ZoneMinder Forums

I have ZM 1.34.22 installed under Ubuntu 18.04 with 6 camera's: 640x360 (4fps, modect), 1920x1080 (2fps, modect), 2560x1440 (10fps, modect), 1280x720 (2fps, modect), 1280x720 (2fps, modect), 3850x2160 (4fps, nodect linked to first camera).

The computer has an AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 955 Processor with 16GB memory and 256SSD for ZM and 1TB SSD for video recordings. For the above config, the CPU runs at 40% (temperature between 40C and 60C). So I experimented with a GPU (an old Nvidia GeForce 610 with 2GB). After installing the required drivers (with multi process service) and setting (the ffmpeg version installed with hardware acceleration available: vdpau, vaapi, cuvid) I set DecoderHWAccelName to Cuvid. With the tool nvidia-smi it was clear that the GPU was used (memory usage of the card would change). The CPU load dropped to 5% and temperature varied between 25C and 30C. The total power consumption of the computer dropped with almost 20W (to 60 from about 80W).

However. There was no video available (recordings were blue screens and preview was blank). So it seems that ffmpeg did send video to the GPU but nothing was captured back. Is there a setting I am missing?

GPU in ZM is still relatively new. It may not be worth the trouble, FYI.

See this guide: https://wiki.zoneminder.com/GPU_passthrough_in_VMWare

I'm not sure I would recommend an SSD for the videos. You are certainly testing how many reads/writes it can do before it fails... Typically spinning HDDs are used. SSD for the OS (or ideally just DB) is ok. Saw an 8TB HDD for $200 recently. Couldn't believe it. Very powerful for ZM.

You can lower Analysis FPS to save on CPU usage. ZMA is analysis. ZMC is capture. They have distinct FPS limits. Don't set FPS on ZMC for IP Cameras in ZM.

Need to see logs. Preferably with debugging turned on.

Thanks for the reply.
You might have a point on the SSD... I will put back the purple WD2TB drive. Just wanted to see if I could lower power consumption.

No logs at this point: I reinstalled the entire system when moving to the SSD and did not reinstall the NVidia drivers. Once it gets more mature I will try again.

By the way. When moving to a new install (same OS and ZM version) I used a script to export all settings and config files (see attached; perhaps it can be of use). Worked great but having an import/export option in ZM would have been better I guess...