ZoneMinder Forums

New to Debian and ZM.
Followed the instructions to setup from here: https://wiki.zoneminder.com/Debian_11_B ... der_1.36.x
I'm not able to get any IP cameras working so I decided to start testing with VLC. My main computer is Linux mint and I'm able to stream from a LTS CMIP 3342W (hike-vision knockoff) without any issues but when I try from VLC installed on Debian 11 I get errors:

rtsp://username:password@IPAddress:554/Streaming/Channels/1
Input cant be opened: VLC is unable to open the MRL rtsp://username:password@IPAddress:554/Streaming/Channels/1 check log:

From log that I think are relevant:
access_realrtsp warning: Cseq mismatch, got 1, assumed 0
access_realrtsp debug: rtsp connected
access_realrtsp warning: only real/helix rtsp servers supported for now
main debug: no access modules matched
main debug: dead input

After some googling it looks like Debian no longer supports RTSP because it contains non-free software?!? I assume ZoneMinder wont work if VLC wont either.
I wanted to try ZoneMinder on Debian as I've read it's better with resource allocation but maybe it's not compatible anymore?
Any suggestions?

Use source type ffmpeg in ZM and see how you get on.

Thanks for the reply, I've tried ffmpg and a bunch of others without success. Onvif probe can see that camera and gives several choices for the stream but can never connect. (monitor is always red).

That doesn't make sense to me.

So I spun up a virtual machine of Ubuntu 20.04 and installed VLC and was able to connect to my camera first try. A fresh install of Debian 11 with VLC will not.
I don't think it is a zoneminder problem as much as it is a Debian 11 problem.
I guess I'll head over to the Debian forum and ask why Debian 11 cant stream RTSP?

Are you saying it can’t do it with ffmpeg either?

Magic919 wrote: ↑Wed Jan 05, 2022 7:30 am Are you saying it can’t do it with ffmpeg either?

yes.

I don't believe it.

Decided to start from scratch:
Downloaded and installed debian11.02 and created new esxi6.5 virtual machine. Went with xfce desktop.
Followed instructions here:
https://wiki.zoneminder.com/Debian_11_B ... der_1.36.x
All went well except for the line echo "deb https://zmrepo.zoneminder.com/debian/release-1.36 "`lsb_release -c -s`"/" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/zoneminder.list
it was permission denied even if using sudo, had to su in order to get it to complete then exit to get back to my user prompt.

Started zoneminder web interface and set time zone.
Went to console and selected ONVIF. It can see one of my cameras so entered username and password for the camera and then selected multicast stream at 15fps.
Console shows camera as red and log says: ERR Unable to open input rtsp://XXXX:XXXX@IPaddress:554/Streaming/Channels/101?transportmode=mcast&profile=Profile_1 due to: Invalid argument zm_ffmpeg_camera.cpp (username, password, IP removed for security)

I then deleted the monitor and tried the unicast stream, same result.
I then tried with the sub streams that were being detected again with the same result.

UDP or TCP?

OMG, I think I figured this out.
There was a Debian policy decision that will cause Debian VLC build to not stream rtsp, you have to use vlc as a flat-pack or snap to get around that if you plan on using VLC to test your cameras.
Then, in zoneminder, you cant use special characters in the password. In my case there was a ? in the password. To include non-standard characters you have to use % escaping.

happnatious1 wrote: ↑Fri Jan 07, 2022 3:41 am There was a Debian policy decision that will cause Debian VLC build to not stream rtsp,

ref: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo ... bug=982299, "We had to disable those plugins as liblivemedia
constains non-free code."

-- thanks! happnatious1

(I can't tell you how many hours I've spent trying to figure out what was wrong, trying over and over again over the last year whenever I had time. I only wish that an appropriate error message had appeared in the log.)

Debian 1.36.32
no streaming for my cameras (ezviz rtsp and panasonic http) but alarm images recorded.

VLC rtsp not working (deb or snap) but SMPlayer OK

zoneminder 1.36.25 OK on the same network and install on OpenSuse Leap 15.3