Picture Jitter

[Carey]

Hello,

I'm new to ZoneMinder, and I've just installed the hardware and software.

I'm using a PV-149 from Bluecherry and a single Q-See QSOCWC Outdoor camera.

When I watch the live video in daytime colour, the picture jitters up and down by several pixels, with random coloured lines appearing and disappearing at the bottom of the frames. When I watch the live video in the dark with the IR mode activated, the frames are clean and there is no jitter at all.

When I watch this same camera on my TV, the colour daytime picture is smooth and there is no jitter at all. So based on this, I'm thinking I can't blame the camera.

Can anyone tell me if this is a software issue, or is it due to the other 3 inputs not being terminated? Or some other reason I can't think of? I read one forum posting elsewhere, that felt that the other inputs not being terminated can cause picture distortion on capture boards that have multiple inputs. Is this true?

Thanks to all helpful comments.

[Carey]

Well I haven't received any replies on this. But in case anyone reads it some day and has a similar issue, the terminators on the unused inputs didn't fix my problem.

And it only happens in colour display mode. If I switch it in the seetings to display as B&W, there is no up and down jitter.

[curtishall]

It might be a shmmax issue. This wiki gives some good information:
http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.ph ... gs_mean.3F

and this post might help:

http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8851

It sounds like the shmmax setting is just fine for black and white images however when the camera switches out of black and white and into color the file size increases and the memory runs out

Well I haven't received any replies on this. But in case anyone reads it some day and has a similar issue, the terminators on the unused inputs didn't fix my problem.

And it only happens in colour display mode. If I switch it in the seetings to display as B&W, there is no up and down jitter.

[Carey]

Thank you for the reply.

I changed these settings and there was no improvement.

I plugged my camcorder into the PV-149 and I get a stable picture. I'm new to CCTV cameras, but I'm now thinking the camera is defective. I thought since it displays well on a TV that it must be the software or capture card. Do you think a TV will compensate for frames with junk at the bottom, where a capture card won't?

Can the capture card or software be adjusted to ignor the bottom few lines of pixels that are being randomnly generated that causes the picture to jump around? The top 98% of the picture frames are clean and sharp.

Any experience or thoughts you can share on this with me?

Thanks again!

It might be a shmmax issue. This wiki gives some good information:
http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.ph ... gs_mean.3F

and this post might help:

http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8851

It sounds like the shmmax setting is just fine for black and white images however when the camera switches out of black and white and into color the file size increases and the memory runs out

Well I haven't received any replies on this. But in case anyone reads it some day and has a similar issue, the terminators on the unused inputs didn't fix my problem.

And it only happens in colour display mode. If I switch it in the seetings to display as B&W, there is no up and down jitter.

[cordel]

This could possibly be a sync issue. There is a setting to basicaly toss away a set number of frames just for this case, sorry I forget what and where in options it is so you'll have to dig abit through the discriptions. I'll have a working test system up a few weeks and can be more spacific then.
What length is the run from the zm box to the cam?
Remember that color sends more signals down the coax than B/W.

[Carey]

This could possibly be a sync issue. There is a setting to basicaly toss away a set number of frames just for this case, sorry I forget what and where in options it is so you'll have to dig abit through the discriptions. I'll have a working test system up a few weeks and can be more spacific then.
What length is the run from the zm box to the cam?
Remember that color sends more signals down the coax than B/W.

Thanks for the tip. I'll take a look for that setting later.

The camera came with a 60 ft cable.

[Carey]

This could possibly be a sync issue. There is a setting to basicaly toss away a set number of frames just for this case, sorry I forget what and where in options it is so you'll have to dig abit through the discriptions. I'll have a working test system up a few weeks and can be more spacific then.
What length is the run from the zm box to the cam?
Remember that color sends more signals down the coax than B/W.

Thanks for the tip. I'll take a look for that setting later.

The camera came with a 60 ft cable.

Well I found the problem. Your inquiry about the cable length was the trick. I attached a shorter video cable and the colour display is perfectly fine. Obviously too poor a quality of cable for the length. A part of the learning curve for my CCTV project.

Thanks!