Looking for a specific recording type...

[jsylvia007]

Howdy all!!

So I'm running the latest version with 5 cameras configured using RTSP (1920x1080@30fps)...

Is there a recording option that says:

Record Constantly, cut clips at XX time (maybe 5 minutes), but also analyze for motion, and mark clips that have motion...

I ask, because I can't get the Reference Image Blend %ge and AlmRefImageBlendPct to something that reliably gets ALL events. There are times when I can literally slowly walk in front of the camera in a slow circle, and it never fires the alarm, and I just can't figure out what I'm doing wrong...

So given this, I'd rather record it all, but have "alarms" flagged so that in case part of the motion gets flagged, I have the rest of it already recorded just as a matter of the normal configuration...

[bbunge]

Use Mocord as it will do 10 minute events with the alarmed frames marked.

And slow your cameras down to 5 fps. This is security camera system not production grade video!

[jsylvia007]

Thanks for the reply!

A few questions...

1. For Mocord... Can I distinguish between recordings that have alarms, and what don't have alarms? I've only always used MODECT...

2. For setting the 5ps, in reading the documentation, is the RTSP mode capable of filtering the frame-rate? Ideally, I'd like to have a low framerate for normal recording/analysis, but I'd like to kick it up for full recording... There's a specific caveat about mjpeg, but the docs don't say anything about RTSP.

[knight-of-ni]

Apples and oranges. Mjpeg is a type of video stream and so is h264. RTSP is a protocol used to send a stream. That protocol can stream mjpeg, h264, or anything else that comes along.

Read the documentation again, specifically the help text concerning the Max FPS field. You will see that it does not use the word "mjpeg" when describing the caveat. It uses the word "stream", which includes everything an IP camera is capable of sending with the only exception being snapshot mode (because that is by definition not a stream).

This warning has been put there because ZoneMinder cannot control the stream from the camera. That means zoneminder cannot change the frame rate when a camera goes into alarm, for example. Ignoring the warning is guaranteed to causes problems with your video. We even made the warning red, but we still get forum requests from those that ignore the warning and then report problems.

If your camera supports dual streams (most do nowadays), you can program two monitors for the same camera. Set low frame rate and resolution on the first, and set higher resolution and framerate on the second. Enable motion detection on the first monitor and link it to the second monitor. This will get you want you want, but it comes with the cpu and memory cost of two cameras versus just one.

[jsylvia007]

Apples and oranges. Mjpeg is a type of video stream and so is h264. RTSP is a protocol used to send a stream. That protocol can stream mjpeg, h264, or anything else that comes along.

Thanks for that! I didn't actually realize the difference. I'll have to look at the cameras, but I believe they are streaming h264 via rtsp. Maybe I'll just turn the framerate down to 15FPS and see how that works. I have a powerhouse of a server it's running on (64GB ECC Memory and and 8-core Xeon CPU), so I don't think I'm running into issues there.