too much storage space, compression of events with ffmpeg?

[techdruid]

I have searched the forums and tried google. It is odd that I can't seem to find any results for zoneminder and "too much storge" or "zoneminder storage compression".

I have a single Axis M1054 camera installed and I'm using the modect function on the device. Basically, it is storing roughly 2.5GB per hour, or 60GB per day. This is just way to much storage to keep up with if we want to use anything beyond 2 or 3 cameras at our location.

Is there a way to automatically compress the raw .jpg files into avi files, yet still access/view them via the zoneminder interface? Sure, I could write a script to compress them on the back-end using ffmpeg, then remove the jpg files. But I think this will render the zoneminder event viewing capabilities useless.

Have I missed something in the configuration where this auto-compress into video is enabled/possible? I'd be willing to use "record" instead of "modect" if the stream could just be sent straight to video files instead of jpeg's.

Any thoughts/ideas would be appreciated.

[Paranoid]

Here are a few things you can do to save space:

• 1. Decrease the frame rate.
  2. Decrease the resolution.
  3. Don't create analysed alarm images (Options->Config->CREATE_ANALYSIS_IMAGES)
  4. Decrease the JPEG quality (Options->Images->JPEG_(ALARM)_FILE_QUALITY)
  5. Change alarm zone settings to decrease the number of alarms.