ZoneMinder Forums

I like the idea of 5 megapixel cameras but am worried that motion detection and the rest of the processing could not keep up with 2 cameras. Does anyone have experience with this? What camera/resolution were you running on what CPU/computer and frame-rates/load did you see?

Seems to me the larger images will create a larger load on the server. I recall how the processor usage jumped up when I configured ZM for 4 AXIS 211 cameras running at 640x480. Anything much larger than 640x480 with more pixels would require some serious computing power I would think.

I am also interested in using a couple of megapixel cameras, to capture license plates in a parking lot.

I am running 6 cameras at 640x480/5fr/sec and the amd 4000 can just keep up. Any faster and it drops frames. I would need an X2 or an Opteron to go any higher.

captain_morgan wrote:I am running 6 cameras at 640x480/5fr/sec and the amd 4000 can just keep up. Any faster and it drops frames. I would need an X2 or an Opteron to go any higher.

Thanks much! That is the kind of info I was looking for.

Not knowing anything more I will assume load is based on total number of pixels. So I will guess that the same machine could do 1 camera at 6 times the resolution.

So with a 5 megapixel camera we might do 2 frames per second on an amd 4000. And more on a faster machine.

I should also tell you that whenever I'm viewing the cameras, I don't view them at full resolution, to save cpu time and bandwidth on the server. I found that if I look at more than 1 camera at a time, at full res, it slows the system down. I usually view them at 1/2. ThNo montage, at all, either; that's a nightmare.

Also, I believe that if you go any higher than 320z240, the system automatically interlaces the images. One of the gurus should be able to better explain this, though.

i did varous test a while ago with an oc fx60
i found that 200 ish fps at 320x240 were a max for that processor
if a 2 megapixel cam runs at 1600x1200 then that is 25x std res then if it was doing 200 fps at 320x240 then it will do 1600x1200 at 8 fps

to be perfectly honest 8 fps is more than enough at std res much less mega pixel.
I have megapixel cams on my rig and i use the megas at 1 fps but use use a duplicat emonitor at 320x240 for normal use. I also use the std res as a linked monitor to the megapixels.
You will also notice options in zm4ms for this purpose.

If anyone has a quadcore core 2 id be interested in stress testing figures to save me buying one?