Time line performance

[agoodm]

Hi,

I am a long term Zoneminder user. 12+ years now. My ZM machine is a VM; host is a dual 10 core xeon monster. Storage isnt the best - some old SATA disks that are healthy in RAID 0.

Since the move to h264 storage timeline performance on the web has been so poor that I've tended to use 24 hour review on zmninja/mobile instead. I use this in order to quickly scan through potentially interesting events. The performance here is great however there doesnt seem to be any way to see events older than 24 hours in this format.

Today I once again find myself in a situation where I need to check for an event 48 hours ago; however timeline performance is extremely poor (it takes 10s of seconds to see a thumbnail on mouse over) and there is therefore no easy way to look through the events on the web.

Am I missing some setting somewhere that pre generates thumbnails to make these views more performant; or perhaps a more modern way to look at the events on desktop type devices?

[iconnor]

Agreed about the performance. Working on it.

Requires a major rework unfortunately.

Unfortunately firing up zms, opening an mp4, seeking to the desired frame and outputting it is slow...
We need zms to stay resident and eventually we can output h264 frames intead of jpg..

another option is storing the video not as one .mp4 but as hls segments.

the only way to speed it up is to store jpeg frames.

[agoodm]

Thanks for the reply. It would be nice as an interim measure to have the option to store jpg frames or something for the alarmed events. I think it does something along these lines to allow the 24 hour review function in the app to work? Perhaps a method of viewing that via the web?

After posting I noticed that there is a left/right arrow in 24 hour review to switch to a 'different' 24 hour period so am getting by with that for now but its only a matter of time before an item appears; or disappears from right under a camera and I cant find it quickly any more...

[iconnor]

There is... Monitor -> Storage -> SaveJpegs

[agoodm]

There is... Monitor -> Storage -> SaveJpegs

Thanks; I enabled this after seeing your post for analysis frames only as I thought this was a reasonable compromise and would cover the times where the timeline shows potentially interesting events. However the timeline doesnt actually use the analysis images! The only way I seem to be able to see these images is to tap 'alarms' under an event in zmninja and then select 'outline motion'. I cant see any method to see the analysis frame in the web app - previously you could click a still to swap between versions.

App performance is broadly speaking OK anyway so these images are really only useful in timeline view on the web which is ultimately how I locate hard to find events most of the time. I suppose I could use 24 hour review and scroll back through the days to find interesting events; its just a new way of working and after 10+ years using the timeline I am stuck in my ways! It would be really awesome to get some of the zmninja event management stuff in the web app; for those times when you need to trawl large amounts of footage which is impractical on mobile.

[Cramac1]

another option is storing the video not as one .mp4 but as hls segments.

the only way to speed it up is to store jpeg frames.

can it be worth adding the ability to save in hls? From them you can show online faster.

[Styx]

Regarding timeline performance, while it's probably not going to be as good as the rework you are working on @iconnor , leewells suggested a small change in timeline.js which allows to see multiple frame per events: viewtopic.php?f=40&t=29400#p119141
I noticed this change is still not in 1.35.16. I tried it on my installation and it works. Without that, only see 1 frame per event and makes the whole timeline feel very slow.