ZoneMinder Forums

I recently updated to ZoneMinder 1.32.x and it seems like my idle resource consumption is significantly higher than it used to be on 1.30.x. Zoneminder consistantly pulls 13% of my CPU and 1GB of RAM. Previously, I don't think I idled at anything higher than 3% of my CPU. I was debating what could be causing it and noticed that all of my monitors show as "Capturing", at anywhere form 30 kb/s to 240 kb/s. Is this by design, or is something strange going on? I have them all set to "Monitor", so I was expecting that they would be idle until I access one of them. Apologies if this is a stupid question, but I was hoping someone could set me straight.

this is normal operation. the cameras set in "monitor" are doing exactly that so the frame analysis to determine if motion has occurred is able to function. In "monitor" mode the only difference to some other modes is no motion is detected and no event or alarm is created, but streams can be viewed. One way to quickly reduce the CPU load is to slow down the camera FPS. With local cameras this is possible directly in the monitor configuration but with network IP cameras you must reduce the frame rates in the camera's settings. 3 - 10 FPS would suffice for security cameras and in your case show if there is improvement in the CPU load.

Try ffmpeg option "allowed_media_types=video". I my case both load and traffic dropped significantly.

@suknil Is that because you would be stripping out the audio stream from the cameras?

MJN wrote: ↑Fri Jan 18, 2019 9:13 am @suknil Is that because you would be stripping out the audio stream from the cameras?

Exactly, I don't need audio

It's worth raising that point so the consequences are fully understood.

I think we may be missing the point here though as I read the OP's question as more being why there is an apparent difference in idle usage between v1.30.x and v1.32.x rather than what the absolute value is or should be.

I've seen very little difference with system loads between 1.30.4 and 1.32.3. If anything, 1.32.3 seems to drop to a lower load level: I've seen system load drop below 0.30 (quad core); under 1.30.4 it seems that lowest was more around twice that. When very active, however, 1.32.3 is loads are higher; this, however, can be partially attributed to now running the AI detection hooks.

I would figure that, because zmc shows as being responsible for being the biggest load on the cpu(s), that it's really about how cameras are configured and how the the stream is being analyzed. I may have even bumped up my video resolution under 1.32.3: had it maxed, but found out that apps on my smartphone couldn't handle it and had to throttle back (but think that I'm still higher under 1.32.3).