ZoneMinder Forums

Hi guys

I am having a bit of a problem with disk space and zoneminder. I have a 250 gig disk and 4 cameras recording 10 fps at 640x480, my problem is that the disk fills up in a few days.

For example I have one event that is 1min.59secs long and it takes up 66meg of disk space on the server, whilst if I convert it to mpeg it is a fraction of the size.

Is there anyway to store archives as an mpeg and not jpeg, i would be able to squeeze about 10 times the amount of recording out of zoneminder. I know this would mean sacrificing some of the "still frame" preview functionality but I think it would be worth it.

Is there a way I could achieve this using filters and a custom command, something like convert the last 100 events to mpeg and copy them to a directory?

I hope this makes sense.

Thanks
Pete

I would suggest that you can probably go some way to what you want by creating a script that

1) Changes to the event directory
2) Runs zmvideo.pl on the event
3) Deletes or moves etc the raw JPEGs.

and then saving it as a custom script in the filters. The event id will be passed in as a parameter. As you say you will lose some of the functionality but if you click on 'video' when trying to view an event it will use the one your script has generated (assuming it is the same rate and scale) rather than regenerate it from scratch. The mpeg will be created in the event directory so it's up to you whether you leave it there or move it somewhere else. You can also customise the filter to either do each event as soon as it's happened or say wait until 2am and do a days worth in one go. The execution of a script on an event is recorded and so no event can have more than one script run on or it, or the same script twice.

Phil,