Viewing event recordings on mobile browsers

Discussions related to the 1.36.x series of ZoneMinder
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karsta
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Jul 12, 2023 5:24 am

Viewing event recordings on mobile browsers

Post by karsta »

Hi there

I have a new ZM setup with 2 IP cameras, and so far it's working brilliantly. However, when I try to view recordings with my Android phone's browser, the event stream is not showing up, but live stream works well. All the playback controls are there, but the frame is just empty. I have the recording and encoder settings on pretty much default. Cameras are Dahuas. Event streams work fine on my Windows and Linux devices through browser, but not on Android.

I remember reading here https://zmninja.readthedocs.io/en/lates ... s/FAQ.html that mobile browsers have some restrictions on record playback. The article says:

Event videos not playable
Your video may be using a codec that is not supported on mobile browsers. H265 is a good example. To work around this, use MJPEG for the monitor. Go to Menu->Monitors, click on Configuration and enable “Force MJPEG”

The article refers to zmNinja app if I understood correctly, but I'm not using that, just the browser. So how do I adjust the necessary settings on ZM end? I couldn't find Menu>Monitors>Configuration on ZM settings.

Phone: Samsung S22
OS: Android 13 (latest available)
Browser: Edge (latest available), also tried with Chrome - same thing
Maximo1970
Posts: 97
Joined: Sun May 28, 2017 4:29 pm

Re: Viewing event recordings on mobile browsers

Post by Maximo1970 »

Just curious, but why aren't you using the zmNinja app? Web browsers on mobile phones have always been clumsy.
karsta
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Jul 12, 2023 5:24 am

Re: Viewing event recordings on mobile browsers

Post by karsta »

Maximo1970 wrote: Wed Jul 12, 2023 3:04 pm Just curious, but why aren't you using the zmNinja app? Web browsers on mobile phones have always been clumsy.
The zmNinja app says on Google Play that it is built for an older version of Android and will not install on my phone. Otherwise I could give it a go.

Edit: related to the same issue viewtopic.php?t=32543
karsta
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Jul 12, 2023 5:24 am

Re: Viewing event recordings on mobile browsers

Post by karsta »

A quick update, I think I managed to resolve the playback issue on Android after some testing with different browsers.

Edge - did not show playback frame at all.
Chrome - did not show playback frame at all.
Opera - did not show playback frame at all.
Firefox - showed a tiny playback frame at first, but after clicking on Play, the frame disappeared.

On the playback controls there's a dropdown menu called "Scale". When it was set to the default setting (Auto) nothing was showing up. But after changing it to something else the playback frame came visible and you could see the image, hooray. A mobile-friendly scale setting seemed to be around 1/8x or 1/4x.
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