Panasonic BL-C101 with Mpeg 4

pvanthony · Post by **pvanthony** » Wed May 27, 2009 2:53 am

Currently using Zoneminder 1.24.1 with Panasonic BL-C101 set to record using jpeg. It is working great.

Now wanting to save space, looking into recording in mpeg4. The camera can stream in mpeg4.

Here are the questions,

1. Does recording in mpeg4 save space?
2. If it does, what is the correct setting for mpeg4 recording?

Tried the following setting but did not work.

rtsp://192.168.0.5/nphMpeg4/nil-640x480
rtsp://192.168.0.5:554/live.sdp
rtsp://192.168.0.5/MediaInput/mpeg4

Tried using vlan to test but that too did not work. So the url must be wrong setting.

Is there some other setting to use?

P.V.Anthony

pvanthony · Post by **pvanthony** » Wed May 27, 2009 2:58 am

Tried this in vlan and it works.
http://<ip_address>/rtpOverHttp?Url=nphMpeg4/nil-320x240

So the camera can stream mpeg4.

How to setup zoneminder to record mpeg4?

P.V.Anthony

pvanthony · Post by **pvanthony** » Thu May 28, 2009 6:14 pm

Is mpeg4 better quality?

P.V.Anthony

mitch · Post by **mitch** » Thu May 28, 2009 8:30 pm

ZM can only record raw frames, while it can most likely read your mpeg4 stream (which will save on bw but will probably result in lower quality pictures) it will parse it into jpegs and events are saved out in this format.

Jynger · Post by **Jynger** » Thu May 28, 2009 9:14 pm

so recorded mpeg4 events are saved as jpeg and in reduced quality compared to mjpeg streamed events ?

kingofkya · Post by **kingofkya** » Thu May 28, 2009 9:34 pm

yes because when ever a conversion takes place quality is lossed similarly to printing a picture then scanning it

so if the cams put out mjpeg it would be better and also less taxing on zoneminder

however if running through the web where bandwith is limited mpeg4 would be better accept for the quality loss

Jynger · Post by **Jynger** » Thu May 28, 2009 9:46 pm

hmm, thats too bad, I thnk I have noticed this on my setup with zavio camers, got them rtsp mpeg4 streaming, and have quality problems on recordings, never thought mpeg4 to still image coversion would actually reduce quality that much. sad thing is that the cameras own motion triggers work only on mpeg4

pvanthony · Post by **pvanthony** » Sat May 30, 2009 7:22 pm

Just for the record,

rtsp://192.168.0.5/nphMpeg4/nil-640x480 actually works with vlan. If did not work at first for me because the firewall was blocking the ports.

Once the firewall was opened, it worked well with vlan.

Since the video quality is not good for mpeg4, I am going to stick with jpeg.

Thank you all for the advice.

NokSuKao · Post by **NokSuKao** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 9:19 am

Hi,

how did you get the BL-C101 work under zm? I'm using zm 1.24.2 and can't get the camera with jpeg work. Could you tell me the Remote Host Path to the jpegs

thx
NokSuKao

Post by **Flasheart** » Thu Sep 16, 2010 8:59 am

/SnapshotJPEG?Resolution=640x480&Quality=Standard

Works for a static jpg which zm is happy with. The mjpeg path for its bigger brothers just produces a blank screen though.