Help with cheap ASF-MPEG4 ip cam

aNt1X · Post by **aNt1X** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 2:32 pm

Dear users,
i'm currently using some webcam identical to the A-LINKING AAL 9684.

It supports 2 view modes:
http://ip/img/video.asf (used by ActiveX)
http://ip/img/video.jpg

I can point correctly ZoneMinder to the video.jpg image, and it shows correctly, with obviously very poor refresh time. Obviously if i point ZoneMinder to video.asf, it doesn't work.

I'm still not able to view the ASF file.

If i point the ASF directly with TCPMP, it shows it correctly, and the informations provided are:

VIDEO: M4S2
Codec: MPEG4 DivX/XviD
Dimensions: 320x240

I tried the howto provided here
http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=10766, but i still have problems: it seems that ffmpeg can't recognize the format.
If i run ffmpeg via command line without parameters, i have this error:

Code: Select all

root@videoserver:~# ffmpeg -i http://192.168.1.220/img/video.asf
FFmpeg version SVN-rUNKNOWN, Copyright (c) 2000-2007 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
  configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-pp --enable-swscaler --enable-pthreads --enable-libvorbis --enable-libtheora --enable-libogg --enable-libgsm --enable-dc1394 --disable-debug --enable-shared --prefix=/usr
  libavutil version: 1d.49.3.0
  libavcodec version: 1d.51.38.0
  libavformat version: 1d.51.10.0
  built on Jun  3 2007 20:59:25, gcc: 4.1.3 20070528 (prerelease) (Ubuntu 4.1.2-9ubuntu2)
http://192.168.1.220/img/video.asf: Error while opening file
root@videoserver:~#         '

but the video.asf is reachable, because if i use WGET it starts downloading the stream:

Code: Select all

root@videoserver:~# wget http://192.168.1.220/img/video.asf
--15:43:05--  http://192.168.1.220/img/video.asf
           => `video.asf.1'
Connecting to 192.168.1.220:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: unspecified [application/octet-stream]

    [             <=>                     ] 26,645         7.76K/s
root@videoserver:~#

What can i do? I have these 10 webcams installed, my customer is viewing them via ActiveX, but i would like to view them via ZoneMinder, and use the ZoneMinder motion detection feature.

Thank you very much,

Post by **cordel** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 10:45 pm

You have to use jpeg, ZM does not support mpeg, avi, asf capturing as they are patent encumbered.

aNt1X · Post by **aNt1X** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 12:31 pm

cordel wrote:You have to use jpeg, ZM does not support mpeg, avi, asf capturing as they are patent encumbered.

i cannot even use the ffmpeg tool ?

i have a problem with this webcam. this ipcam has a limit of 4 simultaneous viewer.
it seems that if i use the ipcam in jpeg mode and activate Zoneminder, it seems that the webcam immediately reaches the limit, thus locking the webcam: the image doesn't refresh anymore, until i reboot the webcam.

any suggestion? i thought that using the ffmpeg decoder i was able to use Zoneminder ...

thank you very much

aNt1X

agoodm · Post by **agoodm** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 8:47 am

Try lowering the frame rate of the monitor to about 2 fps.

aNt1X · Post by **aNt1X** » Wed Apr 09, 2008 7:39 am

Ok,
i had to recompile ffmpeg.

The version installed with "apt-get install zoneminder" wasn't able to open the asf stream.

I downloaded and compiled the latest svn version, and now i am able to convert the ASF stream to raw video with

Code: Select all

ffmpeg -i http://192.168.1.220/img/video.asf -f rawvideo -pix_fmt rgb24 - | ./vpipe -f rgb -i 0

and point the Zoneminder monitor to /dev/video1

Thank you very much

aNt1X