Can't Play Recorded Videos

Previous development branch now released as 1.36
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dwoolridge
Posts: 7
Joined: Tue Mar 23, 2021 3:58 pm

Can't Play Recorded Videos

Post by dwoolridge »

Hello, I'm new to ZoneMinder and really like what I see so far. I'm having a problem that several hours of Googling hasn't helped me solve.

ZoneMinder was working as expected, but then something happened (not sure what) and I can no longer play the recorded videos in the web browser. I'm guessing I might be missing something simple, but tried to include as much information below as possible.

Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS
ZoneMinder v1.35.20 (installed from ppa:iconnor/zoneminder-master)
Google Chrome 89.0.4389.90 (Official Build) (64-bit)

When viewing the event, it shows what I think is the first frame of the video on the screen. The "Play", "Step Back", and "Step Forward" buttons are greyed out. The other buttons look active, but do nothing when clicked.

My browser can play the mp4 file that ZoneMinder creates for the event. I tested this by copying the file to a folder my browser can see and put that path to that file in Chrome's address bar.

ZoneMinder should be running as the "www-data" user
I have ZoneMinder starting as a service with the following zoneminder.service file:

Code: Select all

# ZoneMinder systemd unit file
# This file is intended to work with Debian distributions

[Unit]
Description=ZoneMinder CCTV recording and surveillance system
After=network.target mysql.service
# Remarked out so that it will start ZM on machines that don't have mysql installed
Requires=mysql.service

[Service]
User=www-data
Type=forking
ExecStart=/usr/bin/zmpkg.pl start
ExecReload=/usr/bin/zmpkg.pl restart
ExecStop=/usr/bin/zmpkg.pl stop
PIDFile=/run/zm/zm.pid
Restart=always
RestartSec=10
Environment=TZ=:/etc/localtime
TimeoutSec=600

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Recordings are stored in /mnt/data/zm_recording

Here are the file/folder permissions:

Code: Select all

drwxr-xr-x    4 root       root      4096 Mar  9 17:50 mnt
drwxrwsr-x   20 dataguest  datauser  4096 Mar 23 10:25 data
drwxrwsr-x    4 www-data   www-data  4096 Mar  9 17:31 zm_recording
As an example, here are the files that ZoneMinder created in /mnt/data/zm_recording/2021-03-23/6621:

Code: Select all

6621-video.mp4
alarm.jpg
snapshot-48x27.jpg
snapshot.jpg
Here are some periodic errors that I see in the web log:

Code: Select all

2021-03-23 11:18:30	zmwatch		481005	ERR	Memory map file '/dev/shm/zm.mmap.2' does not exist in zmMemAttach. zmc might not be running.	zmwatch.pl	-

2021-03-23 10:35:14	web_js		478844	ERR	Uncaught ReferenceError: action is not defined	zm/cache/skins_classic_views_js_zones-classic-1615486613.js     2

Any help would be most appreciated.
dougmccrary
Posts: 1173
Joined: Sat Aug 31, 2019 7:35 am
Location: San Diego

Re: Can't Play Recorded Videos

Post by dougmccrary »

There may have been a problem in .20.
Not sure as current version is .21 and it is working for me.
Simplest thing is get .21, See if it helps. You might try clearing cookies, too - not sure what all is in those now.
dwoolridge
Posts: 7
Joined: Tue Mar 23, 2021 3:58 pm

Re: Can't Play Recorded Videos

Post by dwoolridge »

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately it didn't fix it...

Here's what I did:
1) "sudo apt upgrade" which upgraded Zoneminder from 1.35.20 to 1.35.21 (among other upgrades).
2) rebooted
3) Initiated video motion that triggered Zoneminder to record.

The play button is stil greyed out for both the old and newly recorded videos.
dougmccrary
Posts: 1173
Joined: Sat Aug 31, 2019 7:35 am
Location: San Diego

Re: Can't Play Recorded Videos

Post by dougmccrary »

Did you clear cookies?
Can you post a screenshot of where you're at?
dwoolridge
Posts: 7
Joined: Tue Mar 23, 2021 3:58 pm

Re: Can't Play Recorded Videos

Post by dwoolridge »

Here's a screenshot. Note that changing the "Replay Rate" doesn't change button status.

I got there by:
Console-->clicked on the Hour event-->Clicked on the first event ID
Zoneminder_screenshot.png
Zoneminder_screenshot.png (897.86 KiB) Viewed 4380 times
dwoolridge
Posts: 7
Joined: Tue Mar 23, 2021 3:58 pm

Re: Can't Play Recorded Videos

Post by dwoolridge »

Here's the URL in case that tell us anything...

Code: Select all

http://automator/zm/?view=event&eid=6748&filter%5BQuery%5D%5Bterms%5D%5B0%5D%5Battr%5D=StartDateTime&filter%5BQuery%5D%5Bterms%5D%5B0%5D%5Bop%5D=%3E%3D&filter%5BQuery%5D%5Bterms%5D%5B0%5D%5Bval%5D=-1+hour&filter%5BQuery%5D%5Bterms%5D%5B1%5D%5Bcnj%5D=and&filter%5BQuery%5D%5Bterms%5D%5B1%5D%5Battr%5D=MonitorId&filter%5BQuery%5D%5Bterms%5D%5B1%5D%5Bop%5D=%3D&filter%5BQuery%5D%5Bterms%5D%5B1%5D%5Bval%5D=1&sort_field=StartDateTime&sort_asc=1&page=1
dwoolridge
Posts: 7
Joined: Tue Mar 23, 2021 3:58 pm

Re: Can't Play Recorded Videos

Post by dwoolridge »

I just tried to play the recorded videos on 2 other browsers. The videos played fine on:

-Ubuntu running Firefox 86.0.1 (64-bit)
-Raspbian running Chromium 86.0.4240.197


Any idea what could cause the problem on Google Chrome 89.0.4389.90 (64-bit)? It's really strange because Chrome was the browser I tried playing the files on directly (in the address bar) and that worked.

Again, any help would be most appreciated!
Last edited by dwoolridge on Wed Mar 24, 2021 10:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
dwoolridge
Posts: 7
Joined: Tue Mar 23, 2021 3:58 pm

Re: Can't Play Recorded Videos

Post by dwoolridge »

I just tried the following in Chrome, with no luck...

1) Downgrade Chrome to v88.0.4324.182 (had same video problem)
2) Allowed Chrome to update back to latest version (had same video problem)
3) Turned off All chrome extensions (had same video problem)
dwoolridge
Posts: 7
Joined: Tue Mar 23, 2021 3:58 pm

Re: Can't Play Recorded Videos

Post by dwoolridge »


SOLVED!


Clearing the Google Chrome cookies and cache brought the videos back to life!


Sorry dougmccrary, I missed that suggestion when I first read your post.
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