ZoneMinder Forums

I'm new to ZM and installed 1.29 on Debian a few days ago. I have it configured with three IP cams set to modect operation mode.

In general, things work but I've noticed a few issues.

First, when motion is detected, it seems like >50% of the time the recording ends before the motion stops. As an example, I have a camera in my garage pointed at the garage door. When the door opens a recording starts, but only continues until the door is about 60-70% open. The last bit of motion is not recorded.

Second, I've noticed that in some circumstances recordings occur back to back. In other words, a recording will start due to a motion alarm, the recording will be a few seconds in duration, and then a second (and sometimes third, fourth, etc) recording will start immediately after the previous recording stops. This is such that if you took the frames from all recordings and stitched them together you wouldn't know they came from separate events.

What I've already done to try to solve the problem:

Set the presets for each camera zone to 'Best - High sensitivity'

Increased the post event image count buffer to 100 frames (these cameras record at ~20 FPS)

Neither of these changes has seemed to make much of a difference.

The ZM server has plenty of available disk / cpu / memory.

Any suggestions on how I can address these issues?

There is discussion on this.

Post event image count is the biggest thing you want to change it changes how many frames after an event it will record (assuming another alarm isn't triggered) you can set this as high as you like, pre-event however is stored in cache and should be kept fairly small.

viewtopic.php?t=13796

Hi,

As mentioned, I've already tried increasing post-event image count and it does not appear to have made any difference.

Next steps?

Thanks

Are you getting 5 seconds of footage?

It's hard to tell because I'm not sure where the alarm event is ending and the 100 frame post alarm recording is starting...

The recordings did seem to get longer, but I'm still experiencing multiple recordings when there is what I'd consider to be constant motion.

Maybe I should ask this a different way...

Let's say there's an alarm event and a recording kicks off. When the motion alarm ends, it'll record 100 additional frames. If motion begins again during the 100 frame post event recording, it seems like it continues recording until it hits the configured number of post event frames and then starts another recording. Is there some way to tell it to cancel the post event recording and continue the current recording?

I.E.

:00 Motion starts, begin recording
:06 Motion stops, start post event capture
:07 Motion starts, cancel post event capture and continue existing recording

I would be looking at your motion settings, there is a wiki article on it Zones for Dummies or something like that, disregard the name it does a good job explaining the different options. The presets are hard to get right for everyone, every camera and location. Since it is a garage door you can play with it to test all day long. Door goes up, door goes down, door goes up... I am sure in frames view you can see alarm vs non alarm frames.
I mostly record 24x7 so I forget what happens, but I believe if you are still in Post event buffer and you get a new alarm it will add to that existing alarm. There is on record and mocord a Section length setting, that will split events, but I don't know if that will cut events in modect. You would know if that was occurring as all events would be same length.