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I am searching for some Ubuntu software for using webcam. It needs to be able to record video with motion detection with the option of saving it to disk. I have tried ZoneMinder and found it way too complex to use. I am looking for something simple, preferably something with a GUI. Everyone keeps mentioning 'Motion' however It seems VERY complicated.

If Motion is the best way to go, could someone please take the time to instruct me on how to set it up to capture video?

I have read THIS tutorial on setting it up, but there is no mention of capturing video files. I also have read this FFMPG article, but have no clue how to set it up (I do have it installed).

I am running UBUNTU 12.04.

Pablo Bianchi
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Kalamalka Kid
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2 Answers2

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Maybe it was too complicated back in 2014. Now is pretty simple:

  1. Install it, sudo apt install motion
  2. Run sudo sh -c "mkdir /var/log/motion && chown motion /var/log/motion" and restart motion service (always after any config change). This seems a bug.
  3. By default all the Matroska videos (mkv, movie_codec) will be on /var/lib/motion/.
  4. On /etc/motion/motion.conf you might be interested in tweaking things like event_gap, movie_filename or movie_max_time.

You can also remove the old files with a cron job, merge videos with mencoder, or set areas with a PGM file on mask_file.

More info on this related answer.

Pablo Bianchi
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If you're looking for a simple program to do motion detection, I would choose a script using OpenCV like this one.

Or just download the first script and install python-opencv:

sudo apt-get install python-opencv

To run the script, just type in a terminal:

python ./MotionDetector.py

You will need Python 2 installed.

Pablo Bianchi
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Sylvain Pineau
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