ZoneMinder Forums

Can anyone tell me what the video card requirements are for Zoneminder. I would like to put a system together with 16 cameras or so.

1) How many megs of memory does the video card need per camera.

2) Does the video card need to support anything like directX.

3) Are there any special things to know about video card for Zoneminder.

Mbill

Hi mbill,

Not sure if you're tallking about your display card or a capture card? On the display side, as long as the card can display your desktop at a decent resolution and in plenty of colours it will do. Since Zoneminder is browser based there are no requirements for hardware acceleration.

On the capture side check out the Hardware Compatibility forum which lists loads of cards that Phil and the user community have got to work.

One thing worth noting is that it's best to have plenty of memory in the PC itself for 16 cameras as Zoneminder uses a memory buffer for each camera to enable it to record pre-alarm frames. I think this is the formula per camera;

height * width * 3 * image_buffer_size

Image buffer size is 100 by default.

cheers,
J

The buffer size is now 40 by default in the last couple of versions. This is to help prevent memory problems by reducing the requirements somewhat. Otherwise very useful answer Jason!

Phil