ZoneMinder Forums

Hello

I have a colour CCTV camera set up to monitor our driveway. I have set it up with a single zone on "Best Medium Sensitivity".

However once it starts to record an event it doesn't stop unless I manually disable alarms and then re-enable them. For example, the most recent event looks like this:

215373 Event-215373(r) Cars Motion 12/20 16:54:25 3989.00 16487 16477 824283 50 76

Its been recording for 3989 seconds since 16:54 yesterday. Why is it not stopping after the detection of a movement ends?

I have configured it with the following settings:

Zoneminder v1.24.2
Maximum FPS: 10.00
Alarm Maximum FPS: <BLANK>
Reference Image Blend %ge: 7
Triggers: None available

BUFFERS
Image Buffer Size (frames): 40
Warmup Frames: 30
Pre Event Image Count: 10
Post Event Image Count: 10
Stream Replay Image Buffer: 1000
Alarm Frame Count: 5

ZONES: 1
Name: Driveway
Type: Active
Alarm Check Method: Blobs
Min/Max Pixel Threshold: 40,0
Filter Width/Height: 5,5
Min/Max Alarmed Area: 16,0
Min/Max Filtered Area: 12,0
Min/Max Blob Area: 10,0
Min/Max Blobs: 1,0
Overload Frame Ignore Count: 0

I have a greyscale camera installed to the same system with the same settings and that works fine - events are only a few seconds in length.

Can anyone help?

Thanks

I have similar issues with an IP camera, but the BNC cameras work fine.

Both my cameras are wired in to a bt878 pci cctv card. Seems weird that it's only affecting one camera.

do you have any trees etc marked out as "Inclusive" zones? cause if a "active" zone gets movement then the "Inclusive" zones can then detect movement and if it was a tree outside would make it record indefinitely

No there are no trees - it is pointed at our driveway so the only motion is our cars or people walking on the pavement.

I think it must be something to do with the buffers or zone settings but I've tried changing them slightly and I either get no events at all or events which are very long. The last 2 events are 22,134 seconds and 49,932 seconds which is obviously much longer than any event of someone walking past.

I've had this issue and what I've found is it is when the detection is easily triggered. It doesn't detect motion until x frames in a row. This generally does fine as the motion is only detected in a couple frames and then doesn't trigger the alarm. But once motion is detected, any single frame keeps it recording instead of the same block of x frames of motion (within the post alarm buffer period). So it keeps recording for a very long time. I like to have a long post alarm buffer recorded as some of my cameras often have someone passing one way, then back within 20 seconds, so I post-record ~30 seconds to make it one event.

See if you have sporadic frames of motion detected that keeps it recording.

I don't know if that helps, but maybe it triggers something else for you to try.

Thanks, I've upped the post event image count to enough frames for around 30 seconds. But unfortunately this has not stopped it recording events of thousands of seconds long.

The events seem to start when a genuine alarm is detected but then never stop unless I manually stop them.

I've noticed that the camera does wobble slightly in the wind (1 or 2 pixels left or right) - perhaps this is the cause of the alarm not stopping.

I am increasing the image blend percentage to see if this helps - I am up to 30 at the moment - the default was 7.

Is this the best way to try and get the alarm to stop after a reasonable amount of time?

i ran into this issue once too where I somehow had managed to specify a zone larger than the image size and it perpetually recorded... so make sure all the "points" on the zones are inside the image border :p

the other option is that its not perpetually recording and it makes random event sizes because you are out of hard-drive space.

I've had a look at the zone and all the points are inside the image area (just to be on the safe side I moved them all in by 1 pixel). However it is still doing the same thing - the last event was over 59,000 seconds long!!

I deleted all my monitors and re-created them and it seems to be working properly now - the events are a few seconds long.

I think we'll have to put it down to one of those things we'll never know the cause of.

Thanks for all of your replies and happy new year!

I have the following listing for a camera - latest everything installed in the last week - just started modect recording late yesterday. Notice that most are 2011 year, but one is 1969. That event has 39 frames stored on disk. Apparently something is reading the current time wrong. When trying to display it from a browser click on the event, it takes an very long time to view, if it ever will.

Another system that has been around for a few years has done the same thing on occasion.

1165 Event-1165 2011-01-08 09:03:38 4.23 32/12 35/64 X
1140 Event-1140 2011-01-08 08:37:27 2.87 22/2 3/4 X
1133 Event-1133 2011-01-08 08:31:52 3.58 30/8 3/4 X
1124 Event-1124 2011-01-08 07:47:15 2.52 21/1 3/3 X
1111 Event-1111 2011-01-08 07:14:43 3.11 32/12 10/17 X
1110 Event-1110 2011-01-08 07:13:43 3.64 37/17 14/22 X
1109 Event-1109 2011-01-08 07:12:56 2.84 29/9 12/17 X
1108 Event-1108 2011-01-08 07:11:57 3.66 38/18 12/21 X
1107 Event-1107 2011-01-08 07:09:34 3.23 33/13 10/17 X
1106 Event-1106 2011-01-08 07:08:35 2.65 27/7 21/23 X
1105 Event-1105 2011-01-08 07:04:18 3.17 33/13 11/19 X
1104 Event-1104 2011-01-08 07:03:19 2.90 30/10 20/24 X
1103 Event-1103 2011-01-08 06:59:04 3.30 34/14 11/20 X
1102 Event-1102 1969-12-31 17:00:00 6004944.71 39/19 24/64 X <-----------
1101 Event-1101 2011-01-08 06:58:03 3.85 39/19 13/23 X
1100 Event-1100 2011-01-08 06:57:42 3.13 33/13 11/20 X
1096 Event-1096 2011-01-08 06:56:42 3.82 39/19 13/23 X
1095 Event-1095 2011-01-08 06:54:51 3.22 33/13 11/19 X
1094 Event-1094 2011-01-08 06:53:52 3.05 31/11 18/23 X
1093 Event-1093 2011-01-08 06:53:25 1.95 21/1 6/6 X

The odd recording is a camera fault. Happens every time I restart or power fail analog or IP camera. Can't explain the date but the problem should be easy to replicate.