ZoneMinder Forums

Hi, just bought a capture card from here, it is only showing a blue screen but I have had a few real frames captured correctly today say a total of ~10 only:

http://www.simplyautomate.co.uk/product ... rodId=5462

It shows in lspci as:

03:08.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Video Capture (rev 11)
Actual card is here http://www.provideo.com.tw/PV-149P.htm

BTTV loads OK and detects the following, a PV150 when the card is a PV149:

bttv: driver version 0.9.14 loaded
bttv: using 8 buffers with 2080k (520 pages) each for capture
bttv: Host bridge needs ETBF enabled.
bttv: Bt8xx card found (0).
bttv0: Bt878 (rev 17) at 0000:03:08.0, irq: 9, latency: 132, mmio: 0xf4400000
bttv0: detected: Provideo PV150A-1 [card=98], PCI subsystem ID is aa00:1460
bttv0: using: ProVideo PV150 [card=98,autodetected]

I have set it to use video0, channel 0, RGB24, PAL, 320x240. Increased ring buffer to 40.

Oddly enough zmu reports a PV143:

zmu -d0 -q -v
Video Capabilities
Name: BT878 video (ProVideo PV143)
Type: 171
Can capture
Can tune
Overlay onto frame buffer
Can clip
Scalable
Video Channels: 4
Audio Channels: 0
Maximum Width: 924
Maximum Height: 576
Minimum Width: 48
Minimum Height: 32
Window Attributes
X Offset: 0
Y Offset: 0
Width: 320
Height: 240
Picture Attributes
Palette: 4 - 24bit RGB
Colour Depth: 24
Brightness: 32768
Hue: 32768
Colour :32768
Contrast: 32768
Whiteness: 0
Channel 0 Attributes
Name: Composite0
Channel: 0
Flags: 2
Channel has audio
Type: 2 - Camera
Format: 0 - PAL
etc etc...

I have increased:

kernel.shmall = 268435456
kernel.shmmax = 268435456

I am using RHE4, kernel 2.6.9-22.EL.

I was using a USB camera and all was working fine so I know ZM is OK.

Everything seems to start up fine /var/log/messages reports every so often:

Oct 24 19:23:16 lois zma_m6[4063]: INF [Garage1: 3000 - Processing at 25.00 fps]
Oct 24 19:23:56 lois zmc_d0[4058]: INF [Garage1: 4000 - Capturing at 25.00 fps]
Oct 24 19:23:56 lois zma_m6[4063]: INF [Garage1: 4000 - Processing at 25.00 fps]

Any ideas?

Cheers

LW

Never seen one of these before and my bttv driver wont go as high as 171?

It looks similar to a cs16 (card-131) but my cs16 wont play ball as yet i get similar issues to you

One thing that gave me some success was to drop the frame rate to about 2 but it wasnt right.

Sorry i cant be more helpful

A trawl of the archives and I found this recommendation:

modprobe bttv gbuffers=16

And all if fine now!

Cheers

Please see my post on 16 ch/120 fps blue screen.

I worked through a lot of issues.
I really found that using the pictures of the cards to identify the card (see post the above referrence message to see what I mean) really helped get me on the right path.

Once Cordel got me going down the right path with the values in modprobe, my blue screens went away and I got video.

I also wrote a script that uses "vidcat" to scan all my video devices to help identify.

If yours card is the same as mine then it's a little different, anyway see if that entire post helps. (its only a day to two old)
________
vaporizer store

OK, so it was working for a few hours then stopped, must either be a faulty card or I just am not using the correct option for the bttv driver.

Are there any errors in your zmdc.log?

ld999 wrote: I have set it to use video0, channel 0, RGB24, PAL, 320x240. Increased ring buffer to 40.

You have the device set to PAL but, 320x240 is an NTSC setting is it not?

Regards,
Cordel

Hi Cordel,

good point, changed to NTSC and no difference, showing my noob status here. If zmu -d reports PAL or NTSC, how does it read that, from the card or the camera (camera on video0):

[root@zm ~]# /usr/lib/zm/bin/zmu -d0 -q -v
Video Capabilities
Name: BT878 video (ProVideo PV150)
Type: 171
Can capture
Can tune
Overlay onto frame buffer
Can clip
Scalable
Video Channels: 2
Audio Channels: 0
Maximum Width: 768
Maximum Height: 480
Minimum Width: 48
Minimum Height: 32
Window Attributes
X Offset: 0
Y Offset: 0
Width: 320
Height: 240
Picture Attributes
Palette: 4 - 24bit RGB
Colour Depth: 24
Brightness: 32768
Hue: 32768
Colour :32768
Contrast: 32768
Whiteness: 0
Channel 0 Attributes
Name: Composite0
Channel: 0
Flags: 2
Channel has audio
Type: 2 - Camera
Format: 1 - NTSC
Channel 1 Attributes
Name: Composite1
Channel: 1
Flags: 2
Channel has audio
Type: 2 - Camera
Format: 1 - NTSC
[root@zm ~]# /usr/lib/zm/bin/zmu -d1 -q -v
Video Capabilities
Name: BT878 video (ProVideo PV150)
Type: 171
Can capture
Can tune
Overlay onto frame buffer
Can clip
Scalable
Video Channels: 2
Audio Channels: 0
Maximum Width: 924
Maximum Height: 576
Minimum Width: 48
Minimum Height: 32
Window Attributes
X Offset: 0
Y Offset: 0
Width: 320
Height: 240
Picture Attributes
Palette: 4 - 24bit RGB
Colour Depth: 24
Brightness: 32768
Hue: 32768
Colour :32768
Contrast: 32768
Whiteness: 0
Channel 0 Attributes
Name: Composite0
Channel: 0
Flags: 2
Channel has audio
Type: 2 - Camera
Format: 0 - PAL
Channel 1 Attributes
Name: Composite1
Channel: 1
Flags: 2
Channel has audio
Type: 2 - Camera
Format: 0 - PAL

zmdc.log doesnt report any errors btw

If it worked yesterday, what on earth could be the issue?

BR
LD

OK, just started working again with the following settings:

Device Number (/dev/video?) 0
Device Channel 0
Device Format (0=PAL,1=NTSC etc) 0
Capture Palette RGB24
Capture Width (pixels) 320
Capture Height (pixels) 240

Image Buffer Size (frames) 40
Maximum FPS 40

I then receive lots and lots of alarm states, the image is moving up and down:

Oct 27 14:19:56 zm zmc_d0[4545]: INF [New: 3000 - Capturing at 25.00 fps]
Oct 27 14:19:59 zm zma_m1[4553]: INF [New: 2849 - Gone into alarm state]
Oct 27 14:19:59 zm zma_m1[4553]: INF [New: 2850 - Gone into alert state]
Oct 27 14:19:59 zm zma_m1[4553]: INF [New: 2860 - Left alarm state (69) - 21(1) images]
Oct 27 14:20:05 zm zma_m1[4553]: INF [New: 3000 - Processing at 22.73 fps]
Oct 27 14:20:33 zm zma_m1[4553]: INF [New: 3695 - Gone into alarm state]
Oct 27 14:20:33 zm zma_m1[4553]: INF [New: 3698 - Gone into alert state]
Oct 27 14:20:33 zm zma_m1[4553]: INF [New: 3708 - Left alarm state (70) - 23(3) images]
Oct 27 14:20:36 zm zmc_d0[4545]: INF [New: 4000 - Capturing at 25.00 fps]
Oct 27 14:20:45 zm zma_m1[4553]: INF [New: 4000 - Processing at 25.00 fps]

I guess I have the wrong resolution?

I then changed to 640x480 which is working but it took a long time to appear and I think it is taking too much memory:

ct 27 14:29:22 zm zma_m1[4751]: ERR [Shared memory not initialised by capture daemon]
Oct 27 14:29:27 zm zmu[4761]: ERR [Shared memory not initialised by capture daemon]
Oct 27 14:29:27 zm zma_m1[4766]: INF [Debug Level = 0, Debug Log = <none>]
Oct 27 14:29:27 zm zmc_d0[4767]: INF [Debug Level = 0, Debug Log = <none>]
Oct 27 14:29:27 zm zma_m1[4766]: ERR [Shared memory not initialised by capture daemon]
Oct 27 14:29:27 zm zms[4764]: ERR [Shared memory not initialised by capture daemon]
Oct 27 14:29:27 zm zmc_d0[4767]: INF [Starting Capture]
Oct 27 14:29:37 zm zma_m1[4771]: INF [Debug Level = 0, Debug Log = <none>]
Oct 27 14:29:38 zm kernel: bttv0: OCERR @ 1f6f8014,bits: HSYNC OCERR*
Oct 27 14:29:38 zm zma_m1[4771]: INF [Warming up]
Oct 27 14:30:08 zm zmc_d0[4767]: INF [New: 1000 - Capturing at 24.39 fps]
Oct 27 14:30:42 zm zma_m1[4771]: INF [New: 1000 - Processing at 15.62 fps]
Oct 27 14:30:48 zm zmc_d0[4767]: INF [New: 2000 - Capturing at 25.00 fps]
Oct 27 14:31:28 zm zmc_d0[4767]: INF [New: 3000 - Capturing at 25.00 fps]
Oct 27 14:31:45 zm zma_m1[4771]: INF [New: 2000 - Processing at 15.87 fps]
Oct 27 14:32:08 zm zmc_d0[4767]: INF [New: 4000 - Capturing at 25.00 fps]
Oct 27 14:32:48 zm zmc_d0[4767]: INF [New: 5000 - Capturing at 25.00 fps]

Are you restarting ZM after you make these changes to the monitors?

Regards,
Cordel

I wasnt restarting no, I guess thats a "you should restart" then?

KR

LD

Any time you change any of the settings that deal with monitors or any thing to do with the processes that read the capture devices, you need to restart the services so that the memory can be properly allocated.

Regards,
Cordel

Very strange, built another PC used the same hard drive (exactly same config) as the old PC, booted up Kudzu did its job, and all works perfectly. I wonder if it was an IRQ issue?