ZoneMinder Forums

I have managed to get ZM to a running state, it records from all 15 cameras and can play back through Cambo.

Video-Gen fails, however, zmvideo.log says "Incorrect frame rate".
FFserver is executed with -r 0.0 for some reason. Events are recorded at 0.5 FPS.

Another thing is my logs. Setting a monitor in "Mocord" generates 3 lines in my syslog every second. How can i conf syslog to log zm* somewhere else? Or zm to not log at all unless its told to?

And why is ZoneMinder utilizing 1,5 GB of RAM for a mere 15 cameras? The old Everfocus EDR1600 did the same job with 128MB and a really lousy CPU. Can i limit the apache-user to a specific memory-amount?

My boss is really starting to breathe down my neck now, so replies are appreciated.

sgn wrote:Another thing is my logs. Setting a monitor in "Mocord" generates 3 lines in my syslog every second.

See other thread for replies to your other points. I'm interested though in what gets written to your syslog every second? Can you give me an example.

Phil,

Something in the order of:
Motion detected
Alarm
Returned from alarm state

The other "log-posts" here advise linking syslog to devnull. I want logs, just not from ZM.

I cannot find a solution to the ffmpeg issue, either by using Google or this forums Search.

That doesn't look right. Mocoord should only log when an alarm starts if something is triggering it. If it's not supposed to be triggered but is alarming every second it would imply that the feed into it is corrupted.

If it's easier feel free to PM me your systems details and I can log in and take a look.

Phil,

Well, the nature of this particular ZM installations location provides plenty of motion camerazone-wise. Isn't motion an alarm event in Mocord mode?

Anyways, the log-issue is only a minor one, cron can take care of it. However, FEEL FREE to give my the whatever you know on how to divert logs going from ZM to syslog.

After a weekend of sweat and tears got the system up running, however Video-Gen fails. Why it fails and why ZM instructs it to use -r 0.0 is a mystery to me. Actually, I have another question abaout ZM-FFMpeg. When configuring zm with the --with-ffmpeg=/usr/local/ffmpeg option, zm-configure still whined about "libavcodec required for mpeg whatever". Tried again, this time pointing at the ffmpeg build-dir, having seen something abaout that in the docs. Same warning. FFMpeg-0.4.9-pre1, btw. The older ones fail to compile on Debian Sarge.

Another issue is memory consumption. Started out with 1G 3200-DDR-RAM. ZM started and only consumed about 400M, however gradually draining the excess rendering the web-interface in the need of waiting- music. Inserted another 512M, as the system DID manage with 1G, but slow. Started out the same, 70% free, then, an hour later, 13M free. The web-interface is faster, but how on earth can processing 15 JPGs at 0.5 FPS consume the same amount of memory as a WinXP installation requires of a HD?

ZM and Apache both run as the user apache. I use the grsec-patch for my 2.4-kernel, hence the PAM memlock-function is disabled. Can i limit the amount ZM can use so that Apache doesn't get pinned up in a corner?

And last, but not least. What resolution in pixels does 330 telelines (Camera-resolution) make? Or 460 for that matter. Color-PAL. Need that information to get ZM to scale the images correctly.

Replies are, as always, appreciated.

sgn wrote:Well, the nature of this particular ZM installations location provides plenty of motion camerazone-wise. Isn't motion an alarm event in Mocord mode?

Yes but if you get that many alarms then it's not adding anything to the information you get. If you are expecting continuous movement I would change it to just 'record' which is a lot lighter on system resouces.

sgn wrote:Anyways, the log-issue is only a minor one, cron can take care of it. However, FEEL FREE to give my the whatever you know on how to divert logs going from ZM to syslog.

I would compile the binaries with dbg_level=-1 or something, though record mode will drastically cut down on logging.

sgn wrote:After a weekend of sweat and tears got the system up running, however Video-Gen fails. Why it fails and why ZM instructs it to use -r 0.0 is a mystery to me.

You will need to post more information about the event. If you go into the event list and click on the value in the 'Frames' column it should display a table which you can post here.

sgn wrote:Actually, I have another question abaout ZM-FFMpeg. When configuring zm with the --with-ffmpeg=/usr/local/ffmpeg option, zm-configure still whined about "libavcodec required for mpeg whatever". Tried again, this time pointing at the ffmpeg build-dir, having seen something abaout that in the docs. Same warning. FFMpeg-0.4.9-pre1, btw. The older ones fail to compile on Debian Sarge.

I think you may just want --with-ffmpeg=/usr/local here, as it is just supposed to point to the installation root (what you gave as --prefix in the ffmpeg install).

sgn wrote:Another issue is memory consumption. Started out with 1G 3200-DDR-RAM. ZM started and only consumed about 400M, however gradually draining the excess rendering the web-interface in the need of waiting- music. Inserted another 512M, as the system DID manage with 1G, but slow. Started out the same, 70% free, then, an hour later, 13M free. The web-interface is faster, but how on earth can processing 15 JPGs at 0.5 FPS consume the same amount of memory as a WinXP installation requires of a HD?

Did you reduce the ring buffer size as per the other thread? Once you've done that and restart ZM you will see memory usage reduce drastically.

sgn wrote:And last, but not least. What resolution in pixels does 330 telelines (Camera-resolution) make? Or 460 for that matter. Color-PAL. Need that information to get ZM to scale the images correctly.

No idea here, it depends on your capture card but I would think 480x360 or 640x480 would cover them.

Phil,

Is the ring buffer the same as the "buffer"-option for each monitor? Tried to reduce it from 100 to 5, rendering all /dev/video* in the console orange and recording events that didn't contain anything. Runs at 25 or 50 now, can't remember, however vacating 1.5G of system memory.

I installed ffmpeg into /usr/local/ffmpeg. So the binary is /usr/local/ffmpeg/bin/ffmpeg. The /usr/local/ffmpeg doesn't contain shit about libavcodec, though the build dir does.

Where is libavcodec.a in your ffmpeg tree? It might be easier just installing it into the default locations so it can be found without any special config.

Phil,

It isnt there. I am recompiling ffmepg with the --enable-shared option, hopefully it will compile libavcodec.

I set the following option:

Buffer size: 10 (Was 25)
Warmup: 5
Pre: 5
Post: 5
Alarm: 2

Now it gives a "close to buffer overrun, increase ring-buffer" in syslog. Memory consumption is the same.

I can't be 100% sure but I think it's ffmpeg that requires you do do 'make installlib to install the libraries otherwise it only installs the binaries.

Phil,