Digital Surveilance with Zoneminder 1.23

After several time our church congregation got stolen, we decide to upgrade our CCTV - yes we've been using the CCTV, but the quality is very poor (we seen the theft but the picture quality is very poor and the way to retrieve the recording isn't very comfortable - we've to search every single frame and there's no other way to skip it). Then we decide to upgrade the CCTV using computerize system which we find out will be doing more good for us.

My choice drop to Zoneminder, the fact of it being open source and it ran on LINUX also!!! has been always makes me believe we're not going wrong direction. As you guys know, we are non-profit organization and our budget come from the congregation, thats why we've to consider well every penny we spent and mostly because it ran on Linux which have been famous because of it's stability and robustness.

The hardware we choose this time is a set of computer (motherboard with onboard graphic card should be enough as we're going to install a server) and a DVR card - we choose Kodicom KMC-8800 8 channel DVR card.
Here is the list of supported hardware by Zoneminder

This time i choose Ubuntu 9.04 LAMP 32bit - Jaunty Jackalope as our base system. I'm not going to tell you guys about how to install it because the installation is pretty straight forward and well documented on internet. After the installation - make sure you guys give your server a static address, and change the repository to the local one (choose the closest one to you guys).

Once again!!! make sure you guys choose to install LAMP (Linux, Apache, mysql, PHP)!!!!

After that as usually, do some package update "sudo apt-get update" and the the upgrade "sudo apt-get upgrade" - install webmin to help us configure our system.

Now we're going to the install the zoneminder, installation is pretty straight forward also - we're going to make our life easier by installing it from debian repository "sudo apt-get install zoneminder" and if it asking for dependency fire up some command "sudo apt-get install -f" and try install the zoneminder again with "sudo apt-get install zoneminder".

After the installation progress is finish, try to link Apache with Zoneminder

"sudo ln -s /etc/zm/apache.conf /etc/apache2/conf.d/zoneminder.conf" and the reload apache "/etc/init.d/apache force-reload"

Notes :

• For Kodicom KMC-8800 we've to make bttv.conf file on /etc/modprobe.d/ and write down
  

     options i2c-algo-bit bit_test=1
     options bttv gbuffers=16 card=102,102,102,102,102,102,102,102 radio=0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 tuner=4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4 chroma_agc=1 combfilter=2 full_luma_range=1 coring=1 autoload=0

   for 1 card - The 8 inputs are from /dev/video0 channel 0 to /dev/video7 channel 0, and

     options i2c-algo-bit bit_test=1
     options bttv gbuffers=16 card=102,102,102,102,102,102,102,102,102,102,102,102,102,102,102,102 radio=0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 tuner=4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4 chroma_agc=1 combfilter=2 full_luma_range=1 coring=1 autoload=0

   for 2 card - The 16 inputs are from /dev/video0 channel 0 to /dev/video15
   channel 0.
   At this time it appears its not possible to install more than 2 cards of this card in the same computer, the computer will detect no more than 16 BT878 chips.

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Install Final Cut Pro/Studio on Macbook

Some of you may have facing some problem when installing Final Cut Pro on older Macbook white, yes the Final Cut Pro require us to have 128 MB of VRAM - As many of you know already, in many cases Apple's 'requirements' (and installer checks) for OS's, Apps, etc. are steeper than what the software will actualy run on (although not all features may work, or performance may be poor on some hardware).

The FCS 3 Install requirements lists "ATI or NVIDIA graphics processor (integrated Intel graphics processors not supported)" and "128MB of VRAM". They also list a higher minimum res (1280x800) display recommendation than FCS2 did (1024x768 min). And there's higher "requirements" listed for some apps like Color.

I copied the entire installation disk to my hard drive and deleted the installation check file from the FinalCutPro.mpkg file. (right click/"show package contents", etc.), and then go to "Content" - "Resources" and rename "Requirement Checker" file. Then the installer ran normally. After it was installed, I had to open up the applications' packages and change the "MRCheckPro.bundle" from the respective Contents/Resources folders (this is slightly different from older versions) with the one from here.

I should note that many newer Macbooks have more than 64MB shared VRAM, so people may not have to jump through these hoops on those models.

By the way, my experience with FCS 2 on this Macbook was that "almost" everything ran perfectly -- there were one or two filters (like "Bloom") that wouldn't render, but other than that, it was virtually indistinguishable from a Macbook Pro (and I should mention I have seen Mac Pros that couldn't render the Bloom filter either). I suspect this version will be similar...

Ok, have a great ministry with your Macbook.

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Panasonic AG-MX70 DSK (Down Stream Keyer)

Yes it's a bit confusing for the first time we using the DSK function on AG-MX70, me either need about one week to figure out how to set the DSK on AG-MX70.

Here's the step :
1. Connect the source of your DSK by using Composite or Component to "EXT IN" jack at the back of your AG-MX70 ("Key" for "Composite" and "Y Pb Pr" for "Component"
2. Next is the setup of your video mixer section, go to "Setup" setting by pressing the "Set up" button under the LCD and change the "Gen. Lock" -- "Ref In" into "Ext Key"
3. Next go to "DSK Fade" setting by pressing the "DSK Fade" button under the LCD and change the "DSK Source" -- "Key" into "EXT" and "Fill" into "BodMat" (this will make sure your text color match your desired color.
4. To change your text color just go to the "PATTERN" setting ("Mix" ussually for the church) by pressing the "Mix" button under the PATTERN setting , and change "Pattern Edge" -- "Color" into the color you want ("Yellow" for me).
Yes you can change the color into the color you desired.
5. To start using the DSK, send the text to mixer (i'm using Easy Woship from one computer connected to my video mixer by using S-Video to RCA cable custom build). The text must using black background.

I know the result of AG-MX70 is a litle bit crappy, and if your church have budget, just plan to buy one more video switcher with Chroma Key function other than using DSK function on AG-MX70 (There just a plain text with no shadow under it) Read More...

Installing Webmin on ubuntu

Webmin is a web-based interface for system administration for Unix. Using any browser that support tables and forms (and Java for the File Manager module), you can setup user accounts, Apache, DNS, Squid, file sharing and so on.

Webmin consists of a simple web server, and a number of CGI programs which directly update system files like /etc/inetd.conf and /etc/passwd. The web server and all CGI programs are written in Perl version 5, and use no non-standard Perl modules.

Preparing Your System

You need to install the following packages

sudo apt-get install perl libnet-ssleay-perl openssl libauthen-pam-perl libpam-runtime libio-pty-perl libmd5-perl

Install Webmin in Ubuntu

You can use the above procedure but if you want to install latest version of .deb package you can download from webmin site under Download Section

Download latest webmin using the following command

wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin_1.500_all.deb

Now we have webmin_1.500_all.deb package you need to install using the following command

sudo dpkg -i *.deb

If your server complains that there is some library things does not find. Just run the following command

sudo apt- get install -f

You should now be able to login to Webmin at the URL https://localhost:10000/

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