Maximum Camera Supported and seperate server data backup

justin2442 · Post by **justin2442** » Thu Mar 25, 2010 7:09 pm

Has anyone used zoneminder for a large number of cameras (100+)

My research on zoneminder indicates that due to the way the system detects motion (analizing each frame for changes) that it becomes very CPU intensive to record anymore than 16 cameras at a time depending on how many FPS each camera is set to record and the speed of the CPU.

Is this correct?

Also, is there an application to periodically dump video recorded using zoneminder to another server while still keeping the video and grouping intact?

mrkroket · Post by **mrkroket** » Fri Mar 26, 2010 5:38 pm

100+? How many DVR systems can do that by alone?
ZM (and almost 95% of CCTV systems out there) its not aimed to that kind of massive records. Think that propietary 100+ channels DVR could cost about 15k-20k USD, and almost always in chained mode (not only 1 CPU).

I imagine you can create a master-slave structure. One master system checks and connect to ZM machines, and unifies all data on a single server. All CPU intensive process will be done on slaves normal ZM rigs, while the master only keep info about slaves and stream if necessary. 8 slaves running 16 cameras on each one could be a feasible option (128 cams).

About dumping video to another server, I done it by modifying the zmvideo.pl and sharing a folder. Then the other server moves all exported videos from that shared folder, each 5 minutes. The only issue is that the video can't be exported and/or reviewed on web.

mrkroket · Post by **mrkroket** » Fri Mar 26, 2010 5:45 pm

Just check that link:
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/ ... minster.do

The move follows a reprieve of nearly a year for drivers after the wireless cameras had to be switched off because they did not meet Department for Transport guidelines on image quality.
Westminster council has now fixed the Â£15 million digital network of cameras, increasing the pixellation, at a cost of Â£495,000 and had them re-certificated.The software was also upgraded at an extra cost of Â£330,000.

That's it, implementing a 100channels CCTV costs London about 15 million pounds (a lot of money, probably due to installation and cable runs, not equipment itself). 330.000 pounds to only update the software, about half million USD.

kingofkya · Post by **kingofkya** » Fri Mar 26, 2010 7:49 pm

In theory zm could do it but you would be capturing at like what 10x10 it wouldn't be pretty. Now what you maybe able to do with a Xen cloud but still not cost effective.

Another way is to have say 5 servers with 20 cams each and just view them independently.

Post by **Flasheart** » Sat Mar 27, 2010 7:27 am

I'm doing around 50 cams, but that's split across three servers. (One due to being in a different town).

Motion detection /is/ CPU heavy, but I can't envisage any other way of doing it. The London system mentioned is, I believe, monitored by humans and doesn't do any motion detection - but then they have pan/tilt/zoom. I think we're talking apples and oranges here, theirs is a very specialised system and I can believe the cost.

I don't doubt you could do 100 on a single computer, but it'd have to be a beast. A small mainframe or cluster server. If you dropped the modect requirement then the a straight recording of say 5fps B&W at 320x240 - I think you'd be able to do that with a fast server and fast raid today. And tomorrow the hardware wouldn't even break sweat.

(I am talking IP's btw, probably on two gbit networks - the irq traffic for 100 would possibly be crippling even if you could physically stuff analogue cards in there)

To answer the other question - dumping video without affecting anything else. Yes, possible.

justin2442 · Post by **justin2442** » Sun Mar 28, 2010 4:46 pm

Most proprietary systems work much like the structure being described, but the advertised camera limit is usually much higher than 16-20 per server. I was more worried about how the unifying server would handle all the incoming data and whether or not it could reconstruct the frames into exportable video events which now sounds possible. Anyone know if H.264 compliancy is in ZM's future?

Question regarding scalable architecture: Does ZM have a remote access client Windows and Mac OS compatible? I assume that there can be many different users all with varying privs registered.

kingofkya · Post by **kingofkya** » Sun Mar 28, 2010 7:09 pm

its a webclient so its cross platform

yes there is users that you can set permissions

also you can alredy use H.264 but its very resource intensive

i think you could run 50 + cams but you would need some server grade hard where.

curtishall · Post by **curtishall** » Sun Mar 28, 2010 11:41 pm

Supporting 50+ cameras at 30FPS isn't a issue if the software is designed for it. Unfortunately Zoneminder is not, specifically because it takes 30 images every second from each camera (we are now up to 1500 images per second for 50 cameras) and then does (software) motion analysis.

The most efficient way is to do motion detection on the edge device or capture card itself, not in software. Video also needs to be stored as streams, not as single jpeg images.

Many solutions like this exist, none are cheap, and none are Linux supported. We have a product coming to market soon that will support this (32 cameras @ 30FPS @ MPEG4 encoding with a CPU usage of 10%) and support it well, but that's not a topic for the Zoneminder forum.