Alarm frames getting dropped

Forum for questions and support relating to the 1.28.x releases only.
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ParanoidVideo
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Dec 29, 2015 9:53 pm

Alarm frames getting dropped

Post by ParanoidVideo »

Hi everyone,

I have my one-camera setup working pretty well at this point. It does catch motion. It's an Axis IP camera. Physical installation was quite complicated but the result is an awesomely cool peephole in my door that works.

Thanks to the help from this forum, I did fix the issue with it getting stuck in Alarm mode when I opened the door.

Now I'm having a different problem. When it goes into alarm, it drops frames, especially near the end and the beginning. The end is the worst though - it often seems like it skips one or two seconds of alarm frames at the end.

It's running on an older computer (2009) but that computer isn't doing anything other than monitoring this one camera. I have alarm max FPS set around 5. Surely even an older PC can process 5 FPS ?

I've seen other people having similar problems but I couldn't find a FAQ for how to approach this. Any suggestions? I don't want to add any more cameras to my setup until I have a good understanding of how to make it all work smoothly. I do plan to upgrade the computer once I know it's working and also add one or two more cameras. I'm also planning to upgrade to 1.29 as soon as it's out.
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knight-of-ni
Posts: 2404
Joined: Thu Oct 18, 2007 1:55 pm
Location: Shiloh, IL

Re: Alarm frames getting dropped

Post by knight-of-ni »

Don't place values into the Max fps and Aalrm Max fps fields. They are not intended for video streams.
Placing values in those fields cause exactly the issue you have described.

Instead, limit the frame rate in the ip camera, never in zoneminder.
Visit my blog for ZoneMinder related projects using the Raspberry Pi, Orange Pi, Odroid, and the ESP8266
All of these can be found at https://zoneminder.blogspot.com/
ParanoidVideo
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Dec 29, 2015 9:53 pm

Re: Alarm frames getting dropped

Post by ParanoidVideo »

Thank you Knnniggett. That worked! It now catches all the frames and it seems to be working much better. I went into the Axis camera setup and I limited it to 10 fps there, and that seems to give good captures. System load is a bit high, around .4 to .5, for one camera, so I worry about trying to do two cameras on this. I think I need to upgrade my PC.
lukey
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Oct 01, 2018 11:13 am

Re: Alarm frames getting dropped

Post by lukey »

knight-of-ni wrote: Tue Jan 05, 2016 4:21 pm Don't place values into the Max fps and Aalrm Max fps fields. They are not intended for video streams.
Placing values in those fields cause exactly the issue you have described.

Instead, limit the frame rate in the ip camera, never in zoneminder.
Just wish to thank you for this information too, was causing issues at our site and we couldn't get to the bottom of it. Clearing out those fields resolved the issue! :D
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