Getting stills in montage view. ZM 1.24.1.

PRDR · Post by **PRDR** » Tue Aug 11, 2009 2:58 am

Hi,

Does anyone know how to get the montage view to show stills instead of streams?
I just switched from v. 1.23.3 (Ubuntu jaunty package) to 1.24.1 (package in the bluecherry repository). In 1.23.3 this was easy because there was a link that read stills or stream on top of each camera view. But this does not seem to be present any longer in the montage view with v1.24.1. I think that I had also set (or perhaps unset) a variable in 1.23.3, something like "ZM_CAN_STREAM", to indicate that I wanted stills by default, but I do not seem to be able to do that in 1.24.1.

I have been searching for info regarding this, but I have not found any topic covering it. If there is, I would appreciate it if anybody could point me to it.

Thanks in advance.

kingofkya · Post by **kingofkya** » Tue Aug 11, 2009 6:46 am

Yeah i dont know where it went in this release but what i do is set the low speed to single jpeg and switch that way

PRDR · Post by **PRDR** » Tue Aug 11, 2009 10:20 am

kingofkya wrote:Yeah i dont know where it went in this release but what i do is set the low speed to single jpeg and switch that way

Thanks for the answer, King.
I can not seem to see where or what you are setting. You are not unsetting the "WEB_L_USE_STREAMS" variable at the Low B/W Options Tab, are you? That did not work for me, at least for the Montage View (I actually unset that for High and Medium B/W also, just in case it wouldn't respect the fact that I am using low B/W, but it did not help).

Where is the option you are setting? Without this Montage View would not be usable, given the very low upload B/W I have. Thanks in advance!

kingofkya · Post by **kingofkya** » Tue Aug 11, 2009 4:58 pm

yeah
WEB_L_USE_STREAMS Use streaming or stills for live and events views (?)

is what I turned off then in the main windows click on the low, high or medium right below where it says zoneminder

and change to low when you need stills and back to high for streams

PRDR · Post by **PRDR** » Tue Aug 11, 2009 9:13 pm

That's odd. I have WEB_L_USE_STREAMS unchecked for low B/W, I am using low B/W and I keep getting streams from all cameras in montage view...

I even set WEB_L_VIDEO_MAXFPS to 1 for low B/W, and I still get very "heavy" streams when using Montage View...

cgutierrez · Post by **cgutierrez** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 4:28 pm

I upgraded a Zoneminder 1.23.3 installation to 1.24.2 running on Fedora 11 and also am unable to view still images no matter what settings I change. The original configuration was set to show still images by default and worked perfectly over a slow modem link.

I also installed a new Zoneminder 1.24.2 at home, also on Fedora 11... and am also unable to view stills.

I'll keep investigating this....

cgutierrez · Post by **cgutierrez** » Tue Aug 18, 2009 4:49 am

I was finally able to get still images working, but I must say there has to be an easier and clearer way to get this done... as there was in version 1.23.3. There should be clear "Still" and "Stream" links in the monitor window and in montage view...

So this is what I did:

1. At the ZoneMinder console, click the Options link at the upper right of the page.

2. In the Options popup window, click on the Images tab.

3. Change the CAN_STREAM radio button from Auto to No.

4. By the way, I have STREAM_METHOD set to jpeg. I did not have time to test mpeg... I just had to get this working so that I can move on to other things...

5. If you have Cambozola installed, lie and uncheck the OPT_CAMBOZOLA checkbox. If you don't do this, your browser will load Java and Cambozola to view the stream instead of giving you the stills.

6. Click Save to save these changes, then click the Low B/W tab.

7. Change WEB_L_REFRESH_IMAGE to the desired number of seconds for still image refreshing.

8. Click Save.

9. You do not need to restart Zoneminder, but you should close and reload the monitor window for the camera you want to watch.

10. You should get a new image every WEB_L_REFRESH_IMAGE seconds.

Some background: In 1.23.3 I used stills to watch the cameras from my business at home over a relatively slow link. I also used streaming to watch those same cameras in my office, in my local area network. And I used Cambozola sometimes when using Internet Explorer instead of Firefox. In 1.23.3 I could use both stills and streaming flawlessly...

Now 1.24.2 seems to want to stream at any cost, all the time. And there are no longer any direct "Still" and "Stream" links... this seems to me a regression. It is quite possible that someone might want to see a few cameras as stills, AND have one of them streaming at the same time. One could have montage view as stills, see something interesting, and want to hit the stream button for that camera. Right now it seems to me that we lost that flexibility.

I would humbly suggest:

1) Bring back the "Stills" and "Stream" links that were available in each monitor and montage window.

2) That there be a clear "Default Stream/Stills?" configuration variable for each bandwidth setting. Perhaps even for each camera...

3) Depending on how you implement #2, you might also want to have a USE_CAMBOZOLA variable for each bandwidth setting and/or camera. Otherwise having Cambozola installed will interfere with getting stills.

PRDR · Post by **PRDR** » Tue Aug 18, 2009 9:17 pm

cgutierrez wrote:I was finally able to get still images working, but I must say there has to be an easier and clearer way to get this done... as there was in version 1.23.3. There should be clear "Still" and "Stream" links in the monitor window and in montage view...

...........

I would humbly suggest:

1) Bring back the "Stills" and "Stream" links that were available in each monitor and montage window.

2) That there be a clear "Default Stream/Stills?" configuration variable for each bandwidth setting. Perhaps even for each camera...

3) Depending on how you implement #2, you might also want to have a USE_CAMBOZOLA variable for each bandwidth setting and/or camera. Otherwise having Cambozola installed will interfere with getting stills.

Thanks for the tips, although they look kind of extreme: getting rid of all streaming capabilities, it seems...

I would definitely vote for having the "stream/stills" link back in place at the montage view in the 1.24.x series too, if that is at all possible...

I guess... meanwhile I am back to using good old 1.23.3...