aytons

So, I'm pretty new to the cctv... Been messing around with Zoneminder for a few weeks and have a few web cams, an 878a based capture card, and a single analog camera. Pretty much in the testing phase.. This is a home installation with limited, budget so factor that into the nature of my question.. Over on the Zoneminder forums I've read that the max resolution one can get using their system with analog cameras and capture cards is NTSC or PAL standard of 320x240 and 384x288 respectively. I've tried interlaced and it's not for me... the interlaced lines in the captured video are annoying and defeat the purpose. I tried a cheap IP camera with a higher resolution, but the motion blur introduced made it beside the point... On the flip side, I've read a bunch and understand now what CIF, 2CIF, and 4CIF are... I've scene discussion here on these resolutions and I've seen youtube video's at resolutions over CIF, so my question is, why can't ZoneMinder, a higher quality capture card, and a good hi-res analog camera (e.g., good quality, 1/3" had lens, 540TVL, etc) and capture resolutions higher than 320x240 or 384x288 without interlacing? I'm sure a huge part of it is the capture card max resolution, and then perhaps the compression algorithm going into zoneminder (e.g, mpeg2, mpeg4, or h264)... But if that's the case, why can't I buy a capture card capable of 4CIF and use that with ZoneMinder? Clearly, with webcams and ip cams, ZM is capable of supporting higher resolutions... Much, much appreciation if someone can please clarify this for me? aytons

So, then are there any capture cards that could be used with zoneminder that could capture at d1 progressive? aytons

I'm running Fedora 14 -64 and ZM 1.24.4 on a home built machine running a Phenom X4 with 4gb ram.. the server shares other duties as you might imagine, but even with 4 monitors, it easily manages the load.. the card is a cheapy conexant 4 port 30fs, though I picked up a used 8 port / 240fps that hasn't come yet.. the cam is a "Videosecu Day Night Vision CCTV CCD Home Security Camera Outdoor Vandal Proof 420TVL 3.6mm Wide View Angle Lens with Free Power Supply 1WX" I picked up on Amazon on the cheap.. the jury's out on it.. I'm thinking that if I can't get 640x480 to work without interlacing, I might as well go PAL on the cams and pick up 384x288 progressive and leave it at that... With that said, I change the CAPTURES_PER_FRAME to 2.. the multi-buffer I left on, but it shouldn't make a difference 'cause there's only one device on the card. I generated an event and I'm still getting the interlacing.. it's especially bad when viewing the mjpeg stream at low frame rates.. It cleans up a little when I generate an mpeg video out of it, but it's still there. V4L2_CAPTURE_FIELDS is set to 0. I tried, 2,3, & 7 and all of them split the video into 2 wide but vertically compressed images sitting on top of each other (obviously a no go). BTW, I've been using modect... that's what makes the most sense for me I think... I'm not too concerned about where I'm at now.. I've only spent a few bucks on a these cards and the one camera, but I just wanted to confirm if I can get get anything higher out of analog before I start investing in more gear. Couple more questions.. If I ended up sticking with progressive analog, I'm thinking it would make sense to pick up PAL cameras since they'll provide a slightly higher progressive image size (384x288).. make sense? And, does it makes sense at these resolutions to buy anything higher than 420TVL? Will I see any difference at that frame size/resolution? atyons