Where does 'Motion' web cam interface store image files?

Question

I've tested a USB webcam with motion with the motion detection on. I suspect that's why the memory card has no space left. I cannot in the name find the directory where Motion stores the images saved from the camera. Any idea where could I find it?

Answer 1

The default target directory should be your actual working directory. E.g. if you startet motion in your terminal from /home/pi, the saved images should be located there.

If your want to change this directory i would recommend reading this article and configure the motion.conf file: http://www.lavrsen.dk/foswiki/bin/view/Motion/AdvancedFilenames

Maybe in your case this directory is already set.

Answer 2

The default directory is /var/lib/motion which is set in the /etc/motion/motion.conf file using the target_dir variable

Answer 3

If using motion eye (the web server), with motion, it appears the generated images dont use the motion config file setting. Having just installed motion and motion eye on a Pi4 with Buster a week back, the config file does indeed say that the storage folder for the created files is

#Target base directory for pictures and films
#Recommended to use absolute path. (Default: current working directory)
target_dir /var/lib/motion

But running the motion system with motion eye web service results in the files being placed on the local pi filesystem here

/var/www/html/media

If in doubt as to the location of a file, simply hover your mouse over an image on the "Download Videos and Images" web page and it will tell you the local location of the file on the pi file system at the bottom of the web page.