Hi all,
My question is regarding what is typical for input to a capture card, output from a camera and output from a TV....
I just started looking at ZoneMinder and have one USB webcam connected right now and purchased/installed a 8(4) port KWorld bt878 capture card. There are some cheapo cameras from Harborfreight.com that plug into a TV so I figured if I could take an RCA VideoOUT driving the NTSC VideoIN of my capture card and it worked then these cameras would work.... I have a VGA to TV box which as an RCA VideoOUT and when I built a connector to get it to connect to the BNC of the Capture card, IT WORKED.
Now the B/W HarborFreight.com cameras are in and I can not get the signal on the capture card. Plugging it into the VideoIN of my VCR brings up the picture so the camera works. I did find that if I set the resolution to 320x288 and hit SAVE, there's a short time where I can see the picture and then it all goes white. Anybody know if I'm mixing apples with oranges here or is there something else going on besided my lack of knowledge in this field.
Thanks for any help or pointer anybody can give.
The camera specs are:
1/4" CMOS Sensor
2:1 Interlace
320x240(EIA) and/or 352x288(CCIR)
350-TVlines(EIA) and/or 400-TVlines(CCIR)
Composite VideoOut at 1.0Vp-p, 75 ohms
The Kworld is the SEC800 but only 4 channels seem to work since it was said with only one bt878, some multiplexing hack is being used and we don't have access to that.
TIA.
NTSC, PAL, EIA, CCIR....what's going to work with what
camera picture in TVtime but still not in ZM
Here is what I found so far. NTSC and EIA are the same and so are PAL and CCIR. NTSC and PAL are pretty much the worldwide standards for broadcast video systems.
The HarborFreight camera is an NTSC/EIA camera and I was able to get the TVtime application to show data/picture from the camera. I had to change the Brightness and Contrast( Hue and Color did nothing since it's a B/W camera ).
Now ZoneMinder is another story. The Brightness and Contrast were defaulted to 327xx for each and I could not find a setting which would work. If I started the camera facing my hand and quickly moved it aside, I would see a quick image and then it would fade away. Getting correlating settings for these from TVtime didn't work( tried debug=0,1, and 2 ) and going with the percentages didn't work either( 50% in TVtime => 163xx ).
I also found it interesting that after "saving" the settings, if I "restart" ZM then those settings revert back to the max value.
Maybe I should have forked over >$100ea for cameras with auto-iris and auto-gain but that seemed excessive for seeing how well ZM is going to work. :-/
The HarborFreight camera is an NTSC/EIA camera and I was able to get the TVtime application to show data/picture from the camera. I had to change the Brightness and Contrast( Hue and Color did nothing since it's a B/W camera ).
Now ZoneMinder is another story. The Brightness and Contrast were defaulted to 327xx for each and I could not find a setting which would work. If I started the camera facing my hand and quickly moved it aside, I would see a quick image and then it would fade away. Getting correlating settings for these from TVtime didn't work( tried debug=0,1, and 2 ) and going with the percentages didn't work either( 50% in TVtime => 163xx ).
I also found it interesting that after "saving" the settings, if I "restart" ZM then those settings revert back to the max value.
Maybe I should have forked over >$100ea for cameras with auto-iris and auto-gain but that seemed excessive for seeing how well ZM is going to work. :-/
I don't know where or what thread this goes in but I was able to get the HarborFreight.com B/W camera to show video in ZM( using the KWorld SEC800( using 4 ports )). BUT, I had to drop the FPS on 3 of the 4 SEC800's monitors to 1-2 FPS before the first monitor would show a non-whiteout video display. Anybody know what gives?
I thought this might have something to do with total FPS capabilities of the card or something so I changed monitor 0 to 35FPS and sure enough, it showed ~35fps. There are no cameras connected to monitors 1,2, or 3 yet but I sure hope I don't have to run those at 1-2fps all the time.
I found this out by starting to turn off the monitors( 1-3 ) and after the 2nd one, I noticed I could see the camera output from monitor 0!
Any insights, directions, links or even RTFM comments welcome. Or I'll just keep on replying to myself here. :-/
I thought this might have something to do with total FPS capabilities of the card or something so I changed monitor 0 to 35FPS and sure enough, it showed ~35fps. There are no cameras connected to monitors 1,2, or 3 yet but I sure hope I don't have to run those at 1-2fps all the time.
I found this out by starting to turn off the monitors( 1-3 ) and after the 2nd one, I noticed I could see the camera output from monitor 0!
Any insights, directions, links or even RTFM comments welcome. Or I'll just keep on replying to myself here. :-/
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Hi Doug,
Just so's you know, version 1.19.5 has a fix that will keep the brightness and contrast settings etc between executions of ZM so you won't have to reset them. Provided your camera driver doesn't either.
Capture speed on multi-port cards is a bit hit and miss unless you know the full spec of the card you are using. Cheapo ones will limit you to ~3fps if you are using all ports whereas more epensive ones will still give you the full 25fps. I've never heard of needing to mess around with the capture rate to correct a brightness issue though.
Phil,
Just so's you know, version 1.19.5 has a fix that will keep the brightness and contrast settings etc between executions of ZM so you won't have to reset them. Provided your camera driver doesn't either.
Capture speed on multi-port cards is a bit hit and miss unless you know the full spec of the card you are using. Cheapo ones will limit you to ~3fps if you are using all ports whereas more epensive ones will still give you the full 25fps. I've never heard of needing to mess around with the capture rate to correct a brightness issue though.
Phil,
Phil, thanks for the 'heads-up' on the brightness/contrast fix in v1.9.5 since I was going to patch the LiveCD installed version with info from this thread:
http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewto ... s+contrast
but will probably go through the steps of upgrading since I need to learn these anyways.
The KWorld SEC800 card definately booms when the frame rates are over just a couple of fps / channel even though it uses the bt878 chip. Shocked me when I saw video when shutting down monitors. Oh well. I'll probably break down for a "real" card eventually but for now, it's good enough to check ZM out some more.
http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewto ... s+contrast
but will probably go through the steps of upgrading since I need to learn these anyways.
The KWorld SEC800 card definately booms when the frame rates are over just a couple of fps / channel even though it uses the bt878 chip. Shocked me when I saw video when shutting down monitors. Oh well. I'll probably break down for a "real" card eventually but for now, it's good enough to check ZM out some more.