ZoneMinder Forums

My cameras say they are 420 lines. What does that translate to in horizontal/vertical? The documentation says to do 320x240, which is what I have it set to. Can I bump that up?

Also, can I capture at a higher FPS so that it apears more like a movie and not a slideshow?

If you are using analogue video cameras it's more likely that the limitation will be with your capture card. You can try capturing at higher resolutions but you will usually hit interlacing issues for fast horizontally moving subjects. However you can capture as fast as your card and system will allow, and unless you limit your fps then this is what will happen. This is normally around 25 or 30fps for an input with a dedicated capture chip.

But how do I tell ZM to capture at a higher FPS? I set the max FPS to 30, but I dont think thats actually telling ZM to capture at a higher FPS.

This depends on your card. Each for example bt878 chip on your card can do 30 FPS total.
If you have one bt878 chip, this is divided across all inputs to that chip with a penalty for switching and sync.
In order to get a full 30 FPS from each input, each input needs to have it's own chip like the Ituner Spectra 8 where the four inputs on the card all route to their own chip. With the Ituner Spectra 8 you can get a daughter card that will add four inputs for a total of eight but then each chip is handling two inputs and will only give you <15 FPS for each input.

Regards,
Corey

I have a bt878, and it has 4 chips on it. (one for each input?) And the box certainly isnt cpu-bound. Looking at top, each instance is running ~2% cpu, with a total of ~85% idle.

does it have four bt878 chips?

Here is a cut from dmesg. I'm sure you can make more sense of this than I

bttv: driver version 0.9.16 loaded
bttv: using 16 buffers with 2080k (520 pages) each for capture
bttv: Bt8xx card found (0).
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:0c.0[A] -> Link [APC4] -> GSI 19 (level, high) -> IRQ 19
bttv0: Bt878 (rev 17) at 0000:02:0c.0, irq: 19, latency: 32, mmio: 0xdd000000
bttv0: using: Kodicom 4400R (slave) [card=133,insmod option]
bttv0: gpio: en=00000000, out=00000000 in=00feffff [init]
bttv0: using tuner=4
bttv0: i2c: checking for TDA9887 @ 0x86... not found
bttv0: registered device video0
bttv0: registered device vbi0
bttv0: PLL: 28636363 => 35468950 .. ok
bttv: Bt8xx card found (1).
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [APC1] enabled at IRQ 16
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:0d.0[A] -> Link [APC1] -> GSI 16 (level, high) -> IRQ 20
bttv1: Bt878 (rev 17) at 0000:02:0d.0, irq: 20, latency: 32, mmio: 0xdd002000
bttv1: using: Kodicom 4400R (master) [card=132,insmod option]
bttv1: gpio: en=00000000, out=00000000 in=00feffff [init]
bttv1: using tuner=4
bttv1: i2c: checking for TDA9887 @ 0x86... not found
bttv1: registered device video1
bttv1: registered device vbi1
bttv1: PLL: 28636363 => 35468950 .. ok
bttv: Bt8xx card found (2).
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [APC2] enabled at IRQ 17
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:0e.0[A] -> Link [APC2] -> GSI 17 (level, high) -> IRQ 21
bttv2: Bt878 (rev 17) at 0000:02:0e.0, irq: 21, latency: 32, mmio: 0xdd004000
bttv2: using: Kodicom 4400R (slave) [card=133,insmod option]
bttv2: gpio: en=00000000, out=00000000 in=00feffff [init]
bttv2: using tuner=4
bttv2: i2c: checking for TDA9887 @ 0x86... not found
bttv2: registered device video2
bttv2: registered device vbi2
bttv2: PLL: 28636363 => 35468950 .. ok
bttv: Bt8xx card found (3).
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [APC3] enabled at IRQ 18
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:0f.0[A] -> Link [APC3] -> GSI 18 (level, high) -> IRQ 22
bttv3: Bt878 (rev 17) at 0000:02:0f.0, irq: 22, latency: 32, mmio: 0xdd006000
bttv3: using: Kodicom 4400R (slave) [card=133,insmod option]
bttv3: gpio: en=00000000, out=00000000 in=00feffff [init]
bttv3: using tuner=4
bttv3: i2c: checking for TDA9887 @ 0x86... not found
bttv3: registered device video3
bttv3: registered device vbi3
bttv3: PLL: 28636363 => 35468950 .. ok
bt878: AUDIO driver version 0.0.0 loaded
bt878: Bt878 AUDIO function found (0).
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:0c.1[A] -> Link [APC4] -> GSI 19 (level, high) -> IRQ 19
bt878_probe: card id=[0x0],[ <NULL> ] has DVB functions.
bt878(0): Bt878 (rev 17) at 02:0c.1, irq: 19, latency: 32, memory: 0xdd001000
bt878: Bt878 AUDIO function found (1).
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:0d.1[A] -> Link [APC1] -> GSI 16 (level, high) -> IRQ 20
bt878_probe: card id=[0x0],[ <NULL> ] has DVB functions.
bt878(1): Bt878 (rev 17) at 02:0d.1, irq: 20, latency: 32, memory: 0xdd003000
bt878: Bt878 AUDIO function found (2).
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:0e.1[A] -> Link [APC2] -> GSI 17 (level, high) -> IRQ 21
bt878_probe: card id=[0x0],[ <NULL> ] has DVB functions.
bt878(2): Bt878 (rev 17) at 02:0e.1, irq: 21, latency: 32, memory: 0xdd005000
bt878: Bt878 AUDIO function found (3).
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:0f.1[A] -> Link [APC3] -> GSI 18 (level, high) -> IRQ 22
bt878_probe: card id=[0x0],[ <NULL> ] has DVB functions.
bt878(3): Bt878 (rev 17) at 02:0f.1, irq: 22, latency: 32, memory: 0xdd007000
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [APCL] enabled at IRQ 22
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:02.2[C] -> Link [APCL] -> GSI 22 (level, high) -> IRQ 16
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:02.2 to 64

Okay this card has a multiplexer chip on it. So how you configue it in ZM can affect it's performance (assuming that is thae card you have since you insmoded the options). If you search the forum for that card, you'll find a post I did some time back about how this card works.
The best to do is set one input on each chip (You can do this with that card via the mux chip) through the zm config for that monitor.

/dev/video0 (0) Sets input 0 to chip 0
/dev/video1 (1) Sets input 1 to chip 1
/dev/video2 (2) sets input 2 to chip 2
/dev/video3 (4) Sets input 4 to chip 3
/dev/video0 (3) Sets input 3 to chip 0 which now is going to share that same bt878 as input 0

So how you configure it in ZM Tells the card how to set it's inputs through the mux.

Regards,
Corey

My modprobe.conf is:

alias char-major-81 bttv
options bttv gbuffers=16 card=133,132,133,133 tuner=4,4,4,4

I'm pretty sure I found that line from this forum, for my card.

As for the video settings, I have each camera on its own input, using video 3 and 2

hondaman wrote: As for the video settings, I have each camera on its own input, using video 3 and 2

So your settings in zm are?

I'm sorry for the dumb questions, but are you asking for a .conf file output somewhere? Or the web interface?

If its the web interface,

1. TestGarage Modect /dev/video (3)
2. TestBedroom Modect /dev/video (2)

Where testgarage source is /dev/video, channel 3 and testbedroom is /dev/video, channel 2

Just to clarify.

The bedroom cam is OUTSIDE the window looking at the backyard

So your using the same chip for both cameras.
most likely /dev/video is a link to /dev/video0
Try something like
/dev/video0 (2)
/dev/video1 (3)

OUTSTANDING!


That fixed it. Thank you very very much. Now, with that, im off to Florida!

Happy holiday weekend.

enjoy, Cheers,
Corey