2 mocord 9fps / 18fps alarm frame skip 4

With this configuration load is about a constant .20 - .40, CPU use about 30% (Core2 Duo E6750) Disk write (from iotop) between 300-800 K/s but more around 400 K/s (I assume not alarm).

I am afraid to test it out now 30fps but I can make some time to connect 2 more cameras and set it all to a constant 30fps and see what happens. It's a generic card a little similar to Kodicom clone but it has 8 chips, 8 inputs (no audio) and the breakout cable has the same plug as a joystick port and was USD 85 locally.

oh, your card is a BRG palette type.

I noticed Zoneminder doesn't have the BRG555, 565 and 444 types. I think they do exist in v4l2 (I think I've seen them in a .h file for the v4l2 libraries). Hopefully someone will provide a patch to include those palette types in Zoneminder.

Joako, are you close all unused inputs for your capture card? I mean, set all unused inputs to "none" and uncheck "Enable" checkbox.

If you have only 2 cameras on your systema, but leave 6 inputs open, then you will get these lines. A solution is to add the rest (6) of the monitors in ZM to each input (/dev/video...) but leave as "None" mode and uncheck the "Enable" checkbox.

Tell me if you fix the issue.

all the unused inputs were already set to disabled and none. But I don't see why that should matter since in this card it is 1 chip per input.

Ever since I set it to RGB555 it is much better but still there are 2 or 3 or sometimes a few more lines. But also many times there are no lines during quick motion.

IS it possible it is a heat issuse? Meaning do you have heat syncs on the chips?

Quick way to test is to shut off the system for a few hours then turn it on. See if lines are there, if not check back later see if they come back.

I already have solid copper heatsinks applied to a clean surface. I really doubt it is heat, after changing to RGB555 the lines are much reduced but simply not 100% done.

curtishall wrote:This is usually the result of a power supply issue. Try swapping out power supplies and seeing if the issue goes away

Do you mean the camera's power supply or the PC power supply?

If it is the camera power supply I suspect it could be overloaded a little.... the box says one rating the power supply says another and both are a big range I think 3-5 and 5-7 Amps are the conflicting numbers.

But also today I installed a PTZ camera with a separate power supply and I do see some lines.