[Motion-user] Enhancement of network camera handling for Motion

[William M. B. <wb...@mm...>]

After spending quite a bit of time looking at the existing code which handles
network cameras, I (reluctantly) came to a decision that the code really
needed to be completely re-written.  I decided to take on that task, and have
made a very considerable amount of progress with it.

At this time, I have been running my new code using a variety of cameras from
URL's obtained through the help of Google :-) (I have no network camera of my
own).  The code is behaving quite well, including recovery from 99% of all
errors encountered, and a gentle closedown, with appropriate messages, for the
remaining 1%.

For load testing, I have been running with a total of 10 (simultaneous)
cameras - 5 running streaming MJPEG, 4 running single-frame capture JPEG, and
1 CCTV camera on a local bttv interface.  I have my motion configuration set
with a framerate of 10 (but remember, for the remote webcams this just means
I'll take data as fast as they will supply it), and output_normal and
output_motion both off, since I'm only interested in the camera-handling. 
With motion's webcam monitoring of the 10 channels, using a dual-Opteron
system with lots of memory, this takes between 25 - 45% of the total CPU of
the system).

I am now at a point where it would be *very* useful to have some other people
try out the code.  If any users are brave enough to do this, I have prepared a
"beta-release" of the motion source modules which I have changed.  The release
is available from anonymous FTP at bbsf.bbrack.org - filename
netcam2-b1.0.tgz.    To try it out, create a directory containing
motion-3.2.2_snap7, and unpack the release within that directory (that will
overwrite the old modules with the changed ones).  *Delete* the motion
Makefile, then configure and install as usual.

Most of the changed code is within the new modules netcam2.c, netcam_jpeg.c
and netcam2.h.  There are "a lot" of comments which should explain what I
(think I) am doing.  Since this is a "beta" release, it would not be
surprising if something doesn't work right - but at this point in my testing,
I'm not aware of any problems.  Please let me know any results (both positive
and negative), and particularly let me know of any improvements which need to
be included.

Enjoy!


Bill