virtualbox.org

Hi,
I have setup an IP security camera (GW-5037IP) and am encountering a problem when I try to view the camera live stream from my virtualbox guest OS.

From the host OS, I can control and view the camera live stream no problem. However, from the guest OS I can only control the camera and not view the live stream (I just see black where the video is supposed to display).

There are 3 methods to access the camera: (1) proprietary windows software, (2) over IE with proprietary IE plugin, (3) software that can stream rtsp (like VLC)

Regardless of which method I try, I can view the live camera stream from the host. But not from the guest OS.

My environment is:
Machine: NEC LaVie Notebook computer 4GB memory
Host: Windows 10
Guest OSes: Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 10
I have tried a few VB settings for the guest OS.
- Base memory: between 1 and 2 GB
- Video Memory: always 128MB (the max) with 3d acceleration both on and off, and 2d video acceleration both on and off

I have also tried running the above guest OSes on an OSX Yosemite Host (which is a much more powerful machine). However, the results are the same- can control the camera but not view the camera live stream.

I have checked with the manufacturer. However they are not familiar with access from a virtual machine. What I find more odd is that even streaming on VLC produces the same results (host ok, guest no good).

Questions:
(1) Is there any video related limitation in a VirtualBox guest OS?
(2) besides maxing out video memory and trying 2d and 3rd acceleration, is there any other setting I should be concerned with?

Any information and/or guidance is much appreciated.
Thanks,
Lon

Please post a VM log file. With the VM fully shut down, right click it in GUI. Select "Show Log" and save "VBox.log" (ONLY) to a zip file. Attach the zip here.

Hi Mpack,
Thanks for your response.
See a zipped up vbox.log attached.
Lon

VBox.log wrote: 00:00:03.131571 Host RAM: 4015MB total, 1473MB available
...
00:00:03.994792 RamSize <integer> = 0x0000000040000000 (1 073 741 824, 1 024 MB)
...
00:00:03.995033 VRamSize <integer> = 0x0000000010000000 (268 435 456, 256 MB)

I think you are assigning too much RAM to the VM, not leaving much for the host. Way too much VRAM in particular. I would cut that to 64MB until you have a host with more RAM available.

VBox.log wrote: 00:00:03.135517 Installed Extension Packs:
00:00:03.135584 None installed!

No extension pack basically means no USB. Not a problem as long as you don't enable USB. I would just install the extension pack.

VBox.log wrote: VirtualBox VM 5.0.14 r105127 win.amd64 (Jan 19 2016 16:40:17) release log
00:00:12.859365 VMMDev: Guest Additions information report: Version 4.3.12 r93733 '4.3.12'

GAs way out of date. It may be worth updating them.

I don't know that any of these will influence your problem, but it's worth a try. Your problem may simply be that you are asking too much of a VM. Performance in simulated hardware is always going to be lower than physical hardware.

Hi Mpack,
Thanks again for your response.

After further investigating alternative software, I found software that does work without any problems in Virtual Box guest.

Clearly there the vendor's software (both the IE plug-in and the windows app) have some incompatibility with Virtual Box. Their software has been fairly buggy to begin with so perhaps not much of a surprise.

Im going to stick with the alternative software. So we can close this inquiry. Thanks again for the help.
Lon

Guest software usually doesn't have to be compatible with VirtualBox, but if it's badly written then running in the more limited resource environment of a VM will sometimes show that, yes.