ZoneMinder Forums

Hi,

I have two cameras connected to a BT878 video card. The installation is based on Fedora 4. The video from the 2 cameras keeps switching rapidly, causing constant event generation when in Modect mode.

Using XawTV, I found out that once the ZM service is stopped, the image flipping stops. Starting the ZM service causes image flipping to start again.

Have anyone encounter this problem? Any ideas?

Thanks!

if your using a single chip card then zm has to swicth the channels and you see what your seeing. TV time will only work with mutilpe cams if you have 1 cam per card or stop zm to stop the switching. Check that zm_captures per frame is set to 1 or try increasing to 3

In short what you are seeing in tvtime is normal. Each chip is only capable of viewing one camera at a time so zm has to flip though each configured channel on that chip to capture an image from each channel.
If you need us to elaborate more, just let us know.

Regards,
Corey

Thanks a lot for your replies. So does this mean that ZM doesn't work with multiple cameras connected to a single-chip card? This specific card is a BT878 card that's supposed to be supported by ZM?

I checked that zm_captures per frame is set to 1, and also tried 3 with the same results.

I don't mind TV Time flipping through channels, but when it's happening in ZM, it makes Modect function useless. I think I'm missing something, so elaborating more sounds great!

Regards,
Lara

No Problem,
Here's the skinny. yes it should work with zm just fine. The single chip can only see one camera at a time. So in order for zm to use the card and capture from all the inputs, It switchs the inputs. So what you see in tvtime is zm on the first video input, it captures a frame, switchs to the next video input, captures a frame, etc...

So if your seeing in tvtime the scanning through all the inputs is a good thing and means that zm is controling the card properly.

Now if your seeing the monitors switching around in zm, this could be that:
* the wrong card type is chosen
* You might have set video attirbutes with out restarting zm
* You might have a shared memory issue ( try restarting zm otherwise see FAQ)

It's best to check your logs before doing anything of coarse.
Logs of interest for you would be:
/var/log/messages
/var/log/dmesg

Depending how you configured zm it's logs are most likely in /tmp
zmdc.log
zmpkg.log
zmwatch.log

If you need more help I can always ssh in and help you out. At the moment though I'm kinda out taking I guess you might call it a vacation and should be back on the 24th and can be more helpfull then but for now I'm down in Santa Cruz, Ca with only dialup access and might be a bit slow.

Regards,
Corey