CPU usage of zm processes

[bomberb17]

Hello, I'm running Zoneminder 1.26.5 on my ODROID XU4, running Ubuntu server 14.04. I use it to detect motion from 3 USB webcams (25fps, 320x240)
I installed and setup everything correctly, the webcams show image correctly, but I'm concerned about the CPU usage of the zm processes.
Here's the output of top

Code: Select all

top - 12:52:01 up 23 min,  2 users,  load average: 1.20, 1.27, 1.03
Tasks: 160 total,   1 running, 158 sleeping,   1 stopped,   0 zombie
%Cpu(s): 13.6 us,  1.4 sy,  0.0 ni, 84.8 id,  0.2 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
KiB Mem:   2042940 total,   565532 used,  1477408 free,    13696 buffers
KiB Swap:        0 total,        0 used,        0 free.   211232 cached Mem

  PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND
 1622 www-data  20   0  134820  15256  13456 S  23.7  0.7   4:22.79 zma
 1658 www-data  20   0  134824  15256  13456 S  23.0  0.7   4:14.58 zma
 1695 www-data  20   0  134820  15480  13580 S  23.0  0.8   4:13.95 zma
 1617 www-data  20   0  135748  16068  14772 S  14.8  0.8   2:48.43 zmc
 1653 www-data  20   0  135748  16068  14772 S  14.8  0.8   2:44.45 zmc
 1690 www-data  20   0  135748  16068  14772 S  14.5  0.8   2:43.73 zmc
 1542 root      rt   0       0      0      0 S   4.3  0.0   0:51.66 cfinteractive0
  931 mysql     20   0  336136  53520   5252 S   1.3  2.6   0:26.38 mysqld
 1806 root      20   0    2556   1144    776 R   1.0  0.1   0:00.15 top
    8 root      20   0       0      0      0 S   0.7  0.0   0:08.25 rcu_preempt
  120 root      20   0       0      0      0 S   0.7  0.0   0:06.40 mmcqd/1
  126 root      20   0       0      0      0 S   0.3  0.0   0:01.94 thread_hotplug

While the system load is low, the processes eat up 84.8% "idle" cpu.
What does that mean? Can I improve this?
Thanks

[bbunge]

Idle means that the CPU is doing nothing. Like the engine in your car idles when you are at a stop light (unless you keep your foot on the gas...). A better indicator is the Load on your ZM web screen. And you can Google what that means. I think that you do not have a problem!

bb