Motion picture capturing: Debian + motion + Logitech C910 - part II

In my recent attempt to setup a motion detection camera I was disappointed, that my camera, which should be able to record with 30 fps in 720p mode only reached 10 fps using the software motion. Now I got a bit further. This seems to be an issue with the format used by motion. I've check the output of v4l2-ctl ...

$ v4l2-ctl -d /dev/video1 --list-formats-ext
[..]
ioctl: VIDIOC_ENUM_FMT
	Index       : 0
	Type        : Video Capture
	Pixel Format: 'YUYV'
	Name        : YUV 4:2:2 (YUYV)
[..]
		Size: Discrete 1280x720
			Interval: Discrete 0.100s (10.000 fps)
			Interval: Discrete 0.133s (7.500 fps)
			Interval: Discrete 0.200s (5.000 fps)
[..]

	Index       : 1
	Type        : Video Capture
	Pixel Format: 'MJPG' (compressed)
	Name        : MJPEG
[..]
		Size: Discrete 1280x720
			Interval: Discrete 0.033s (30.000 fps)
			Interval: Discrete 0.042s (24.000 fps)
			Interval: Discrete 0.050s (20.000 fps)
			Interval: Discrete 0.067s (15.000 fps)
			Interval: Discrete 0.100s (10.000 fps)
			Interval: Discrete 0.133s (7.500 fps)
			Interval: Discrete 0.200s (5.000 fps)
[..]

... and motion:

$ motion
[..]
[1] [NTC] [VID] v4l2_set_pix_format: Config palette index 17 (YU12) doesn't work.
[1] [NTC] [VID] v4l2_set_pix_format: Supported palettes:
[1] [NTC] [VID] v4l2_set_pix_format: (0) YUYV (YUV 4:2:2 (YUYV))
[1] [NTC] [VID] v4l2_set_pix_format: 0 - YUV 4:2:2 (YUYV) (compressed : 0) (0x56595559)
[1] [NTC] [VID] v4l2_set_pix_format: (1) MJPG (MJPEG)
[1] [NTC] [VID] v4l2_set_pix_format: 1 - MJPEG (compressed : 1) (0x47504a4d)
[1] [NTC] [VID] v4l2_set_pix_format Selected palette YUYV
[1] [NTC] [VID] v4l2_do_set_pix_format: Testing palette YUYV (1280x720)
[1] [NTC] [VID] v4l2_do_set_pix_format: Using palette YUYV (1280x720) bytesperlines 2560 sizeimage 1843200 colorspace 00000008
[..]

Ok, so both formats YUYV and MJPG are supported and recognized and I can choose both via the v4l2palette configuration variable, citing motion.conf:

# v4l2_palette allows to choose preferable palette to be use by motion
# to capture from those supported by your videodevice. (default: 17)
# E.g. if your videodevice supports both V4L2_PIX_FMT_SBGGR8 and
# V4L2_PIX_FMT_MJPEG then motion will by default use V4L2_PIX_FMT_MJPEG.
# Setting v4l2_palette to 2 forces motion to use V4L2_PIX_FMT_SBGGR8
# instead.
#
# Values :
# V4L2_PIX_FMT_SN9C10X : 0  'S910'
# V4L2_PIX_FMT_SBGGR16 : 1  'BYR2'
# V4L2_PIX_FMT_SBGGR8  : 2  'BA81'
# V4L2_PIX_FMT_SPCA561 : 3  'S561'
# V4L2_PIX_FMT_SGBRG8  : 4  'GBRG'
# V4L2_PIX_FMT_SGRBG8  : 5  'GRBG'
# V4L2_PIX_FMT_PAC207  : 6  'P207'
# V4L2_PIX_FMT_PJPG    : 7  'PJPG'
# V4L2_PIX_FMT_MJPEG   : 8  'MJPEG'
# V4L2_PIX_FMT_JPEG    : 9  'JPEG'
# V4L2_PIX_FMT_RGB24   : 10 'RGB3'
# V4L2_PIX_FMT_SPCA501 : 11 'S501'
# V4L2_PIX_FMT_SPCA505 : 12 'S505'
# V4L2_PIX_FMT_SPCA508 : 13 'S508'
# V4L2_PIX_FMT_UYVY    : 14 'UYVY'
# V4L2_PIX_FMT_YUYV    : 15 'YUYV'
# V4L2_PIX_FMT_YUV422P : 16 '422P'
# V4L2_PIX_FMT_YUV420  : 17 'YU12'
#
v4l2_palette 17

Now motion uses YUYV as default mode as shown by its output. So it seems that all I have to do is to choose MJPEG in my motion.conf:

v4l2_palette 8

Testing again ...

$ motion
[..]
[1] [NTC] [VID] vid_v4lx_start: Using V4L2
[1] [NTC] [ALL] image_ring_resize: Resizing pre_capture buffer to 1 items
[1] [NTC] [VID] v4l2_set_control: setting control "Brightness" to 25 (ret 0 ) 
Corrupt JPEG data: 5 extraneous bytes before marker 0xd6
[1] [CRT] [VID] mjpegtoyuv420p: Corrupt image ... continue
[1] [NTC] [VID] v4l2_set_control: setting control "Brightness" to 14 (ret 0 ) 
Corrupt JPEG data: 1 extraneous bytes before marker 0xd5
[1] [CRT] [VID] mjpegtoyuv420p: Corrupt image ... continue
[1] [NTC] [VID] v4l2_set_control: setting control "Brightness" to 36 (ret 0 ) 
Corrupt JPEG data: 3 extraneous bytes before marker 0xd2
[1] [CRT] [VID] mjpegtoyuv420p: Corrupt image ... continue
[1] [NTC] [VID] v4l2_set_control: setting control "Brightness" to 58 (ret 0 ) 
Corrupt JPEG data: 1 extraneous bytes before marker 0xd7
[1] [CRT] [VID] mjpegtoyuv420p: Corrupt image ... continue
[1] [NTC] [VID] v4l2_set_control: setting control "Brightness" to 80 (ret 0 ) 
Corrupt JPEG data: 4 extraneous bytes before marker 0xd7
[1] [CRT] [VID] mjpegtoyuv420p: Corrupt image ... continue
[1] [ERR] [ALL] motion_init: Error capturing first image
[1] [NTC] [ALL] image_ring_resize: Resizing pre_capture buffer to 16 items
Corrupt JPEG data: 4 extraneous bytes before marker 0xd1
[1] [CRT] [VID] mjpegtoyuv420p: Corrupt image ... continue
Corrupt JPEG data: 11 extraneous bytes before marker 0xd1
[1] [CRT] [VID] mjpegtoyuv420p: Corrupt image ... continue
Corrupt JPEG data: 3 extraneous bytes before marker 0xd4
[1] [CRT] [VID] mjpegtoyuv420p: Corrupt image ... continue
Corrupt JPEG data: 7 extraneous bytes before marker 0xd1
[..]

... and another issue is turning up :( The output above goes on and on and on and there is no video capturing. So accordingly to $searchengine the above happens to a lot of people. I just found one often suggested fix: pre-load v4l2convert.so from libv4l-0:

$ LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libv4l/v4l2convert.so motion

But the problem persists and I'm out of ideas :( So atm it lokks like I cannot use the MJPEG format and don't get 30 fps at 1280x720 pixels. During writing I then discovered a solution by good old trial-and-error: Leaving the v4l2_palette variable at its default value 17 (YU12) and pre-loading v4l2convert.so makes use of YU12 and the framerate at least raises to 24 fps:

$ LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libv4lg/v4l2convert.so motion
[..]
[1] [NTC] [VID] v4l2_do_set_pix_format: Testing palette YU12 (1280x720)
[1] [NTC] [VID] v4l2_do_set_pix_format: Using palette YU12 (1280x720) bytesperlines 1280 sizeimage 1382400 colorspace 00000008
[..]
[1] [NTC] [EVT] event_new_video FPS 24
[..]

Finally! :) The results are nice. It would maybe even be a good idea to limit the framerate a bit, to e.g. 20. So that is a tested configuration for the Logitech C910 running at a resolution of 1280x720 pixels:

v4l2_palette 17
width 1280
height 720
framerate 20
minimum_frame_time 0
pre_capture 10 # 0,5 seconds pre-recording
post_capture 50 # 2,5 seconds after-recording
auto_brightness on
ffmpeg_variable_bitrate 2 # best quality

Now all this made me curious, which framerate is possible at a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels now and how the results look like. Although I get 24 fps too, the resulting movie suffers of jumps every few frames. So here I got pretty good results with a more conservative setting. By increasing framerate - tested up to 15 fps with good results - pre_capture needed to be decreased accordingly to values between 1..3 to minimize jumps:

v4l2_palette 17
width 1920
height 1080
framerate 12
minimum_frame_time 0
pre_capture 6 # 0,5 seconds pre-recording
post_capture 30 # 2,5 seconds after-recording
auto_brightness on
ffmpeg_variable_bitrate 2 # best quality

Both configurations lead to satisfying results. Of course the latter will easily fill your hardrive :)

TODO

I guess, the results can be optimzed further by playing around with ffmpeg_bps and ffmpeg_variable_bitrate. Maybe then it is possible to record without jumps at higher framerates too(?). I also didn't test the various norm settings (PAL, NTSC, etc.).

Motion picture capturing: Debian + motion + Logitech C910

Winter time is a good time for some nature observation. Yesterday I had a woodpecker (picture) in front of my kitchen window. During the recent weeks there were long-tailed tits, a wren and other rarely seen birds. So I thought, it might be a good idea to capture some of these events :) I still own a Logitech C910 USB camera which allows HD video capturing up to 1080p. So I checked the web for some software that would begin video capturing in the case of motion detection and found motion, already available for Debian users. So I gave it a try. I tested all available resolutions of the camera together with the capturing results. I found that the resulting framerate of both the live stream and the captured video is highly depending on the resolution and some few configuration options. Below is a summary of my tests and the results I've achieved so far.

Logitech C910 HD camera

Just a bit of data regarding the camera. AFAIK it allows for fluent video streams up to 720p.

$ dmesg
[..]
usb 7-3: new high-speed USB device number 5 using ehci-pci
usb 7-3: New USB device found, idVendor=046d, idProduct=0821
usb 7-3: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=0, SerialNumber=1
usb 7-3: SerialNumber: 91CF80A0
usb 7-3: current rate 0 is different from the runtime rate 16000
usb 7-3: current rate 0 is different from the runtime rate 32000
uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device  (046d:0821)
input: UVC Camera (046d:0821) as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.7/usb7/7-3/7-3:1.2/input/input17

$ lsusb
[..]
Bus 007 Device 005: ID 046d:0821 Logitech, Inc. HD Webcam C910
[..]

$ v4l2-ctl -V -d /dev/video1 
Format Video Capture:
Width/Height  : 1280/720
Pixel Format  : 'YUYV'
Field         : None
Bytes per Line: 2560
Size Image    : 1843200
Colorspace    : SRGB

Also the uvcvideo kernel module is loaded and the user in question is part of the video group.

Installation and start

Installation of the software is as easy as always:

apt-get install motion

It is possible to run the software as a service. But for testing, I copied /etc/motion/motion.conf to ~/.motion/motion.conf, fixed its permissions (you cannot copy the file as user - it's not world readable) and disabled the daemon mode.

daemon off

Note that in my case the correct device is /dev/video1 because the laptop has a built-in camera, that is /dev/video0. Also the target directory should be writeable by my user:

videodevice /dev/video1
target_dir ~/Videos

Then running motion from the command line ...

$ motion
[..]
[0] [NTC] [ALL] motion_startup: Motion 3.2.12+git20140228 Started
[..]
[1] [NTC] [ALL] motion_init: Thread 1 started , motion detection Enabled
[0] [NTC] [ALL] main: Thread 1 is device: /dev/video1 input -1
[1] [NTC] [VID] v4l2_get_capability: 
------------------------
cap.driver: "uvcvideo"
cap.card: "UVC Camera (046d:0821)"
cap.bus_info: "usb-0000:00:1a.7-1"
cap.capabilities=0x84000001
------------------------
[1] [NTC] [VID] v4l2_get_capability: - VIDEO_CAPTURE
[1] [NTC] [VID] v4l2_get_capability: - STREAMING
[1] [NTC] [VID] v4l2_select_input: name = "Camera 1", type 0x00000002, status 00000000
[1] [NTC] [VID] v4l2_select_input: - CAMERA
[..]
[1] [NTC] [ALL] image_ring_resize: Resizing pre_capture buffer to 1 items

... will begin to capture motion detection events and also output a live stream. CTRL+C will stop it again.

Live stream

The live stream is available by pointing the browser to localhost:8081. However, the stream seems to run at 1 fps (frames per second) and indeed does. The stream gets more quality by this configuration:

stream_motion on
stream_maxrate 100

The first option is responsible, that the stream only runs at one fps if there is no motion detection event. Otherwise the framerate increases to its maximum value, which is either the one given by stream_maxrate or the camera limit. The quality of the stream picture can be increased a bit further too by increasing the stream_quality value. Because I neither need the stream nor the control feed I disabled both:

stream_port 0
webcontrol_port 0

Picture capturing

By default there is video and picture capturing if a motion event is detected. I'm not interested in these pictures, so I turned them off:

output_pictures off

FYI: If you want a good picture quality, then the value of quality should very probably be increased.

Video capturing

This is the really interesting part :) Of course if I will "shoot" some birds (with the camera), then a small image of say 320x240 pixels is not enough. The camera allows for a capture resolution up to 1920x1080 pixels (1080p). It is advertised for fluent video streams up to 720p (1280x720 pixels). So I tried the following resolutions: 320x240, 640x480, 800x600, 640x360 (360p), 1280x720 (720p) and 1920x1080 (1080p). These are easily configured by the width and height variables. For example the following configures motion for 1280x720 pixels (720p):

width 1280
height 720

The result was really disappointing. No event is captured with more then 20 fps. At higher resolutions the framerate drops even further and at the highest resolution of 1920x1080 pixels, the framerate is only two(!) fps. Also every created video runs much too fast and even faster by increasing the framerate variable. Of course its default value of 2 (fps) is not enough for fluent videos. AFAIK the C910 can run with 30 fps at 1280x720 pixels. So increasing the value of framerate, the maximum framerate recorded, is a must-do. (If you wanna test yourself, check the log output for the value following event_new_video FPS.)

The solution to the issue, that videos are running too fast, however is to increase the pre_capture value, the number of pre-captured (buffered) pictures from before motion was detected. Even small values like 3..5 result in a distinctive improvement of the situation. Though increasing the value further didn't have any effect. So the values below should almost get the most out of the camera and result in videos in normal speed.

framerate 100
pre_capture 5

Videos in 1280x720 pixels are still captured with 10 fps and I don't know why. Running guvcview, the same camera allows for 30 fps in this resolution (even 60 fps in lower resolutions). However, even if the framerate could be higher, the resulting video runs fluently. Still the quality is just moderate (or to be honest, still disappointing). It looks "pixelated". Only static pictures are sharp. It took me a while to fix this too, because I first thought, the reason is the camera or missing hardware support. It is not :) The reason is, that ffmpeg is configured to produce a moderate(?)-quality video. The relevant variables are ffmpeg_bps and ffmpeg_variable_bitrate. I got the best results just changing the latter:

ffmpeg_variable_bitrate 2

Finally the resulting video quality is promising. I'll start with this configuration setting up an observation camera for the bird feeding ground.

There is one more tweak for me. I got even better results by enabling the auto_brightness feature.

auto_brightness on

Complete configuration

So the complete configuration looks like this (only those options changed to the original config file)

daemon off
videodevice /dev/video1
width 1280
height 720
framerate 100
auto_brightness on
ffmpeg_variable_bitrate 2
target_dir /home/user/Videos
stream_port 0 #8081
stream_motion on
stream_maxrate 100
webcontrol_port 0 #8080

Links

• Motion Guide for Motion
• Motion Config File Options

Continue with part II ...