Help with BT878 16 channel card

[radarthis]

Originally posted in wrong forum so I deleted and moved:

Hello, can someone give me some guidance? I'm playing around with Zoneminder for the first time. I'm using an old Elite Technology PC-Based DVR. The card in it has 2 Conexant Fusion 878A chips. It is a 16 channel unit. My system is showing video0 and video1 both as Brooktree Corp BT878. Each with 4 channels. So I'm missing half of my channels.

I've tried various input settings and can never get anything but a blue screen.

I'm guessing a modprobe.d bttv.conf file is in order to properly use this card, however I have no clue what it should contain. First of all, is this a compatible card? Where can I find settings for it?

Thanks so much for any help.
Chad

[bb99]

Very little to go on here. http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/html_single/BTTV/ will give you card, tuner, numbers along with info that might help you figure this out. I don't think you have a bttv.conf issue. I think you probably have ZM configured incorrectly which is common. Some hints: start with one camera only connected to the card (you're going to have to figure device/channel by trial and error or what I do is swap pigtails one at a time), use 320*240 for your resolution, select gray scale or BGR24 for the palette, and be patient; it can take 10 sec or more for the monitor to display after you save the configuration.

I haven't seen a 878 card offer more then 4 channels per chip so I believe you have what you have: 8 channels. Also the highest fps claim I've seen per single 878 chip is 30 fps; divide by 4 channels = 7.5 fps. In reality..... Going to throw out one more tid bit: eventually you'll add more than one monitor per chip. You'll notice that this doesn't work without changing the value for capture per frame to 2 and this will limit fps even more. Should I mention heatsinks, well ventilated case?

[radarthis]

Ok. I think what I'm gathering from your response is the 16-ch card I have is not ideal. Ha. Do you have any recommendations on a different type that may work better? If not a 16 then perhaps two 8's of a particular make and model?

[bb99]

I can't say. Get it working and you make the call. I will only run 1 camera per installed 878 chip (working knowledge), so for me you have a 2 camera card. I'm running a PV-149 (4 878 chips) for 4 cameras and am very happy.

[radarthis]

Ok, thanks. I will just chuck the idea of using Zoneminder then. Thought it would be a good solution but sounds like you are really limited with the hardware. I appreciate it.