zoneminder/README

  16/01/05        ZoneMinder 1.20.0 README                1
                               
                      ZoneMinder v1.20.0

1.   Introduction
   
Welcome  to  ZoneMinder, the all-in-one Linux  GPL'd  security
camera solution.

A while back my garage was burgled and all my power tools were
stolen! I realised shortly after that if I'd just had a camera
overlooking the door then at least I'd have know exactly  when
and  who did the dirty deed. And so ZoneMinder was born.  It's
still a baby but hopefully it can grow up to be something that
can  be  genuinely  useful and maybe one  day  either  prevent
similar  incidents  or  perhaps  bring  some  perpetrators  to
justice.

ZoneMinder   is  designed  around  a  series  of   independent
components  that  only  function when necessary  limiting  any
wasted resource and maximising the efficiency of your machine.
A  fairly  ancient Pentium II PC should be able to  track  one
camera  per  device at up to 25 frames per  second  with  this
dropping  by half approximately for each additional camera  on
the  same device, additional cameras on other devices  do  not
interact  so  can  maintain this frame rate.  Even  monitoring
several  cameras  still will not overload  the  CPU  as  frame
processing  is  designed to synchronise with capture  and  not
stall it.

As  well  as being fast ZoneMinder is designed to be  friendly
and  even more than that, actually useful. As well as the fast
video  interface core it also comes with a user  friendly  and
comprehensive PHP based web interface allowing you to  control
and  monitor your cameras from home or even at work or on  the
road. It supports variable web capabilities based on available
bandwidth.  The web interface also allows you to  view  events
that  your  cameras have captured and archive them  or  review
them time and again, or delete the ones you no longer wish  to
keep.  The  web pages directly interact with the core  daemons
ensuring  full co-operation at all times. ZoneMinder can  even
be installed as a system service ensuring it is right there if
your computer has to reboot for any reason.

The  core of ZoneMinder is the capture and analysis of  images
and  there  is  a  highly configurable set of parameters  that
allow  you  to  ensure that you can eliminate false  positives
whilst  ensuring that anything you don't want to miss will  be
captured and saved. ZoneMinder allows you to define a  set  of
'zones'   for   each   camera  of  varying   sensitivity   and
functionality. This allows you to eliminate regions  that  you
don't wish to track or define areas that will alarm if various
thresholds are exceeded in conjunction with other zones.

ZoneMinder  is  fresh off the keyboard and so  comes  with  no
warranty whatsoever, please try it, send your feedback and  if
you get anything useful out of it please let me know.

ZoneMinder is free but if you do get ZoneMinder up and running
and   find   it  useful  then  please  feel  free   to   visit
http://www.zoneminder.com/donate.html where any donations will
be  appreciated  and will help to fund future improvements  of
ZoneMinder. This would be especially appreciated  if  you  use
ZoneMinder  as  part  of  your business  or  to  protect  your
property.


2.   Requirements
   
ZoneMinder needs a couple of things to work.

Firstly,  it  uses  MySQL so you'll need  that.  In  order  to
compile   you  need  to  make  sure  you  have  a  development
installation and not just a runtime; this is because it  needs
to use the MySQL header files. If you are running an RPM based
distribution then it's probably worth installing all the  pure
mysql rpm files to be sure you have the right ones.

Next  it  does  things  with JPEGs so  you'll  need  at  least
libjpeg.a  which I think come as standard nowadays  with  most
distributions.  It also uses the netpbm utilities  in  a  very
limited way to generate thumbnails under certain circumstances
though this can be modified.

ZoneMinder  can  generate MPEG videos if necessary,  for  this
you'll  need either ffmpeg (recommended) or the Berkeley  MPEG
encoder (mpeg_encode). If you don't have either, don't  worry,
as  the options will be hidden and you'll not really miss  too
much.  Some  of the authentication uses openssl MD5 functions,
if  you get a grumble about these during configuration all  it
will  mean is that authentication won't be used for streaming.
The web interface uses PHP and so you need that in your apache
or  other  web  server  as well, make sure  MySQL  support  is
available  either statically or as a module.  There  are  also
various perl modules that you may need that vary depending  on
which options you choose on installation, for more details see
later in this document.

Finally,  there  is  quite a bit of  image  streaming  in  the
package. So if you don't have Netscape or another browser that
supports  image  streaming natively I recommend  you  get  the
excellent        Cambozola       java       applet        from
http://www.charliemouse.com/code/cambozola/ which will let you
view  the  image  stream  in  Internet  Explorer  and  others.
Otherwise you're limited to just refreshing still images.

Hardware-wise, ZoneMinder has been used with various video and
USB  cameras  with the V4L interface. I don't have  a  lot  of
cameras myself so I've not had change to test it with  a  huge
range  personally however there is a list of devices that  are
definitely known to work on the web site. Please let  me  know
if  your  camera works and is not listed. You do need to  have
Video4Linux installed. I've not got too many machines so  I've
only  really  used it on various RedHat/Fedora  distributions,
which  seem  to  have  everything there by  default  I  think.
SlackWare   does  need  a  bit  more  tinkering   than   other
distributions; there is a document on the web site  describing
what  users have had to do to get it working. Please  give  me
feedback on other distributions not listed on the site.


3.   Building
   
The  first  thing you need to do is run the included configure
script to define some initial configuration, just type

./configure --with-mysql=<your MySQL root> --with-webdir=<your
web directory> --with-cgidir=<your cgi directory>

where  --with-mysql  identifies the root directory  where  you
have  installed  MySQL  (usually /usr), --with-webdir  is  the
directory to which you want to install the PHP files,  and  --
with-cgidir is the directory to which you want to install  CGI
files.   These  directories  could  be  /var/www/html/zm   and
/var/www/cgi-bin  for example. If you want to  use  real  MPEG
based streaming you will need to have built and installed  the
ffmpeg  tools.  You  can  then also use -with-ffmpeg=<path  to
ffmpeg  root> to help configure find it if it's not  installed
in  a  default location. Note, you have to make sure you  have
installed  the ffmpeg headers and libraries rather  than  just
the   binaries,  or  a  development  package  with  them   in.
Additionally if you have built ffmpeg with the mp3lame feature
turned on you may additionally need to tell configure where to
find   that   the  mp3lame  library,  to  prevent   unresolved
dependencies.  To  do  this add the -with-lame=<path  to  lame
directory>option as well. There are also two further arguments
you  can add if your web user and group are not both 'apache'.
These are --with-webuser and --with-webgroup. Type

./configure -help

for details on these options.

That's the build configuration sorted out. The next thing  you
have to do is do a little more runtime specific configuration.
ZoneMinder configuration is scattered around various files  in
the  distribution so to make things easier for you there is  a
ZoneMinder configuration utility included. Type

perl ./zmconfig.pl

to  get  it  started. It is an interactive  utility  and  will
prompt you by asking you various questions. For most questions
typing '?' will give you additional help if you need it.  Once
you've  answered  all  the  questions  it  will  write  out  a
configuration  file  called 'zmconfig.txt'  and  then  process
various  files to substitute the information in them.  If  you
run  it again it will remember your answers from. If you  just
want to rerun the substitutions you can run zmconfig.pl in non-
interactive mode by typing

perl ./zmconfig.pl -noi

which  will just read your file and do the substitutions  with
no  questions asked. There are two classes of options,  `core'
options  which  much be specified with zmconfig  which  detail
things  such  as  database passwords which are  compiled  into
ZoneMinder  and other options with are stored in the  database
and  which  can  be  modified dynamically  via  the  `options'
section  of the web interface. Only the first set need  to  be
completed  with zmconfig at this stage. If you want to  change
just a few options and can't access the options dialog via the
web  you can append them as parameters to zmconfig and it will
just ask you about those. So for example,

perl ./zmconfig.pl ZM_STRICT_VIDEO_CONFIG

however it is fairly dumb and will not tell you if you make  a
typo and misspell an option.

Among the first questions zmconfig.pl asks you are to do  with
the database and the next thing you should do is create it and
the  associated database users. You may notice that there  are
two sets of users and passwords. This is because the streaming
server  and utility binaries require only read access  to  the
database so you may wish to create both a full access user and
a  limited access user. You can of course set both to the full
access user. The included schema (zmschema.sql) can be used to
actually  create the tables required. The database is  usually
called just 'zm'.

If you are a first time user the first run of zmconfig.pl will
warn  you  about  the missing database, you can  ignore  those
errors  this time. Once you've run it for the first  time  the
schema  file should have your desired database name in  it  so
use  it  to create the database (see below). Once the database
and  permissions are set up rerun zmconfig.pl  with  the  -noi
option  to  get  it to load the configuration  into  your  new
database.

If  you  are  upgrading from a previous version  you  can  use
zmalter-x.y.z.sql  to  upgrade  your  database  and  make  the
necessary  changes  where  x.y.z  identifies  the  version  of
ZoneMinder you had installed previously. So if you  are  going
from version 0.9.7 to version 0.9.11 you would run the scripts
for  all intervening versions to get to the current one,  i.e.
zmalter-0.9.7.sql,  zmalter-0.9.8.sql,  zmalter-0.9.9.sql  and
zmalter0.9.10.sql. Additionally from version  1.19.5  you  can
use  the  zmupdate.pl script to do all the updating  for  you,
this  will  include all the database changes  plus  any  other
tweaks  necessary to upgrade to the latest version. To use  it
you should type

zmupdate.pl -version=<previous version> [--user=<db  user>  --
pass=<db password>]

where `previous version' relates to the version of ZM you  are
upgrading  from,  1.19.4 for example. All  updates  from  that
versions  onwards  will be applied, however  zmupdate.pl  will
only  work  with upgrades from 1.19.0 onwards. The `user'  and
`pass'  options  allow  you to specify  a  database  user  and
password with sufficient privilege to `alter' the structure of
the  database. This is not necessarily the database  user  you
use for ZoneMinder itself as specified in the section below.

For  a  new  installation  the simplest  way  to  create  your
database and users is as follows,

mysql mysql < zmschema.sql

mysql mysql

grant select,insert,update,delete on <your database name>.* to
'<username>'@localhost identified by '<password>';

quit

mysqladmin reload

You  may  need to supply a username and password to the  mysql
commands  in  the  first  place to  give  yourself  sufficient
privileges  to perform the required commands. If you  want  to
host  your  database on a different machine  than  that  which
ZoneMinder  is running on then use the hostname of the  remote
machine instead of localhost.

Then just type 'make' and off you go.


4.   Installation
   
Once the build has completed you should have several shiny new
binaries. I will now briefly describe what each of them does.

  zmc  -  This is the ZoneMinder Capture daemon. This binary's
  job  is to sit on a video device and suck frames off  it  as
  fast  as possible, this should run  at more or less constant
  speed.
  
  zma  -  This is the ZoneMinder Analysis daemon. This is  the
  component  that goes through the captured frames and  checks
  them  for motion which might generate an alarm or event.  It
  generally keeps up with the Capture daemon but if very  busy
  may skip some frames to prevent it falling behind.
  
  zmf  -  This  is  the ZoneMinder Frame daemon.  This  is  an
  optional  daemon that can run in concert with  the  Analysis
  daemon  and whose function it is to actually write  captured
  frames  to  disk. This frees up the Analysis  daemon  to  do
  more  analysis  (!) and so keep up with the  Capture  daemon
  better.  If  it  isn't  running or dies  then  the  Analysis
  daemon just writes them itself.
  
  zms  -  This  is  the ZoneMinder Streaming server.  The  web
  interface  connects with this to get real-time or historical
  streamed images. It runs only when a live monitor stream  or
  event  stream  is actually being viewed and  dies  when  the
  event  finishes or the associate web page is closed. If  you
  find you have several zms processes running when nothing  is
  being  viewed then it is likely you need a patch for  apache
  (see the Troubleshooting section).
  
  zmu  -  This  is  the ZoneMinder Utility. It's  basically  a
  handy  command  line interface to several useful  functions.
  It's  not really meant to be used by anyone except  the  web
  page  (there's only limited 'help' in it so far) but can  be
  if necessary, especially for debugging video problems.
  
  zmfix  -  This is a small binary that exists only to  ensure
  that  the video device files can be read by the main capture
  daemons.  It is often the case that these device  files  are
  set  to be accessible by root only on boot. This binary runs
  setuid  and  ensures that they have appropriate permissions.
  This  is not a daemon and runs only on system start and then
  exits.
  
As  well  as  this  there are the web PHP  files  in  the  web
directory  and  some  perl scripts in the  scripts  directory.
These  scripts all have some configuration at the top  of  the
files which should be viewed and amended if necessary and  are
as follows.

  zmpkg.pl  -  This is the ZoneMinder Package Control  script.
  This  is  used by the web interface and service  scripts  to
  control the execution of the system as a whole.
  
  zmdc.pl  -  This  is the ZoneMinder Daemon  Control  script.
  This  is  used by the web interface and the zmpkg.pl  script
  to  control  and maintain the execution of the  capture  and
  analysis  daemons, amongst others. You should  not  need  to
  run this script yourself.
  
  zmfilter.pl  - This script controls the execution  of  saved
  filters  and  will  be  started  and  stopped  by  the   web
  interface based on whether there are filters that have  been
  defined  to  be autonomous. This script is also  responsible
  for  the  automatic  uploading of  events  to  a  3rd  party
  server.
  
  zmaudit.pl  -  This script is used to check the  consistency
  of  the  event  file  system and  database.  It  can  delete
  orphaned  events, i.e. ones that appear in one location  and
  not  the  other  as well as checking that  all  the  various
  event   related  tables  are  in  line.  It   can   be   run
  interactively or in batch mode either from the command  line
  or  a  cron job or similar. In the zmconfig.pl there  is  an
  option   to  specify  fast  event  deletes  where  the   web
  interface  only  deletes the event entry from  the  database
  itself.  If  this is set then it is this script that  tidies
  up the rest.
  
  zmx10.pl  - This is an optional script that can be  used  to
  initiate  and monitor X10 Home Automation style  events  and
  interface  with an alarm system either by the generation  of
  X10   signals   on  ZoneMinder  events  or   by   initiating
  ZoneMinder monitoring and capture on receipt of X10  signals
  from  elsewhere, for instance the triggering of an X10  PIR.
  For  example  I  have several cameras that don't  do  motion
  detection until I arm my alarm system whereupon they  switch
  to  active mode when an X10 signal is generated by the alarm
  system and received by ZoneMinder.
  
  zmtrigger.pl  -  This is a new (for 1.20.0) optional  script
  that  is  a more generic solution to external triggering  of
  alarms.  It  can  handle  external  connections  via  either
  internet  socket,  unix  socket or  file/device  interfaces.
  Currently  you  have to configure these using the  `sources'
  array  in the script itself though ultimately I would expect
  they  would  be  databased. The format of triggers  used  by
  zmtrigger.pl            is            as             follows
  "<id>|<action>|<score>|<cause>|<text>" where
     <20>    'id' is the id number or name of the ZM monitor
<EFBFBD>    'action' is 'on','off' or 'cancel' where 'on' forces an
alarm condition on, 'off' forces an alarm condition off and
'cancel' negates the previous 'on' or 'off'. Ordinarily you
would use 'on' and 'cancel', 'off' would tend to be used to
suppress motion based events. Additionally 'on' and 'off' can
take an additional time offset, e.g. on+20 which automatically
'cancel's the previous action after that number of seconds.
<EFBFBD>    'score' is the score given to the alarm, usually to
indicate it's importance. For 'on' triggers it should be non-
zero, otherwise it should be zero.
<EFBFBD>    'cause' is a 32 char max string indicating the reason
for, or source of the alarm e.g. 'Relay 1 open'. Ignored for
'off' or 'cancel' messages
<EFBFBD>    'text' is a 256 char max additional info field, currently
not used for anything though anything passed in here will get
saved. Ignored for 'off' or 'cancel' messages.
  Note  that multiple messages can be sent at once and  should
  be  LF or CRLF delimited. Without customisation zmtrigger.pl
  is  of little use, but if you configure it correctly it  can
  help  integrate other systems to generate external  triggers
  that will cause ZoneMinder events.
  
  zmwatch.pl  -  This  is a simple script purely  designed  to
  keep  an eye on the capture daemons and restart them if they
  lockup.  It  has been known for sync problems in  the  video
  drivers  to  cause  this  so this  script  makes  sure  that
  nothing important gets missed.
  
  zmupdate.pl  -  Currently  this script  is  responsible  for
  checking  whether a new version of ZoneMinder  is  available
  and  other  miscellaneous actions related  to  upgrades  and
  migrations. It is also intended to be a `one stop shop'  for
  any  upgrades  and  will  execute  everything  necessary  to
  update your installation to a new version.
  
  zm  -  This  is the (optional) ZoneMinder init  script,  see
  below for details.
  
Finally,  check zm_config.php in the web directory  and  amend
any  configuration necessary in there. Most will have  already
been done by the configuration utilities but some scripts have
a `VERBOSE' flag you can set to get more debug out.

At this stage typing 'make install' will install everything to
the  desired  locations, you may wish  to  su  to  root  first
though.  The  installation routine will copy the binaries  and
scripts    to   your   chosen   install   location,    usually
/usr/local/bin and then move zms to your cgi-bin area. It will
then  copy  the web files to your chosen directory and  ensure
they  have  the  right permissions. Finally it tries  to  link
zm.php to index.php but will not overwrite an existing file if
it already exists.

The 'zm' script does not get installed automatically as it  is
not necessary for the operation of the ZoneMinder setup per se
and  is not necessarily supported for distributions other than
RedHat  However  if  you want to ensure  that  the  ZoneMinder
daemons  are  started on reboot etc copy  it  to  your  init.d
directory,  usually something like /etc/rc.d/init.d  and  then
add it by doing

chkconfig --add zm

or similar command for your distribution. ZoneMinder will then
start  up when your machine reboots and can be controlled  (by
the  root  user)  by doing 'service zm start' or  'service  zm
stop'  etc.  You  may need to use the `-levels'  parameter  to
chkconfig to ensure that ZoneMinder is started when  you  need
it to.

Now start your web browser and point it at your zm.php and off
you go.


5.   Tutorial
   
What  you  see now (and subsequently) depends on  whether  you
chose to run ZoneMinder in authenticated mode or not. This  is
an  option that lets you specify whether anyone that  goes  to
the ZoneMinder web pages must authenticate themselves in order
to be given permissions to perform certain tasks. If you chose
this  mode  then you will need to log in here.  By  default  a
fully privileged user `admin' has been created with a password
also  of  `admin'. You should change this password as soon  as
possible.

Once  you've  logged  in,  or  if  you  are  running  in   un-
authenticated  mode, you will now see the  ZoneMinder  Console
window.  This will resize itself to avoid being too  intrusive
on your desktop. Along the top there are several informational
entries  like  the  time of the last update  and  the  current
server  load. There will also be an indication of  the  system
state which will probably say `stopped' to start with. This is
a  link that you can click on to control the ZoneMinder system
as  a whole. Below that are various other links including  one
detailing  the current user (in authenticated mode  only)  and
one  allowing you to configure your bandwidth. This  last  one
enables  you to optimise your settings depending on where  you
are,  the  actual values relating to this are defined  in  the
options.  If  you are using a browser on the same  machine  or
network  then  choose high, over a cable  or  DSL  link  maybe
choose medium and over a dialup choose low. You can experiment
to  see  which  is  best. This setting is retained  on  a  per
machine basis with a persistent cookie. Also on this line  are
a number of other links that will be covered below.

Please bear in mind that from here on the descriptions of  the
web pages are based on what you will see if you are running as
a  fully  authenticated  user.  If  you  are  running  in  un-
authenticated  mode  or as a less privileged  user  then  some
elements may not be shown or will be disabled.


5.1. Defining Monitors
To  use  ZoneMinder properly you need to define at  least  one
Monitor.  Essentially, a monitor is associated with  a  camera
and  can  continually check it for motion detection  and  such
like. So, next click 'Add New Monitor' to bring up the dialog.
You will see a bunch of things you have to fill in.

To  help  you get started on the video configuration the  best
thing is to us a tool like 'xawtv' (http://bytesex.org/xawtv/)
to  get  a picture you're happy with, and to check your camera
works.  Then run 'zmu -d <device_no> -q -v' to get a  dump  of
the  settings  (note, you will have to additionally  supply  a
username   and  password  to  zmu  if  you  are   running   in
authenticated mode). You can then enter these values into  the
video related options of the monitor configuration panel.  The
'device_no' referred to here is a number corresponding to  the
digit  at  the end of your device file, so /dev/video0  has  a
'device_no' of 0 etc. If 'zmu' gives you an error  related  to
permissions run 'zmfix -a' to make sure you can access all the
video devices.

The  options are divided into a set of tabs to make it  easier
to  edit. You do not have to `save' to change to different tab
so  you  can  make all the changes you require and then  click
`Save'  at the end. The individual option are explained  in  a
little more detail below,

`Monitor' Tab

   Name  -  The name for your monitor. This should be made  up
   of  alphanumeric characters (a-z,A-Z,0-9)  and  hyphen  (-)
   and underscore(_) only. Whitespace is not allowed.
   
   Function  -  This essentially defines what the  monitor  is
   doing. This can be one of the following;
   
      <20>    'None' - The monitor is currently disabled and no streams
        can be viewed or events generated.
        
<EFBFBD>    'Monitor' - The monitor will only stream feeds but no
image analysis is done and so no alarms or events will be
generated,
<EFBFBD>    'Modect' - or MOtion DEteCTtion. All captured images will
be analysed and events generated where motion is detected.
<EFBFBD>    `Record' - In this case continuous events of a fixed
length are generated regardless of motion which is analogous
to a convention time-lapse video recorder. No motion detection
takes place in this mode.
<EFBFBD>    `Mocord' - This is a hybrid of Modect and Record and
results in both fixed length events being recorded and also
any motion being highlighted within those events.
      <20>    'Nodect' - or No DEteCTtion. This is a special mode
        designed to be used with external triggers. In Nodect no
        motion detection takes place but events are recorded if
        external triggers require it.
        
   Generally  speaking it is best to choose  `Monitor'  as  an
   initial setting here..
   
   Section Length - This specifies the length (in seconds)  of
   any  fixed length events produced when the monitor function
   is  `Record'  or  `Mocord'. Otherwise it is  ignored.  This
   should  not  be  so  long  that  events  are  difficult  to
   navigate  nor so short that too many events are  generated.
   A length of between 300 and 900 seconds I recommended.
   
   Frame  Skip  -  This  setting  also  applies  only  to  the
   `Record'  or  `Mocord'  functions and  specifies  how  many
   frames  should  be  skipped  in the  recorded  events.  The
   default  setting  of zero results in every  captured  frame
   being  saved,  whereas one would mean  that  one  frame  is
   skipped  between each saved one, two means that two  frames
   are  skipped  between each saved one etc. An alternate  way
   of  thinking is that one in every `Frame Skip +  1'  frames
   is  saved. The point of this is to ensure that saved events
   do  not  take up too much space unnecessarily whilst  still
   allowing  the  camera  to capture at a  fairly  high  frame
   rate.  The alternate approach is to limit the capture frame
   rate  which will obviously affect the rate at which  frames
   are saved.
   
   Run Mode - Two choices are available here. `Continuous'  is
   the  usual  setting and means that the monitor is  expected
   to  be  performing the function selected above at all times
   and  should  one  or more of the daemons  fail  or  not  be
   running  it  will be automatically restarted.  By  contrast
   `Triggered'  means  that  the decision  about  whether  the
   daemons  should  actually  be  active  is  devolved  to  an
   external triggering mechanism.
   
   Triggers  -  This  small  section  lets  you  select  which
   triggers  will  apply  if the run  mode  has  been  set  to
   `triggered' above. The most common trigger is X10 and  this
   will   appear  here  if  you  indicated  that  your  system
   supported it during installation. Only X10 is supported  as
   a  shipped  trigger with ZoneMinder at present  but  it  is
   expected  that  other  triggers will  become  available  as
   necessary.  You  can  also just use `cron'  jobs  or  other
   mechanisms  to  actually control the camera and  keep  them
   completely outside of the ZoneMinder settings.
   
   Source  Type  -  This determines whether the  camera  is  a
   local one attached to a physical video or USB port on  your
   machine  or  a  remote network camera or similar.  Choosing
   one or the other affects which set of options are shown  in
   the next tab.
   
`Source' Tab (local device)

   Device  Number/Channel  -  For a  local  camera  enter  the
   device  number that your camera is attached to.  If  it  is
   /dev/video0  enter '0' etc. Some video devices,  e.g.  BTTV
   cards  support multiple cameras on one device  so  in  this
   case  enter the channel number in the Channel box or  leave
   it  at  zero if you're using a USB camera or one with  just
   one channel.
   
   Device  Format - For a local camera enter the video  format
   of  the  video  stream. This is defined in  various  system
   files  (e.g.  /usr/include/linux/videodev.h)  but  the  two
   most common are 0 for PAL and 1 for NTSC.
   
   Capture  Palette  -  Finally for  the  video  part  of  the
   configuration  enter the colour depth. ZoneMinder  supports
   a  handful of the most common palettes, so choose one here.
   If  in  doubt  try grey first, and then 24 bit  colour.  If
   neither of these work very well then YUV420P or one of  the
   others   probably  will.  There  is  a  slight  performance
   penalty  when  using palettes other than  grey  or  24  bit
   colour  as an internal conversion is involved. These  other
   formats  are intended to be supported natively in a  future
   version  but for now if you have the choice choose  one  of
   grey or 24 bit colour.
   
   Capture  Width/Height - The dimensions of the video  stream
   your  camera  will supply. If your camera supports  several
   just   enter   the  one  you'll  want  to  use   for   this
   application,  you  can always change it  later.  However  I
   would  recommend  starting with no larger than  320x240  or
   352x288   and  then  perhaps  increasing  and  seeing   how
   performance  is affected. This size should be  adequate  in
   most  cases. Some cameras are quite choosy about the  sizes
   you  can  use here so unusual sizes such as 197x333  should
   be avoided initially.
   
   Orientation - If your camera is mounted upside down  or  at
   right  angles you can use this field to specify a  rotation
   that  is  applied  to  the image as it  is  captured.  This
   incurs an additional processing overhead so if possible  it
   is  better to mount your camera the right way round if  you
   can. If not set the orientation here. If you choose one  of
   the  rotation  options remember to switch  the  height  and
   width  fields  so  that they apply,  e.g.  if  your  camera
   captures  at  352x288  and you choose `Rotate  Right'  here
   then set the height to be 352 and width to be 288.
   
`Source' Tab (remote device)

   Remote  Host/Port/Path  -  For  remote  cameras  use  these
   fields  to  enter the full URL of the camera. Basically  if
   your               camera               is               at
   http://camserver.home.net:8192/cameras/camera1.jpg     then
   these   fields   will  be  camserver.home.net,   8192   and
   /cameras/camera1.jopg respectively. Leave the  port  at  80
   if  there  is  no  special port required.  If  you  require
   authentication  to access your camera then  add  this  onto
   the        host        name       in        the        form
   <username>:<password>@<hostname>.com.
   
   Remote  Image  Colours - Specify the amount of  colours  in
   the  captured  image.  Unlike with local  cameras  changing
   this  has no controlling effect on the remote camera itself
   so  ensure that your camera is actually capturing  to  this
   palette beforehand.
   
   Capture Width/Height - As per local devices.
   
   Orientation - As per local devices.
   
`Timestamp' Tab

   Timestamp  Label  Format - This relates  to  the  timestamp
   that  is  applied  to each frame. It is a  `sprintf'  style
   string.  It  is  actually passed through sprintf  and  then
   through printf to add the monitor name so a format of  '%%s
   -  %y/%m/%d  %H:%M:%S' (note the double % at the beginning)
   would   be  recommended  though  you  can  modify   it   if
   necessary. If you don't want a timestamp or have  a  camera
   that puts one on itself then leave this field blank.
   
   Timestamp  Label  X/Y - The X and Y values determine  where
   to  put  the  timestamp. A value of 0 for the X value  will
   put  it  on the left side of the image and a Y value  of  0
   will  place  it  at  the top of the  image.  To  place  the
   timestamp  at  the bottom of the image use  a  value  eight
   less than the image height.
   
`Buffers' Tab

   Image  Buffer Size - This option determines how many frames
   are  held  in  the ring buffer at any one  time.  The  ring
   buffer  is the storage space where the last `n' images  are
   kept,  ready  to be resurrected on an alarm  or  just  kept
   waiting  to be analysed. It can be any value you like  with
   a  couple  of provisos, (see next options). However  it  is
   stored  in shared memory and making it too large especially
   for large images with a high colour depth can use a lot  of
   memory. A value of no more than 50  is usually ok.  If  you
   find  that  your system will not let you use the value  you
   want  it  is probably because your system has an  arbitrary
   limit  on  the size of shared memory that may be used  even
   though  you may have plenty of free memory available.  This
   limit   is   usually  fairly  easy  to  change,   see   the
   Troubleshooting section for details.
   
   Warm-up  Frames  -  This  specifies  how  many  frames  the
   analysis  daemon  should process but not  examine  when  it
   starts.  This  allows it to generate an accurate  reference
   image  from a series of images before looking too carefully
   for any changes. I use a value of 25 here, too high and  it
   will  take a long time to start, too low and you  will  get
   false alarms when the analysis daemon starts up.
   
   Pre/Post  Event Image Buffer - These options determine  how
   many  frames  from  before and after  an  event  should  be
   preserved  with it. This allows you to view  what  happened
   immediately prior and subsequent to the event. A  value  of
   10 for both of these will get you started but if you get  a
   lot  of  short events and would prefer them to run together
   to  form  fewer  longer ones then increase the  Post  Event
   buffer  size.  The pre-event buffer is a  true  buffer  and
   should  not  really  exceed  half  the  ring  buffer  size.
   However  the  post-event buffer is just  a  count  that  is
   applied  to  captured  frames and so can  be  managed  more
   flexibly.  You should also bear in mind the frame  rate  of
   the  camera  when  choosing these values.  For  instance  a
   network  camera capturing at 1FPS will give you 10  seconds
   before and after each event if you chose 10 here. This  may
   well  be  too much and pad out events more than  necessary.
   However  a  fast video card may capture at  25FPS  and  you
   will  want to ensure that this setting enables you to  view
   a reasonable time frame pre and post event.
   
   Alarm  Frame Count - This option allows you to specify  how
   many  consecutive alarm frames must occur before  an  alarm
   event  is  generated. The usual, and default,  value  is  1
   which   implies  that  any  alarm  frame  will   cause   or
   participate in an event. You can enter any value up  to  16
   here  to  eliminate bogus events caused perhaps  by  screen
   flickers  or  other transients. Values  over  3  or  4  are
   unlikely  to  be useful however. Please note  that  if  you
   have    statistics   recording   enabled   then   currently
   statistics  are  not  recorded for the first  `Alarm  Frame
   Count'-1 frames of an event. So if you set this value to  5
   then  the first 4 frames will be missing statistics whereas
   the  more  usual  value  of 1 will ensure  that  all  alarm
   frames have statistics recorded.
   
`Misc' Tab

   Event  Prefix  - By default events are named  `Event-<event
   id>',  however you are free to rename them individually  as
   you  wish.  This option lets you modify the  event  prefix,
   the  `Event-`  part, to be a value of your choice  so  that
   events  are  named differently as they are generated.  This
   allows  you  to  name  events according  to  which  monitor
   generated them.
   
   Maximum  FPS - On some occasions you may have one  or  more
   cameras  capable of high capture rates but  find  that  you
   generally do not require this performance at all times  and
   would  prefer  to  lighten the load on  your  server.  This
   option permits you to limit the maximum capture rate  to  a
   specified  value. This may allow you to have  more  cameras
   supported  on your system by reducing the CPU  load  or  to
   allocate  video bandwidth unevenly between cameras  sharing
   the  same  video device. This value is only a  rough  guide
   and  the lower the value you set the less close the  actual
   FPS  may approach it especially on shared devices where  it
   can  be  difficult  to synchronise two  or  more  different
   capture  rates  precisely. There is a global  configuration
   option  that allows you to turn this limiting  off  in  the
   event of an alarm.
   
   FPS Report Interval - How often the current performance  in
   terms  of  Frames Per Second is output to the  system  log.
   Not  used in any functional way so set it to maybe 1000 for
   now.  If  you watch /var/log/messages (normally)  you  will
   see  this value being emitted at the frequency you  specify
   both for video capture and processing.
   
   Reference  Image  Blend  %ge  -  Each  analysed  image   in
   ZoneMinder is a composite of previous images and is  formed
   by  applying  the current image as a certain percentage  of
   the  previous  reference image. Thus,  if  we  entered  the
   value  of 10 here, each image's part in the reference image
   will  diminish  by a factor of 0.9 each time  round.  So  a
   typical reference image will be 10% the previous image,  9%
   the one before that and then 8.1%, 7.2%, 6.5% and so on  of
   the  rest  of  the  way. An image will  effectively  vanish
   around  25 images later than when it was added. This  blend
   value  is  what is specified here and if higher  will  make
   slower  progressing events less detectable as the reference
   image  would change more quickly. Similarly events will  be
   deemed  to  be  over  much sooner as  the  reference  image
   adapts   to   the  new  images  more  quickly.  In   signal
   processing  terms  the higher this value  the  steeper  the
   event  attack and decay of the signal. It depends  on  your
   particular  requirements what the appropriate  value  would
   be  for  you but start with 10 here and adjust it  (usually
   down) later if necessary.
   
`X10' Tab

   Note:  This  tab and its options will only  appear  if  you
   have  indicated  that  your system supports  the  X10  home
   automation protocol during initial system configuration.
   
   X10   Activation  String  -  The  contents  of  this  field
   determine  when a monitor starts and/or stops being  active
   when  running  in `Triggered; mode and with  X10  triggers.
   The format of this string is as follows,
   
     n : If you simply enter a number then the monitor will be
     activated  when an X10 ON signal for that  unit  code  is
     detected  and will be deactivated when an OFF  signal  is
     detected.
     
     !n  :  This inverts the previous mode, e.g. !5 means that
     the monitor is activated when an OFF signal for unit code
     5 is detected and deactivated by an ON.
     
     n+  :  Entering a unit code followed by + means that  the
     monitor  is activated on receipt of a ON signal for  that
     unit code but will ignore the OFF signal and as such will
     not be deactivated by this instruction. If you prepend  a
     '!'  as  per the previous definition it similarly inverts
     the mode, i.e. the ON signal deactivates the monitor.
     
     n+<seconds>  : As per the previous mode except  that  the
     monitor will deactivate itself after the given number  of
     seconds.
     
     n-  :  Entering a unit code followed by - means that  the
     monitor  is  deactivated on receipt of a OFF  signal  for
     that  unit code but will ignore the ON signal and as such
     will not be activated by this instruction. If you prepend
     a '!' as per the previous definition it similarly inverts
     the mode, i.e. the OFF signal activates the monitor.
     
     n-<seconds>  : As per the previous mode except  that  the
     monitor  will activate itself after the given  number  of
     seconds.
     
   You  can  also combine several of these expressions  to  by
   separating   them   with  a  comma   to   create   multiple
   circumstances  of activation. However for  now  leave  this
   blank.
   
   X10  Input Alarm String - This has the same format  as  the
   previous  field but instead of activating the monitor  with
   will  cause  a  forced alarm to be generated and  an  event
   recorded  if the monitor is Active. The same definition  as
   above  applies except that for activated read  alarmed  and
   for  deactivated read unalarmed(!). Again leave this  blank
   for now.
   
   X10  Output  Alarm String - This X10 string  also  has  the
   same  format as the two above options. However it works  in
   a  slightly  different way. Instead of ZoneMinder  reacting
   to  X10  events  this option controls how ZoneMinder  emits
   X10  signals  when the current monitor goes into  or  comes
   out  of  the alarm state. Thus just entering a number  will
   cause  the  ON  signal for that unit code to be  sent  when
   going  into alarm state and the OFF signal when coming  out
   of  alarm state. Similarly 7+30 will send the unit  code  7
   ON  signal  when going into alarm state and the OFF  signal
   30  seconds  later regardless of state. The combination  of
   the    X10   instruction   allows   ZoneMinder   to   react
   intelligently  to,  and  also  assume  control  of,   other
   devices when necessary. However the indiscriminate  use  of
   the  Input  Alarm and Output Alarm signals can  cause  some
   horrendous  race  conditions such as a light  going  on  in
   response to an alarm which then causes an alarm itself  and
   so  on.  Thus  some circumspection is required here.  Leave
   this blank for now anyway.
   
Finally, click 'Save' to add your monitor.

On  the main console listing you will now see your monitor and
some of its vital statistics. Most columns are also links  and
you  get  to  other functions of ZoneMinder  by  choosing  the
appropriate  one. Describing them left to right, they  are  as
follows.

The  first  column is the Id, clicking on this gives  you  the
opportunity to edit any of the settings you have just  defined
your monitor to have.

The next column is the Name column, clicking on this will give
you  the watch window where you can view a live feed from your
camera along with recent events. This is described more  fully
below.

Following that are the Function and Source columns, which  may
be  represented  in various colours. Initially  both  will  be
showing  red.  This means that that monitor is not  configured
for  any  function and as a consequence has no  zmc  (capture)
daemon  running on it. If it were orange it would mean that  a
zmc  daemon was running but no zma (analysis) daemon and green
means  both  are  running. In our case it is  red  because  we
defined  the Monitor to have a Function of None so no  daemons
are required. To get the daemons up and running you can either
click  on the source listed in the Source column and edit  the
monitor properties or click on the Function listed and  change
it   to  'Monitor',  which  will  ensure  that  one  or   more
appropriate daemons are started automatically.

Having  a  device status of red or orange does not necessarily
constitute  an  error  if  you have  deliberately  disabled  a
monitor or have just put it into Passive mode.

If  you  have several cameras (and thus monitors) on a  device
the  device status colour reflects all of them for the capture
daemon.  So if just one monitor is active then the  daemon  is
active  for  both even if all the other monitors are  switched
off.

Once  you have changed the function of your monitor, the  main
console window will be updated to reflect this change. If your
device status does not go green then check your system and web
server logs to see if it's something obvious.

You can now add further monitors if you have cameras set up to
support  them.  Once  you have one or more  monitors  you  may
notice  the  '<n> Monitors' title becomes a link. Clicking  on
this  link  will open up a window which allows you  to  assign
your monitors to groups. These let you select certain monitors
to  view.  For  instance you may only  wish  to  view  outdoor
monitors  while indoors. You can also choose to  view  all  of
them.  If  you  choose  a group then your  selection  will  be
remembered via a cookie and will be used until you change  it.
You  can  call your groups anything you like, though  `Mobile'
has  a  special meaning (see Mobile Devices below). There  may
also  be  a  `Cycle' link which allows you to cycle through  a
shot  from each of your monitors (in the selected group unless
they  are switched off) and get a streamed or still image from
each in turn. Similarly if you see a link titled `Montage'  it
will  allow you view all your active enabled cameras  (in  the
selected group) simultaneously. Be aware however that this can
consume  large amounts of bandwidth and CPU so should  not  be
used continuously unless you have resource to burn.


5.2. Defining Zones
The  next important thing to do with a new monitor is  set  up
Zones  for  it  to  use. By default you'll  already  have  one
created  for you when you created your monitor but  you  might
want to modify it or add others. Click on the Zones column for
your  monitor  and you should see a small popup window  appear
which  contains  an  image from your camera  overlain  with  a
stippled  pattern representing your zone. In the default  case
this  will cover the whole image and will be red. Beneath that
will  be  a table containing a listing of your zones. Clicking
on  either the relevant bit of the image or on the Id or  Name
in  the table will bring up another window where you can  edit
the particulars for your Zones. As you can see there are quite
a  few,  so now is a good time to go through them. The options
are as follows.

   Name  -  This is just a label to identify the zone by.  You
   can  change  this to be more representative  if  you  like,
   though   it   isn't  used  much  except  for  logging   and
   debugging.
   
   Type  -  This  is  one  of the more important  concepts  in
   ZoneMinder and there are five to choose from.
   
     Active : This is the zone type you'll use most often, and
     which will be set for your default zone. This means  that
     this  zone will trigger an alarm on any events that occur
     within it that meet the selection criteria.
     
     Inclusive : This zone type can be used for any zones that
     you  want to trigger an alarm only if at least one  other
     Active zone has already triggered one. This might be  for
     example  to  cover an area of the image like a  plant  or
     tree  which moves a lot and which would trigger  lots  of
     alarms.  Perhaps  this is behind an area  you'd  like  to
     monitor though, in this case you'd create an active  zone
     covering  the  non-moving parts  and  an  inclusive  zone
     covering  the tree perhaps with less sensitive  detection
     settings  also. If something triggered an  alarm  in  the
     Active  zone  and also in the Inclusive zone  they  would
     both  be registered and the resulting alarm would be that
     much bigger than if you had blanked it out altogether.
     
     Exclusive  : The next zone Type is Exclusive. This  means
     that  alarms will only be triggered in this  zone  if  no
     alarms have already been triggered in Active zones.  This
     is  the  most specialised of the zone types and  you  may
     never  use  it  but in its place it is very  useful.  For
     instance  in the camera covering my garden I  keep  watch
     for  a  hedgehog that visits most nights and  scoffs  the
     food  out  of  my  cats  bowls. By creating  a  sensitive
     Exclusive zone in that area I can ensure that a  hedgehog
     alarm  will  only  trigger if there is activity  in  that
     small area. If something much bigger occurs, like someone
     walking  by it will trigger a regular alarm and  not  one
     from  the Exclusive zone. Thus I can ensure I get  alarms
     for  big events and also special small events but not the
     noise in between.
     
     Preclusive : This zone type is relatively recent.  It  is
     called  a  Preclusive zone because if it is triggered  it
     actually  precludes  an alarm being  generated  for  that
     image frame. So motion or other changes that occur  in  a
     Preclusive zone will have the effect of ensuring that  no
     alarm  occurs at all. The application for this zone  type
     is  primarily as a shortcut for detecting general  large-
     scale  lighting or other changes. Generally this  may  be
     achieved  by limiting the maximum number of alarm  pixels
     or other measure in an Active zone. However in some cases
     that  zone  may cover an area where the area of  variable
     illumination occurs in different places as the sun and/or
     shadows move and it thus may be difficult to come up with
     general  values.  Additionally,  if  the  sun  comes  out
     rapidly  then although the initial change may be  ignored
     in  this  way as the reference image catches up an  alarm
     may  ultimately  be triggered as the image  becomes  less
     different.  Using one or more Preclusive zones  offers  a
     different approach. Preclusive zones are designed  to  be
     fairly  small, even just a few pixels across, with  quite
     low alarm thresholds. They should be situated in areas of
     the  image that are less likely to have motion occur such
     as  high  on  a  wall or in a corner.  Should  a  general
     illumination  change  occur they would  be  triggered  at
     least  as early as any Active zones and prevent any other
     zones   from  generating  an  alarm.  Obviously   careful
     placement  is required to ensure that they do not  cancel
     any genuine alarms or that they are not so close together
     that  any  motion just hops from one Preclusive  zone  to
     another.  As  always, the best way  is  to  experiment  a
     little and see what works for you.
     
     Inactive  :  This  final zone type  is  the  opposite  of
     Active.  In  this  zone  type  no  alarms  will  ever  be
     reported.  You can create an Inactive zone to  cover  any
     areas  in which nothing notable will ever happen or where
     you  get constant false alarms that don't relate to  what
     you  are  trying to monitor. An Inactive zone can overlay
     other zone types and will be processed first.
     
   I  mentioned  above that Inactive zones may be overlaid  on
   other  zones  to  blank  out areas  however  as  a  general
   principle you should try and make zones abut each other  as
   much  as  possible  and do not overlap.  This  helps  avoid
   repeated  duplicate  processing  of  the  same  area.   For
   instance  an Inclusive zone overlaying an Active zone  when
   all  other  settings are the same will always trigger  when
   the  Active zone does which somewhat defeats the object  of
   the  exercise.  One exception to this is Preclusive  zones.
   These  may  be  situated within Active areas are  they  are
   processed  first and if small may actually save  processing
   time by preventing full analysis of the image.
   
   Units  - This setting which details whether certain of  the
   following   settings  are  in  Pixels  or  Percent,   where
   `Percent'  refers to a percentage area of the zone  itself.
   In  general  `Pixels'  is more precise whereas  percentages
   are  easier  to  use to start with or if you  change  image
   sizes   frequently.  If  you  change   this   setting   all
   appropriate  values below are redisplayed  in  the  correct
   context.  A  good  tip  would be  to  initially  enter  the
   settings  in Percent and then change to Pixels  and  refine
   any  gaps.  Repeated  flipping between  the  settings  will
   cause  rounding errors, as ZoneMinder in general is not  at
   home  to  Mr  Floating  Point for reasons  of  performance.
   Note,  the  sense  of  the  percentage  values  changed  in
   version 1.19.0. Prior to that percentages referred  to  the
   area  of  the image as a whole, whereas it now only  refers
   to  the  area  of the zone. This makes trying to  work  out
   necessary sizes rather easier.
   
   Min/Maximum  X/Y  -  Following  the  units  the  next  four
   settings  define  the  bounds of the Zone  in  the  monitor
   frame  and are self-explanatory with the exception  of  the
   fact  that the minima are at the top left of the frame  and
   the  maxima  are  at  the bottom right  rather  than  in  a
   Cartesian style.
   
   Alarm  Colour - The option after that allows you to specify
   what  colour  you'd like any alarms this zone generates  to
   be  highlighted on images, pick anything you like that will
   show  up against your normal image background. This  option
   is  irrelevant for Preclusive and Inactive zones  and  will
   be  disabled For Inactive zones all subsequent options  are
   likewise disabled.
   
   Alarm  Check  Method  -This  is  a  new  addition  to  Zone
   definitions.  It allows you to specify the  nature  of  the
   alarm  checking that will take place, and more specifically
   what  tests  are  applied  to  determine  whether  a  frame
   represents   an  alarm  or  not.  The  three  options   are
   `AlarmPixels', `FilteredPixels' and `Blobs'  and  depending
   on  which  option  is  chosen some of the  following  other
   settings  may  become  unavailable.  The  first  of   these
   indicates  that  only a count of individual alarmed  pixels
   should  be  used  to determine the state of  a  image,  the
   second  indicate  that  the pixels should  be  filtered  to
   remove  isolated pixels (see below) before  being  counted,
   and  the third uses a more sophisticated analysis which  is
   designed   to  aggregate  alarmed  pixels  into  continuous
   groups,  or `blobs'. Blob analysis is the method ZoneMinder
   has  always used previously (before it became optional) and
   so  this is the default. However this method takes slightly
   longer  and  so  if you find that one of the other  methods
   works  just  as  well  for you and  you  wish  to  maximise
   performance you can opt for that instead. Some of the  more
   useful  alarm related features such as highlighted analysis
   images are only available with the `Blob' setting.
   
   Min/Maximum  Alarm Threshold - These setting  are  used  to
   define limits for  the difference in value between a  pixel
   and  its  predecessor in the reference image. For greyscale
   images  this  is simple but for colour images  the  colours
   are  averaged first, originally this used an RMS (root mean
   squared)  algorithm  but  calculating  square  roots   mugs
   performance  and does not seem to improve detection.  Using
   an  average  does means that subtle colour changes  without
   any  brightness change may go undetected but  this  is  not
   the normal circumstance. There is also the option to use  a
   more  sophisticated integer algorithm to calculate a Y  (or
   brightness) value from the colours themselves.
   
   Min/Maximum  Alarmed  Area  - The  following  two  settings
   define  the  minimum  and maximum  number  of  pixels  that
   exceed  this  threshold that would cause an alarm.  If  the
   units  are  Percent this (and following options) refers  to
   the  percentage of the frame and not the zone, this  is  so
   these  values  can  be related between zones.  The  minimum
   value  must  be  matched or exceeded for  an  alarm  to  be
   generated whereas the maximum must not be exceeded  or  the
   alarm  will  be  cancelled. This is  to  allow  for  sudden
   changes  such as lights coming on etc, which you  may  wish
   to  disregard. In general a value of zero for any of  these
   settings  causes  that  value to be  ignored,  so  you  can
   safely  set a maximum to zero and it will not be used.  The
   use  of  just  a number of pixels is however a  very  brute
   force  method  of detection as many small events  dispersed
   widely are not distinguished from a compact one.
   
   Filter  Width/Height - To improve detection of valid  event
   ZoneMinder applies several other functions to the  data  to
   improve  its  ability  to distinguish  interesting  signals
   from  uninteresting noise. The first of these is  a  filter
   that  removes  any  pixels that do  not  participate  in  a
   contiguous  block  of  pixels above a certain  size.  These
   options  are  always  expressed in  pixels  and  should  be
   fairly  small, and an odd number, three or five is  a  good
   value  to  choose  initially. Application  of  this  filter
   removes  any tiny or discontinuous pixels that  don't  form
   part of a discrete block.
   
   Min/Maximum  Filtered  Area  -  These  are  two  additional
   bounds  that specify the limits of pixels that would  cause
   an  alarm  after this filtering process. As  the  filtering
   process  can only remove alarmed pixels it makes  no  sense
   for  the  Minimum and Maximum Filtered Area  to  be  larger
   than  the  equivalent  Alarmed Area  and  in  general  they
   should be smaller or the same.
   
   Min/Maximum  Blob  Area - The next  step  in  the  analysis
   phase is the collation of any remaining alarmed areas  into
   contiguous blobs. This process parses the image  and  forms
   any  pixels  that adjoin other alarmed pixels into  one  or
   more larger blobs. These blobs may be any shape and can  be
   as  large  as  the zone itself or as small as the  filtered
   size. The Minimum and Maximum Blob Size settings allow  you
   to  define  limits within which an alarm will be generated.
   Of these only the Minimum is likely to be very useful.
   
   Min/Maximum  Blobs - Finally the Minimum and Maximum  Blobs
   settings  specify the limits of the actual number of  blobs
   detected.   If   an  image  change  satisfies   all   these
   requirements it starts or continues an alarm event.
   

5.3. Viewing Monitors
As  this  point  you should have one or more Monitors  running
with  one  or  more Zones each. Returning to the main  Console
window  you  will  see  your monitors listed  once  more.  The
columns  not explored so far are the Monitor name, and various
event  totals for certain periods of time. Clicking on any  of
the  event totals will bring up a variation on the same window
but click on the Monitor name for now. On doing so up will pop
another window which should be scaled to contain a heading, an
image  from your monitor, a status and a list of recent events
if  any have been generated. Depending on whether you are able
to view a streamed image or not the image frame will either be
this  stream  or a series of stills. You have  the  option  to
change  from one to the other (if available) at the centre  of
the  top  heading. Also along the top are a handful  of  other
links.  These  let you change the scale of the  image  stream,
modify image settings (for local devices) or close the window.

The  image  should be self-explanatory but if  it  looks  like
garbage  it is possible that the video configuration is  wrong
so  look  in  your system error log and check  for  or  report
anything  unusual. The centre of the window will have  a  tiny
frame  that  just  contains a status;  this  will  be  'Idle',
'Alarm'  or  'Alert' depending on the function of the  Monitor
and  what's going on in the field of view. Idle means  nothing
is  happening, Alarm means there is an alarm in  progress  and
Alert  means  that an alarm has happened and  the  monitor  is
`cooling down', if another alarm is generated in this time  it
will just become part of the same event. These indicators  are
colour coded in green, red and amber.

By  default if you have minimised this window or opened  other
windows  in  front it will pop up to the front if it  goes  to
Alarm state. This behaviour can be turned off in `options'  if
required.   You  can  also  specify  a  sound  file   in   the
configuration,  which will be played when an alarm  occurs  to
alert  you  to  the  fact if you are  not  in  front  of  your
computer.  This should be a short sound of only  a  couple  of
seconds  ideally. Note that as the status is  refreshed  every
few  seconds it is possible for this not to alert you to every
event  that takes place, so you shouldn't rely on it for  this
purpose if you expect very brief events. Alternatively you can
decrease  the  refresh  interval  for  this  window   in   the
configuration  though  having too  frequently  refreshing  may
impact on performance.

Below  the  status  is  a  list of  recent  events  that  have
occurred,  by default this  is a listing of just the  last  10
but clicking on 'All' will give you a full list  and 'Archive'
will  take you to the event archive for this monitor, more  on
this   later. Clicking on any of the column headings will sort
the events appropriately.

From  here you can also delete events if you wish. The  events
themselves are listed with the event id, and event name (which
you  can change), the time that the event occurred, the length
of  the event including any preamble and postamble frames, the
number  of  frames comprising the event with the  number  that
actually  contain  an alarm in brackets and finally  a  score.
This column lists the average score per alarm frame as well as
the maximum score that any alarm frame had.

The  score  is an arbitrary value that essentially  represents
the percentage of pixels in the zone that are in blobs divided
by  the square root of the number of blobs and then divided by
the  size of the zone. This gives a nominal maximum of 100 for
a zone and the totals for each zone are added together, Active
zones  scores are added unchanged, Inclusive zones are  halved
first  and Exclusive zones are doubled. In reality values  are
likely  to  be  much less than 100 but it does give  a  simple
indication of how major the event was.


5.4. Filtering Events
The  other columns on the main console window contain  various
event  totals for your monitors over the last hour, day,  week
and month as well as a grand total and a total for events that
you  may  have archived for safekeeping. Clicking  on  one  of
these  totals  or  on the 'All' or 'Archive'  links  from  the
monitor  window described above will present you  with  a  new
display. This is the full event window and contains a list  of
events  selected according to a filter which will also pop  up
in  its  own window. Thus if you clicked on a 'day' total  the
filter  will indicate that this is the period for which events
are  being  filtered.  The  event listing  window  contains  a
similar  listing  to the recent events in the monitor  window.
The  primary differences are that the frames and alarm  frames
and  the score and maximum score are now broken out into their
own  columns,  all of which can be sorted by clicking  on  the
heading.  Also  this  window will not  refresh  automatically,
rather  only  on request. Other than that, you can  choose  to
view events here or delete them as before.

The other window that appeared is a filter window. You can use
this  window to create your own filters or to modify  existing
ones. You can even save your favourite filters to re-use at  a
future  date.  Filtering itself is fairly  simple;  you  first
choose how many expressions you'd like your filter to contain.
Changing  this  value will cause the window to redraw  with  a
corresponding  row for each expression. You then  select  what
you  want  to  filter  on  and how the expressions  relate  by
choosing  whether  they are 'and' or 'or'  relationships.  For
filters  comprised of many expressions you will also  get  the
option  to  bracket  parts of the filter  to  ensure  you  can
express  it as desired. Then if you like choose how  you  want
your  results sorted and whether you want to limit the  amount
of events displayed.

There are several different elements to an event that you  can
filter  on,  some of which require further explanation.  These
are  as follows, 'Date/Time' which must evaluate to a date and
a  time  together, 'Date' and 'Time' which are variants  which
may only contain the relevant subsets of this, 'Weekday' which
as  expected  is  a  day  of the week. All  of  the  preceding
elements  take a very flexible free format of dates  and  time
based       on       the      PHP      strtotime      function
(http://www.zend.com/manual/function.strtotime.php).      This
allows  values such as 'last Wednesday' etc to be  entered.  I
recommend acquainting yourself with this function to see  what
the allowed formats are. However automated filters are run  in
perl  and  so are parsed by the Date::Manip package.  Not  all
date  formats are available in both so if you are  saved  your
filter  to  do automatic deletions or other tasks  you  should
make  sure that the date and time format you use is compatible
with  both  methods. The safest type of format to use  is  `-3
day' or similar with easily parseable numbers and units are in
English.

The  other  elements  you can filter on are  all  fairly  self
explanatory except perhaps for 'Archived' which you can use to
include or exclude Archived events. In general you'll probably
do  most  filtering on un-archived events. There are also  two
elements,  Disk  Blocks and Disk Percent which don't  directly
relate  to the events themselves but to the disk partition  on
which  the  events are stored. These allow you to  specify  an
amount  of  disk  usage either in blocks or in  percentage  as
returned  by  the `df' command. They relate to the  amount  of
disk space used and not the amount left free. Once your filter
is   specified,  clicking  'submit'  will  filter  the  events
according  to  your specification. As the disk based  elements
are  not  event related directly if you create  a  filter  and
include the term `DiskPercent > 95' then if your current  disk
usage is over that amount when you submit the filter then  all
events  will be listed whereas if it is less then none at  all
will.  As  such the disk related terms will tend  to  be  used
mostly  for automatic filters (see below). If you have created
a  filter  you want to keep, you can name it and  save  it  by
clicking 'Save'.

If  you do this then the subsequent dialog will also allow you
specify whether you want this filter automatically applied  in
order  to  delete events or upload events via ftp  to  another
server  and mail notifications of events to one or more  email
accounts.  In most cases you can specify your preferences  for
upload  formats  and  email content during configuration  time
(make  sure  you type '?' to get help on options). Emails  and
messages (essentially small emails intended for mobile  phones
or  pagers)  have a variety of tokens that can be  substituted
for  various  details  of  the event that  caused  them.  This
includes links to the event view or the filter as well as  the
option of attaching images or videos to the email itself.  See
the  included  templates zmconfig_eml.txt and zmconfig_msg.txt
for  a  fuller explanation of the availability and meaning  of
these  tokens. Finally you can also specify a script which  is
run  on each matched event. This script should be readable and
executable by your web server user. It will get run  once  per
event  and  the relative path to the directory containing  the
event  in  question.  Normally  this  will  be  of  the   form
<MonitorName>/<EventId> so from this path you can derive  both
the monitor name and event id and perform any action you wish.
Note  that  arbitrary commands are not allowed to be specified
in  the filter, for security the only thing it may contain  is
the full path to an executable. What that contains is entirely
up to you however.

Filtering  is  a powerful mechanism you can use  to  eliminate
events  that  fit  a  certain pattern however  in  many  cases
modifying the zone settings will better address this. Where it
really  comes  into  its  own is generally  in  applying  time
filters, so for instance events that happen during weekdays or
at  certain  times  of  the day are highlighted,  uploaded  or
deleted. Additionally using disk related terms in your filters
means  you  can automatically create filters that  delete  the
oldest events when your disk gets full. Be warned however that
if  you  use this strategy then you should limit the  returned
results to the amount of events you want deleted in each  pass
until the disk usage is at an acceptable level. If you do  not
do  this then the first pass when the disk usage is high  will
match, and then delete, all events unless you have used  other
criteria inside of limits.


5.5. Viewing Events
From  the monitor or filtered events listing you can now click
on  an  event to view it in more detail. If you have streaming
capability  you will see a series of images that make  up  the
event. You will also see a link to allow you to view the still
images  themselves. If you don't have streaming then you  will
be  taken  directly  to this page. The images  themselves  are
thumbnail   size  and  depending  on  the  configuration   and
bandwidth  you  have  chosen will either be  the  full  images
scaled  in your browser of actual scaled images. If it is  the
latter, if you have low bandwidth for example, it may  take  a
few  seconds to generate the images. If thumbnail  images  are
required  to  be  generated, they will be  kept  and  not  re-
generated in future. Once the images appear you can mouse over
them to get the image sequence number and the image score.

You  will  notice  for the first time that  alarm  images  now
contain  an  overlay  outlining the blobs that  represent  the
alarmed  area. This outline is in the colour defined for  that
zone  and  lets  you  see what it was that caused  the  alarm.
Clicking on one of the thumbnails will take you to a full size
window  where  you  can see the image in all  its  detail  and
scroll  through the various images that make up the event.  If
you have the ZM_RECORD_EVENT_STATS option on, you will be able
to  click the 'Stats' link here and get some analysis  of  the
cause  of the event. Should you determine that you don't  wish
to  keep the event, clicking on Delete will erase it from  the
database and file system. Returning to the event window, other
options  here  are  renaming  the  event  to  something   more
meaningful, refreshing the window to replay the event  stream,
deleting  the  event,  switching between  streamed  and  still
versions  of the event (if supported) and generating  an  MPEG
video of the event (if supported).

These  last two options require further explanation. Archiving
an  event  means that it is kept to one side and not displayed
in  the  normal event listings unless you specifically ask  to
view  the  archived events. This is useful for keeping  events
that  you think may be important or just wish to protect. Once
an  event is archived it can be deleted or unarchived but  you
cannot  accidentally delete it when viewing normal  unarchived
events.

The final option of generating an MPEG video is still somewhat
experimental  and its usefulness may vary. It can  use  either
the  Berkeley  MPEG  encoder  or the  faster  and  new  ffmpeg
encoder.  Either of these will generate a short  video,  which
will  be downloaded to your browsing machine to view.  Due  to
the relatively slow frame rate that ZoneMinder will capture at
and the high minimum frame rate that the Berkeley encoder uses
videos created by this method will be very quick. However when
using the ffmpeg encoder, ZoneMinder will attempt to match the
duration of the video with the duration of the event. This has
the  useful effect of making the video watchable and  not  too
quick  while having the unfortunate side effect of  increasing
file  size  and  generation time. Ffmpeg in particular  has  a
particularly  rich set of options and you can  specify  during
configuration which additional options you may wish to include
to  suit  your  preferences. In particular  you  may  need  to
specify  additional, or different, options if you are creating
videos  of events with particularly slow frame rates  as  some
codecs only support certain ranges of frame rates. Details  of
these  options  can  be  found in the  documentation  for  the
encoders and is outside the scope of this document.

Building an MPEG video, especially for a large event, can take
some  time and should not be undertaken lightly as the  effect
on  your host box of many CPU intensive encoders will  not  be
good.  However once a video has been created for an  event  it
will  be  kept  so  subsequent  viewing  will  not  incur  the
generation   overhead.  Videos  can  also   be   included   in
notification emails, however care should be taken  when  using
this option as for many frequent events the penalty in CPU and
disk space can quickly mount up.


5.6. Options and Users
The final area covered by the tutorial is the options and user
section.  If you are running in authenticated mode  and  don't
have  system privileges then you will not see this section  at
all  and  if you are running in un-authenticated mode then  no
user section will be displayed.

The  various options you can specify are displayed in a tabbed
dialog  with each group of options displayed under a different
heading.  Each  option is displayed with  its  name,  a  short
description and the current value. You can also click  on  the
`?'   link   following  each  description  to  get  a   fuller
explanation about each option. This is the same as  you  would
get  from zmconfig.pl. A number of option groups have a master
option near the top which enables or disables the whole  group
so  you  should be aware of the state of this before modifying
options and expecting them to make any difference.

If  you  have  changed the value of an option you should  then
`save' it. A number of the option groups will then prompt  you
to  let  you  know  that the option(s) you have  changed  will
require  a  system restart. This is not done automatically  in
case  you  will  be changing many values in the same  session,
however  once  you  have made all of your changes  you  should
restart ZoneMinder as soon as possible. The reason for this is
that  web  and  some  scripts will pick  up  the  new  changes
immediately  but some of the daemons will still be  using  the
old values and this can lead to data inconsistency or loss.

One  of  the options you may notice in the `System' tab allows
you  to specify the default language for your installation  of
ZoneMinder.   Versions  1.17.0  and  later  support   multiple
languages  but  rely on users to assist in  creating  language
files  for specific languages. To specify a language you  will
have to give the applicable code, thus for UK English this  is
en_gb, and for US English it would be en_us, if no language is
given  then  UK  English is assumed. Most  languages  will  be
specified  in  this nn_mm format and to check which  languages
are  available  look  for  files named  zm_lang_*.php  in  the
ZoneMinder build directory where the parts represented by  the
`*'  would  be  what  you would enter as a language.  This  is
slightly  unwieldy and will probably be improved in future  to
make it easier to determine language availability. On checking
which  languages are available it may be that  your  preferred
language  is  not currently included and if this is  the  case
please consider doing a translation and sending it back to  it
may  be included in future releases. All the language elements
are given in the zm_lang_en_gb.php file along with a few notes
to help you understand the format.

As  mentioned  above, you may also see a `users'  tab  in  the
Options  area.  In this section you will see  a  list  of  the
current  users  defined on the system. You  can  also  add  or
delete  users from here. It is recommended you do  not  delete
the   admin  user  unless  you  have  created  another   fully
privileged  user  to  take over the same role.  Each  user  is
defined with a name and password (which is hidden) as well  as
an  enabled setting which you can use to temporarily enable or
disable  users,  for  example a guest user  for  limited  time
access.  As  well  as  that there is a language  setting  that
allows  you  to  define  user specific  languages.  Setting  a
language here that is different than the system language  will
mean  that  when  that user logs in they  will  have  the  web
interface  presented  in their own language  rather  than  the
system default, if it is available. Specifying a language here
is  done  in  the same way as for the system default  language
described above.

There  are  also four values that define the user permissions,
these are `stream', `events', `monitors' and `system' Each can
have  values  of `none', `view' or `edit' apart from  `stream'
which has no `edit' setting. These values cover access to  the
following areas; `stream' defines whether a user is allowed to
view  the `live' video feeds coming from the cameras. You  may
wish  to allow a user to view historical events only in  which
case  this  setting  should be `none'.  The  `events'  setting
determines  whether a user can view and modify or  delete  any
retained  historical events. The `monitors' setting  specifies
whether a user can see the current monitor settings and change
them.  Finally the `system' setting determines whether a  user
can  view  or modify the system settings as a whole,  such  as
options and users or controlling the running of the system  as
a whole. As well as these settings there is also a monitor ids
setting  that can be used for non-'system' users  to  restrict
them  to only being able to access streams, events or monitors
for  the given monitors ids as a comma separated list with  no
spaces.  If a user with `monitors' edit privileges is  limited
to  specific  monitors here they will not be able  to  add  or
delete monitors but only change the details of those they have
access  to.  If  a  user  has  `system'  privileges  then  the
`monitors ids' setting is ignored and has no effect.'

That's  pretty much is it for the tour. You should  experiment
with  the  various setting to get the results  you  think  are
right  for your. Naturally, letting thousands of events  build
up  is  not good for the database or your file system  so  you
should endeavour to either prevent spurious events from  being
generated in the first place or ensure that you housekeep them
strictly.


6.   Mobile Devices
   
ZoneMinder  has  always  had a minimal  WML  (Wireless  Markup
Language) capability to allow it to function on mobile  phones
and  similar  devices.  However  as  of  1.20.0  this  is  now
deprecated  and  has been replaced with a new XHTML  -  Mobile
Profile  mode  as  well as the default HTML4.  XHTML-MP  is  a
small,  and  limited,  version of XHTML  intended  for  mobile
devices  and  is  based on XHTML Basic. It  does  not  contain
scripting  or  other  dynamic elements and  essentially  is  a
subset of HTML as most people know it.

The  ZoneMinder XHTML-MP interface allows you to log into your
installation  via your phone or mobile devices and  perform  a
limited  number of tasks. These include viewing recent events,
and   monitoring  live  streams.  However  unlike   the   full
interfaces  these  elements  are  presented  as  still  images
requiring manual refreshing. For now the XHTML-MP interface is
presented  as  a prototype interface rather than one  offering
full  capabilities  and,  as such please  feel  free  to  make
comments   or   offer   suggestions   via   the   forums    on
http://www.zoneminder.com. One final word  on  mobile  mark-up
standards  in  general  and their application  to  ZoneMinder.
Ideally  I'd  like to offer a WML2.0 interface.  WML2.0  is  a
blending  of WML1.3, which is traditional WAP, and  XHTML.  As
such  it  offers  the  scripting that  WML  has  traditionally
included  plus the better control of markup that is the  realm
of XHTML. Unfortunately so far I'm unaware of any devices that
support WML2.0, certainly I've never had a phone that does. If
you  find  out that a particular phone does support this  then
please let me know (or better still send me the phone!).

If  you wish to use the XHTML-MP interface to ZoneMinder there
is  no  extra  configuration required to  enable  it  per  se.
However ZoneMinder needs to be able to figure out what kind of
content to deliver to particular browsers and so you have  two
choices.  You can either edit zm.php and include a  definition
that  corresponds to your phone describing a small  number  of
basic  capabilities, you will see a couple of examples already
there,  or  you  can use the comprehensive open  source  WURFL
package available from http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/. You will
need  to  download both the WURFL php files and the  wurfl.xml
file itself. WURFL is a resource containing information on the
capabilities  of a huge number of mobile phones,  devices  and
browsers. Thus once it has matched your phone it can determine
various   capabilities  it  may  possess.  This   means   that
ZoneMinder itself only has to deal with these capabilities and
not the individual phone types.

To  use  WURFL you should install the php files  in  the  same
directory  as  ZoneMinder  and  then  create  a  `wurfl'  sub-
directory  and  ensure  it  is  readable  and  writeable   (or
preferably owned by) your web server user. You should put  the
wurfl.xml  file  in there. One other thing  you  may  need  to
change,  as the xml file is quite large, is the `memory_limit'
setting  in php.ini as the default setting of 8Mb may  be  too
small.  Once you've done this you should find that your  phone
or device is recognised and if it can support XHTML-MP it will
receive that interface. If your phone is very new, or you  are
using an old version of the XML file you might find that it is
not present however. The WURFL library uses a caching strategy
to avoid reloading the whole XML file each time so check if  a
sensible  looking cache file has been created in  the  `wurfl'
sub-directory also check the wurfl.log in the same place.

The WURFL is a third party application and as such I am unable
to  offer support directly for it. If you feel your device  is
missing  or incorrectly represented please contact the authors
via  their  own channels. If on the other hand  you  have  any
comments on ZoneMinder on your device specifically please  let
me know and I would be pleased to hear about it.

As  support for cookies in mobile devices is patchy  at  best,
the  groups  feature is not fully implemented in the  XHTML-MP
views.  Instead  if there is a group called  `Mobile'  already
defined then that group will always be effective, if not  then
all monitors available to the logged in user will be visible,




7.   Troubleshooting
   
Life  eh?  Nothing ever works first time does it? In case  you
are  having  problems here are some things to  try.  If  these
don't    work    then    check   the   ZoneMinder    FAQ    at
http://www.zoneminder.com/faq.html  and  then  the  forums  at
http://www.zoneminder.com/forums.html first and see if  anyone
has had the same problem in the past. If not then feel free to
get in touch and I'll see if I can suggest something else. The
best  places  to look for errors are in the system  error  log
(normally /var/log/messages on RedHat), the  ZoneMinder  logs,
and   the  web  server  log  (/var/log/httpd/error_log  unless
otherwise defined). There should be something in one of  those
that gives you some kind of tip off.

Some things to check.

  o     Device configuration. If you can't get your cameras to
     work  in ZoneMinder, firstly make sure that you have  the
     correct settings. Use xawtv or something like that to check
     for settings that work and then run zmu -d <device_no> -q -v
     to get the settings. If you can't get them to work with that
     then the likelihood is they won't work with ZoneMinder. Also
     check the system logs (usually /var/log/messages) for any
     video configuration errors. If you get some and you're sure
     they're not a problem then switch off ZM_STRICT_VIDEO_CONFIG
     in zmconfig.pl or the `options' tab.
     
o    Start simple. Begin with a single monitor and single
zone. You can run the zmc capture daemon from the command line
as 'zmc --device 0' (or whatever your video device is). If it
returns immediately there's a problem so check the logs, if it
stays up then your video configuration is probably ok. To get
more information out of it use debug as specified below. Also
check that the shared memory segment has been created by doing
'ipcs -m'. Finally, beware of doing tests as root and then
trying to run as another user as some files may not be
accessible. If you're checking things as root make sure that
you clean up afterwards!
o    Web server. Ensure that your web server can serve PHP
files. It's also possible that your php.ini file may have some
settings which break ZoneMinder, I'm not a PHP guru but
setting safe mode may prevent your PHP files from running
certain programs. You may have to set configuration to allow
this. Also since the daemons are started by your web server,
if it dies or is shut down then the daemons may disappear. In
this version the daemons are run under the control of a script
which should trap expected signals but it is possible this
doesn't cover all circumstances.
o    One of the more common errors you can see in the log
files is of the form 'Can't shmget: Invalid argument'.
Generally speaking this is caused by an attempt to allocate an
amount of shared memory greater than your system can handle.
The size it requests is base on the following formula, ring
buffer size x image width x image height x 3 (for 24 bits
images) + a bit of overhead. So if for instance you were using
24bit 640x480 then this would come to about 92Mb if you are
using the default buffer size of 100. If this is too large
then you can either reduce the image or buffer sizes or
increase the maximum amount of shared memory available. If you
are using RedHat then you can get details on how to change
these settings at
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/database/RHDB-2.1-
Manual/admin_user/kernel-resources.html
o    You should be able to use a similar procedure  with other
distributions to modify the shared memory pool without kernel
recompilations though in some cases this may be necessary.
Note, this error also sometime occurs if you have an old
shared memory segment lying around from a previous run that is
too small. Use the ipcs and ipcrm system commands to check and
remove it if necessary.
o    If you get odd javascript errors and your web console or
other screens come up with bits missing then it's possible
that there is a problem with the PHP configuration. Since
version 0.9.8 ZoneMinder has used short PHP open tags to
output information, so instead of something like this '<?php
echo $value ?>', it will be something like this '<?= $value
?>' which is easier and quicker to write as well as being
neater. More information about this directive can be seen at
the following location,
http://www.php.net/manual/en/configuration.directives.php#ini.
short-open-tag. However although by default most PHP
installations support this form, some will need to have it
switched on explicitly. To do this you will first need to find
your php.ini file (do a 'locate php.ini' or 'find / -name
php.ini'. Be aware however that sometimes you might find more
than one, so ensure you identify the one that is actually
being used. You will then need to find the line that starts
'short_open_tag = ' and change the Off value to On. This will
correct the problem. However in some cases you may have
explicitly switched it off, so that XML compliant documents
can be more easily served, or you may even not have permission
to edit the file. In this case you can go into the web
directory of ZoneMinder and run 'sh retag.sh' which will
replace all the short open tags in the files themselves with
the longer variant. You will obviously have to remember to do
this for each subsequent version of ZoneMinder that you
install as well.
o    Use debug. ZoneMinder has various debug in it that by
default will go into your system log (via syslog). These will
be of the form of
     "Sep  14  14:50:11  localhost  zma-0[1975]:  INF  [Front:
     221000 - Processing at 4.26 fps ]"
     
     where the zma-0 part identifies the daemon and the device
     it  is  running on. Entries with INF in are informational
     and  not an error, if you see ERR then it is one,  though
     not  all are fatal. You can prevent this information from
     being emitted by setting the ZM_DBG_LEVEL_zmc environment
     variable  to -1 or less once things are working.  If  you
     want  to run any of the daemons from the command line  to
     test, setting ZM_DBG_PRINT to 1 will output the debug  on
     the  console. You can also use the USR1 and USR2  signals
     to  increase  or  decrease  the  amount  of  debug  being
     emitted.
     
  o    Paths. I admit it, the various paths in ZoneMinder can be
     bit of a nightmare. Make sure that they are all correct and
     that permissions are such that the various parts of ZoneMinder
     can actually run.
     
o    Missing perl modules. There are various perl modules used
by the various scripts. If you get errors about missing ones,
the easiest way to install them is to type the following (you
will probably need to be root),
     perl -MCPAN -eshell
     
     this  will then (eventually, after some configuration  if
     it's  your  first time) present you with a  prompt.  From
     there you can type install module, e.g. Archive::Zip  and
     the  rest  should be more or less automatic  as  it  will
     chase any dependencies for you. There may be some initial
     configuration  questions it might ask you on  startup  if
     you've never run it before and to speed things up I would
     not  install a new Bundle at this point (it  can  end  up
     building  you a whole new perl if you're not careful)  if
     it   asks  you  but  everything  else  should  be   quite
     straightforward.
     
  o    Unsupported palettes. ZoneMinder currently is designed to
     use the simple palettes of greyscale and 24 bit as well as now
     the YUV420P and some other palettes. This should cover most
     cameras but it's possible that there are ones out there that
     might  want  to use more esoteric formats that ZoneMinder
     doesn't support. This will often show up as the capture daemon
     being unable to set picture attributes. If this occurs try
     using different palettes starting with greyscale and if you
     can't get anything to work let me know and I'll try and add
     it.
     
o    USB bus problems. If you have multiple USB cameras on one
bus then it can appear as if ZoneMinder is causing your
cameras to fail. This is because the bandwidth available to
cameras is limited by the fairly low USB speed. In order to
use more than one USB camera with ZoneMinder (or any
application) you will need to inform the driver that there are
other cameras requiring bandwidth. This is usually done with a
simple module option. Examples are usb_alt=<n> for the OV511
driver and cams=<n> for CPIA etc. Check your driver
documentation for more details. Be aware however that sharing
cameras in this way on one bus will also limit the capture
rate due to the reduced bandwidth.
o    Incorrect libjpeg.a detection. It seems to be the case
that in some cases the library file libjpeg.a is reported as
missing even when apparently present. This appears to actually
be down to the g++ compiler not being installed on the host
system. Since ZoneMinder contains both C++ and C files you
need to be able to compile both of these file types and so
usually need to ensure you have gcc and g++ installed (though
they are often the same binary).
o    Httpd and zms memory leaks. It has been reported by some
users with RedHat 9 that the zms process fails to terminate
correctly when the controlled window is killed and also that
it, and it's associated httpd process, continue to grow in
memory size until they kill the system. This appears to be a
bug in early versions of  apache 2. On other systems it may
appear that zms is leaking and growing. However what grows is
the total and shared memory size while the non-shared memory
size stays constant. It's a little odd but I think what it
happening is that as zms picks images out of the shared memory
ring buffer to display, as each slot is read the size of that
bit of memory is added to the shared memory total for the
process. As streamed images are not read consecutively it's a
semi-random process so initially most of the buffer slots are
new and the shared memory size grows then as time goes on the
remaining unaccessed slots reduce until once all have been
read the shared memory use caps out at the same size as the
actual segment. This is what I would have expected it to be in
the first place, but it seems to do it incrementally. Then
once this total is hit it grows no further. As it's shared
memory anyway and already in use this apparent leak is not
consuming any more memory than when it started.
o    Cambozola. There appears to be an issue with recent
versions of Cambozola that causes image corruption in the
stream. If you are getting this then I suggest you stick with
version 0.22 which is available from the Downloads section of
www.zoneminder.com.
Also,  if  you  are using IE under Windows  and  get  lots  of
annoying clicks when various windows refresh then you'll  need
to   edit   your   registry   and   remove   the   value   for
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\AppEvents\Schemes\Apps\Explorer\Navigating\.
current or download the registry script to do it for you  from
http://www.zoneminder.com/downloads/noIEClick.reg


8.   Change Log
   

8.1. Release 1.20.0
Improved and added features, minor bugfixes.

  o      FEATURE  -  Certain  configuration  (Mostly  database
    settings) is now stored in a new file zm.conf. This means that
    database access settings can be changed without recompilation.
    It  also  allows  the creation of ZoneMinder  rpms.  Watch
    zoneminder.com for details. Thanks for forum user `oskin' for
    his work on this.
    
o    FEATURE - The WML interface is now deprecated and the
XHTML-MP interface is the new supported interface for mobile
devices.
o    FEATURE - Monitor groups have now been added allowing
subsets of monitors to be viewed independently.
o    FEATURE - A generic external triggering interface has
been included via the zmtrigger.pl script. A new monitor
function `Nodect' has been added to support this.
  o     FEATURE - The web files have been changed to  use  the
    newer   style  autoglobals,  e.g.  $_SERVER  rather   than
    $HTTP_SERVER_VARS. This should enable use on PHP5 without any
    modification.
    
  o     FIX  - The use of two database users has been somewhat
    redundant for a number of versions now. In 1.20.0 there is
    only one database user. The zmupdate.pl script unfortunately
    cannot handle the migration so you should make a note of the
    username and password of the privileged user and then re-enter
    that using zmconfig.pl when rebuilding ZM.
    
  o    FIX - The zmupdate.pl script previously held a database
    connection open for days at a time but only used to use it
    periodically. This has now been changed to be only open while
    in use.
    
  o    FIX - Debug output and it's relationship with environment
    variables etc was previously broken. This has been tidied up
    and made much easier to use and understand.
    
o    FIX - A number of SQL queries have been analysed and
optimised to run much faster.
  o     FIX - The monitor status was not always being reported
    correctly  in  the  monitor watch window.  This  has  been
    corrected.
    
  o     FIX  - Image numbering in the zmf daemon was sometimes
    wrong if more or less than three significant digits were used.
    This has been corrected.
    
o    FIX - Image capture timeouts used by zmwatch.pl to
restart apparently frozen zmc processes were being calculated
incorrectly on occasion. This was causing some unnecessary
processes to be restarted. This calculation has been fixed.
  o    FIX - Complete DOCTYPE headers were added to HTML output
    and some HTML was tidied up to be more compliant.
    
o    FIX - There was a problem with the interaction between
monitor statuses and the status web window. This meant that
sometimes the window did not pop to the front, or play the
alarm sound, properly. This has been corrected.

8.2. Release 1.19.5
Various miscellaneous fixes and features.

  o    FIX - Sorting event lists by duration was broken and has
    now been corrected.
    
o    FEATURE - The zmfix utility previous corrected file
permissions on video device files only. This has been modified
to do likewise to the X10 device serial port if enabled.
o    FIX - The modification suggested by forum user `oskin'
has been incorporated into the code to try and reduce or
remove video for linux errors.
o    FIX - The remote network camera parsing code has been
patched to try
o    FIX - The error reported when a `shmget' call fails has
been changed to include further information about the cause.
o    LANGUAGE - Fixed missing semicolon in German language
file.
o    FEATURE - Added `<<' and `>>'  links to the page selector
in the events list as suggested by forum user `unclerichy'.
o    FEATURE - Brightness, colour, hue and contrast are now
saved persistently for a monitor rather than being reset each
time the system is restarted. This feature is based on a patch
submitted by forum user `oskin'.
o    FEATURE - In previous versions the events folder has been
keyed by the monitor name. This has caused problems in the
past with various characters appearing which are legal in
names but not in filesystems. From this version all files
related to monitors are keyed on the monitor id rather than
the name. To help you navigate through these files the monitor
name still exists but as a link only. Please ensure you run
zmupdate.pl to update your events directory.
o    FEATURE - You may now optionally have thumbnail images in
your event lists. To enable this functionality set
ZM_WEB_LIST_THUMBS on in Options->Web. You can also control
the width or height of these thumbnails but should only set
one dimension only and leave the other blank or zero.
o    FEATURE - You can now specify how many image thumbnails
appear across and down the page in the event stills listing.
In Options->Web set the ZM_WEB_FRAMES_PER_LINE and/or
ZM_WEB_FRAME_LINES options.
o    FEATURE - ZoneMinder uses ffmpeg
(http://ffmpeg.sourceforge.net/) for video generation and
processing. Recently a new version (0.4.9-pre1) was released
which changed the interface that ZoneMinder uses and so broke
compilation. This version will detect which version of ffmpeg
you have and compile accordingly.
o    FEATURE - You can now specify a prefix for events
generated by particular monitors. This will replace the
default `Event-` one.
o    FEATURE - If you use filters to send event notification
emails you can now have them sent in HTML format. This is done
automatically if your mail body includes a `<html>' token,
o    FEATURE - An experimental feature has been added which
lets you view several events in sequence. In event listing you
can check the events you want to view and then click the
`View' button. This will allow you to navigate through only
those events in the normal manner (via Prev and Next links)
but also to view them in sequence by clicking on the `Play
All' link. This will replay each event and then automatically
move onto the next one. You can stop this progression at any
time by pressing `Stop' (which only stops the sequence and not
the currently playing event). The timing of the replay is done
depending on the calculated length of the event (plus one
second) and so may not exactly correspond to the real event
length. In particular this is unlikely to work if replaying
events using MPEG video and buffering players as the timing
will likely be incorrect. If you are viewing an event but
haven't checked any in the list the `Play All' button will
just work down the current event list.
o    FIX - A default php error level excluding notice warnings
is now explicitly set.
o    FEATURE - Previously events have been created even if
only one frame has generated an alarm. This has not always
been desirable as sometimes glitches and flickers create large
numbers of events, however no mechanism existed for limiting
this. In this version you can now specify the minimum number
of consecutive alarmed frames that are necessary to create an
event. This is the `Alarm Frame Count' described above. Note
that if an alarm is in progress single isolated alarmed frames
will still prolong it and the count only applies to the
initial frames that would cause the event.

8.3. Release 1.19.4
Language fixes and updates.

  o     FIX  -  The  US English language file was  recursively
    including itself rather than the UK English file as the base
    language.
    
o    LANGUAGE - The Brazilian Portuguese language file
detailed in the previous release has actually been included in
this one.
o    LANGUAGE - The Argentinian Spanish, Polish and Italian
translations have all been updated with tokens introduced in
version 1.19.3.

8.4. Release 1.19.3
Minor tweaks, fixes and language updates.

  o    FEATURE - All stills views now use the single image mode
    of  zms rather than spawning off a zmu process to write an
    image which is then read. This reduces complexity of double
    buffering significantly and also reduces the chance of errors
    caused by multiple simultaneous image generation.
    
o    FEATURE - The generated MIME types when creating streamed
video were previously assigned by zms depending on which of a
limited number of output formats was specified. This has now
been changed so that the ffmpeg libavformat library itself now
generates these identifiers. The consequence of this is that
many more video formats supported by your version of ffmpeg
should now be available via zms.
o    FEATURE - When viewing a single frame of an event you can
select a `stats' link to view the statistics that apply to
that frame, if you have the RECORD_EVENT_STATS option switched
on. This can be used to help configure your zones for optimal
motion detection. Previously only pixel count values were
displayed here which made it difficult to configure zones
configured in percentage terms. These values are now displayed
in both pixel and percentage terms to assist in zone
configuration. Note that the percentage values are based on
the current size of the zone so if this is changed then the
value displayed will not be applicable at the time of event
generation.
o    FIX - When doing motion detection an extra blob, that
could never be removed, was sometimes included. This could
have caused false triggering and has not been corrected.
o    FIX - A problem was reported whereby when using bulk
frame records to reduce database load the last frame record
was not written. Replaying the event via the web interface
resulting in the event being truncated. A correction has been
made so prevent this and ensure that the last frame of an
event is always recorded.
o    FIX - If an analysis daemon terminates abnormally or the
host computer crashes then events can be left in a state
whereby they effectively have zero length and are useless. A
change to zmaudit.pl was made such that any `open' events such
as this which have not been updated for at least five minutes
are closed and updated to reflect their actual content so that
they may be viewed or saved. Events recovered in this way are
named with a `(r)' mark to help identify them.
o    FIX - In more recent versions of MySQL the password hash
generated is 50 characters long, which overflows the previous
password field in the database which was only 32 characters
long. This field has been extended to 64 characters to
accommodate this.
o    FIX - The montage view had an error whereby the refresh
timeout for stills was mislabelled causing continuous refresh
attempts which rendered the view mostly unusable. The
constants in question are now correctly referenced.
o    FIX - The default, bandwidth specific, rate and scales
were not always used as the records in the database were
misnamed. This is now corrected though you may need to reset
the values that were used previously as these will be lost if
they had been changed.
o    FIX - It was previously the case that old images could be
left in the `images' directory for a long period, sometimes
resulting in incorrectly assuming correct operation. A fix was
made to zmaudit.pl which modified the previous clean up of old
WAP images so that any old images left in this directory are
removed after a short period. Please ensure that if you have
customised the web interface and have images you wish to keep
that they are not left in the temporary images folder as they
will now be deleted.
o    FIX - A JavaScript error in the Zone configuration screen
was identified and fixed.
o    LANGUAGE - A Brazilian Portuguese translation has been
supplied by Victor Diago and is available by selecting `pt_br'
as the language type.
o    LANGUAGE - Updated versions of the Dutch and Argentinian
Spanish translations have been included.

8.5. Release 1.19.2
Minor features, fixes and language updates.

  o     FEATURE  - The default replay rate and live and  event
    scale settings are now configurable on a per bandwidth basis
    rather than globally. This allows you to view at full scale
    when you have high bandwidth and at smaller scales when you do
    not have so much resource. You will need to re-configure your
    previous defaults as they will be lost.
    
o    FEATURE - Filters can now include a specification of the
preferred sort order of the results.
o    FEATURE - Filters can now include a specification to
limit the results to a predefined maximum
o    FEATURE - Two new filter elements have been added. These
are disk blocks and disk percentage. These are event
independent and return the amount of disk space used on the
event partition in terms of disk blocks or percentage as
returned by df(1). Thus filters using these criteria will
either match all events or none at all depending on the disk
usage at the time of filter execution. The addition of these
terms along with the ability to sort and limit filter results
now means it is possible to create a filter that will
automatically clear out old events once disk usage exceeds a
certain value. Included in the database schemas for both new
installations and upgrades is a sample filter called
PurgeWhenFull which can be used to do this. It is initially
not set to do anything automatically so if you want to use it,
you should load it into the filter selection window, modify it
to your taste and then save it, selecting `auto delete'.
Please note that filters created using disk related terms to
delete events should always contain a limit term also
otherwise it is possible for all events to match and thus be
deleted. Using a limit ensures that only a small number are
affected at any one time.
o    FEATURE - Filters can now be defined to automatically
execute an external script or program of your choosing. This
can be specified when the filter is saved. Note that for
security reasons this cannot be just any arbitrary command but
must be readable and executable by your web server effective
user. The script or program you specify here will be executed
in the events root directory once for each event and will be
passed one parameter containing the relative path to the event
directory. This will normally be of the form
<MonitorName>/<EventId> so it it possible to determine both
the monitor and event in question from the path. Note also
that a flag is set per event as with other auto actions
indicating that an executable script has been run on that
event and so to exclude it from subsequent matches. However if
you have several filters all with executable scripts you will
find that only the first gets executed as the flag will be set
following successful completion and so no further scripts will
be run on that event. Successful completion is indicated by
the script returning a zero exit status, any other status
indicates an error and the executed flag will not be set.
o    FIX - In some circumstances temporary diagnostic images
were being saved instead of highlighted analysis images. This
is now corrected.
o    FIX - When viewing a list of frames in an event, the link
to the diagnostic image was incorrect. This is now fixed.
o    FIX - The Archive link from the monitor watch window has
been fixed. Previously this generated a bogus window.
o    FIX - The zone definition have been updated so that
selecting the various types of zones etc only disables those
options you no longer have access to rather than wiping them
out entirely. This is also true of the zone when saved. Thus
you can now more easily change a zone to be temporarily
inactive for example and have your previous active settings
restored in the future.
o    FIX - Selecting an event from the list generated by a
filter that included a Monitor Name term did not previously
work properly. This is now fixed.
o    FIX - A number of the constants used internally have been
renamed to be more consistent. Hopefully nothing is broken!
  o    FIX - Following notification of a potential vulnerability
    in zms by Mark Cox, all non-trivial string and buffer copies
    are now limited by the maximum size of the destination. Mark
    has also askedme to include the following notice relating to
    this, which I am very happy to do.
    
      "This    issue   was   discovered   by   Mark   J    Cox
      <mark@awe.com>.  The Common
      Vulnerabilities  and  Exposures project  (cve.mitre.org)
      has assigned the
      name CAN-2004-0227 to this issue."
      
  o    LANGUAGE - An additional Italian language translation has
    been added. One, by Davide Morelli, was included in 1.19.1 but
    not announced. However like buses another one has come along,
    from Tolmino Muccitelli, and so they are both now present. The
    original translation is accessible by selecting it_it as the
    language whereas the new one is it_it2. I would prefer if they
    were merged as two versions of one language is not easy to
    maintain when I don't know what the differences mean!
    
o    LANGUAGE - A version of Argentinian Spanish by Fernando
Diaz has also been included and is accessible by setting your
language to es_ar. As with all the language translations I
cannot vouch for the completeness or accuracy of the language
files so feel free to feedback any updates you think should be
made.
o    NOTE - None of the non-English language files in this
release do not contain any translations of the new, or
modified, tokens which have been introduced in this release.
All new or modified tokens are included in the language files
in English. There will shortly be a point release which
includes these language updates assuming I can get
translations of them in a reasonable timescale.

8.6. Release 1.19.1
Minor bugfixes and enhancements.

  o    Ffmpeg Configure Changes. The configure script has been
    modified to look for the ffmpeg libraries in their installed
    location rather than in a build directory. This is to avoid
    having  to  build  the library when it  might  already  be
    installed.
    
o    Pcre Configure Changes. The configure script has been
modified to look for the pcre.h header file in both
/usr/include and /usr/include/pcre rather than just the latter
as previously.
o    Remote Image Parsing. Further improvements have been made
to handle additional patterns of images with differing styles
of terminations or none at all.
o    Event Image Numbering. An additional configuration option
(ZM_EVENT_IMAGE_DIGITS) has been added to allow the user to
define how many significant figures should be used to number
individual event images.
o    Frame Listing Timestamp Bug. Fixed a bug where in the
event frame listing view the timestamps were not correctly
displayed.
o    Event Filters Bug. Fixed (again) a bug where several
fields used in event filters did not generate valid database
queries.
o    Zmu Device Authentication. Removed the previous
requirement to pass in a username and password to zmu when
just querying a device as this was slightly broken and was
unnecessary anyway.

8.7. Release 1.19.0
Some major enhancements and bugfixes.

  o    MPEG video streaming. ZoneMinder now supports true video
    streaming if configured with the -with-ffmpeg option. This
    allows one or both of live or event streaming to be in this
    format rather than motion JPEG style as before. Note however
    that is still somewhat experimental and may not work on your
    system. The reason for this is due to the variation in plugins
    and video movie formats. Currently I have got it working well
    with browsers on Windows platforms using the Windows Media
    Player plugin and the 'asf' video format. I have also managed
    to get event streaming working on Mozilla using mplayer (I
    think) though it jumps in and out of it's place in the window
    a bit. I would appreciate any feedback or advice on formats
    and plugins that work on your system. Also note that video
    streaming tends to get buffered before being displayed. This
    can result in the 'live' view being several seconds delayed.
    
o    Motion JPEG Capture. Previously image capture from
network devices has been limited to single stills capture
only. This has now changed and if you entered a remote camera
path that returns the multipart/x-mixed-replace MIME type then
this will be parsed and images extracted from the stream. This
is much faster than before and frame rates can be as fast now
with network cameras as with capture cards and video. This
feature also has the side-effect that one ZoneMinder
installation can use another as a remote video source.
o    NPH Streaming. After months of frustration I have finally
figured out why streams were corrupted using Cambozola
versions after 0.22. It turned out that apache was injecting
characters into the streams which was screwing up the headers.
I believe this to be because the initial header had no content-
length header, as the length is indeterminate. So I have added
a zero content length header which I believe fixes the problem
though perhaps not in the best way. I have also made the
installation link the existing zms binary to nph-zms so that
you can now use zms in non-parsed-header mode. If it detects
it is in this mode then the content-length header is not
output, though several other additional ones are. In nph mode
the false character injection seems to disappear so I suspect
this is a better way to use zms.
o    Bulk Frame Records. With the recent advent of the
'Record' and 'Mocord' modes a lot of people have started using
ZoneMinder as a pseudo-DVR. This meant that a lot of database
activity was taking place as each captured frame required its
own entry in the database. The frames table has now been
reorganised so that 'bulk' frames may be written at defined
intervals to reduce this database activity. The records act as
markers and individual frame timings are interpolated in
between. Bulk frames are only used when no alarm or motion
detection activity is taking place and normal frame records
are kept otherwise.
o    Event List Ordering and Scrolling. It was previously the
case that the `Next' and `Prev' buttons on the event view did
not always go to the event that was expected and sometimes
disappeared altogether. This behaviour has now been modified
and these buttons will now take you to the next and previous
events in the list which the event was selected from. Thus if
the list was sorted on ascending scores then the `next' event
is the one below which has a higher score etc. A possibly
counterintuitive side effect of this is that as the default
list is sorted by descending time the `next' event is the one
below in the list which will actually be earlier and the
`previous' event is later. So long as you remember that next
and prev refer to the order of the list you should be ok.
o    Zone Percentage Sizes. Zone motion detection parameters
can be defined either in terms of total pixels or as a
percentage. This percentage was defined relative to the size
of the image as a whole. However this was difficult to
calculate or estimate especially with several zones of varying
sizes. In version 1.19.0 this has been changed so that the
percentage relates to the size of the zone itself instead.
This should make calculations somewhat easier. To convert your
existing zones you can run zmupdate.pl with the -z option,
though this should be done only once and you should backup
your database beforehand in case of error.
o    Console View System Display. The console display was
slight revamped to indicate disk space usage (via the `df'
command) on the events partition,
o    Zone Form Validation. Changes applied in version 1.18.0
to prevent invalidate entries in the zone definition form
actually had the opposite effect due to JavaScript treating
everything as a string and not a number (e.g. 5 is greater
than 123). This is now corrected.
o    Default Rate and Scales. You can now specify (in the
options dialog) the default scale you would like to view live
and event feeds at. You can also give a default rate for
viewing event replays.
o    More Rates. Additional faster rates have been included,
up to 100 times.
o    Frame Buffer Size. Previously it was possible for frames
being sent from the analysis daemon to the frame server to
exceed the defined maximum buffer size in which case the write
would fail. It is now possible to define a larger size if
necessary to prevent this. Note that you may have to adjust
your system configuration to accommodate this. For further
details check the help for the ZM_FRAME_SOCKET_SIZE option.
o    Filter Name Duplication. Following recent changes to the
filters table, several people reported that when saving
filters they actually got a duplicate. This resulted in
several copies of filters all with the same name as the
constraint on unique filter names was not present. Well it is
now so when upgrading your database all the filters will be
renamed from `myfilter' to `myfilter_<id>' where `<id>' is the
id number in the database (which is then removed). In general
the higher the id number the more recent the filter. So you
should go through your filter list deleting old copies and
then rename the last one back to it's original name.
o    Filter Form. Problem were reported with the filtering
form where several selections generated SQL errors. This is
now fixed.
o    Filter Image Attachments. A fix was made to zmfilter.pl
to prevent it trying to attach<63> alarm images to non-alarm
events.
o    Video Rate Specification. A fix was made to zmvideo.pl
that corrected a problem with no default frame being used if
none was passed in.
o    RBG->BGR Black Screen. Fixed an issue with black screens
being reported in RGB24 mode if RGB->BGR invert was not
selected.
o    Monitor Deletion. Fixed a problem with event files not
being deleted when monitor was.
o    A translation for the Dutch (nl_nl) language has been
included.

8.8. Release 1.18.1
Minor bugfixes.

  o     Filter  Monitor  Name Bug. A bug was  present  in  the
    previous  release where monitor names where not  correctly
    handled in filters. This is now fixed.
    
o    Database Upgrade Change. Users upgrading from releases
prior to 1.18.0 please note that now as part of the upgrade
process all your filters will have any automatic actions
unset. This is because the previous affinity to a particular
monitor has now been removed and you may be left with several
filters all doing the same thing to all of the events or have
filters which for instance delete events on only one monitor
but which now would delete them for all of them. It is
recommended that you review your list of saved filters and
delete duplicates before adding any monitor specific terms and
resetting the actions for any that remain.

8.9. Release 1.18.0
Major optimisations, important new features and some bugfixes.

  o    Optimisations and Performance Improvements. This release
    contains several major performance improvements in various
    areas. The first of these is that image processing for YUV
    style input formats are now pretty much handled at almost the
    same speed as native RGB formats. As this is what the capture
    daemons spend most of their time doing, the improvement helps
    reduce  the  amount  of CPU time by a significant  degree.
    Application of these changes also highlighted a bug that had
    existed previously in YUV conversion which caused incorrect
    conversions for certain values. The other two main areas of
    optimisation  are in the Blend and Delta image  functions.
    Normally when doing motion detection the analysis  daemons
    spend about 99% of their time comparing a captured image with
    the reference image and then blending the two ready for the
    next capture. Both of these functions have been significantly
    improved. In previous versions there were two options  for
    calculating  image deltas (or differences), a  simple  RGB
    average and a Y channel calculation. Historically the RGB one
    was  faster however with the optimisations the  Y  channel
    calculation (which is more accurate) is now 15-20% faster and
    so has become the default though you can select either method
    by the ZM_Y_IMAGE_DELTAS configuration option. A new method of
    image  blending has also been added which is up to 6 times
    faster than the old one which is retained for compatibility
    and because in some unusual circumstances it may still be more
    accurate (see the ZM_FAST_IMAGE_BLENDS option for details).
    Altogether these optimisations (along with other common sense
    ones such as not maintaining a reference image in `Record'
    mode where it is not used) significantly reduce the CPU load
    for most systems, especially when alarms are not in progress.
    If an alarm is detected then a lot of file system and database
    activity takes place which is limited by the speed of these
    resources so the gain will not be as much.
    
o    Remote Authentication. This document has previously
indicated that basic authentication for network cameras could
be used by entering a hostname of the form of
<user>:<pass>@<hostname>. This was not actually the case as
the relevant authentication header was never sent. This is now
fixed and addresses of this form can now be used.
o    Filter Date Parsing. The zmfilter.pl date parsing now
correctly reports when dates or times which it cannot parse
are used.
o    Monitor Independent Filters. Previously filters were
closely tied to a monitor and a new filter had to be created
for each monitor. This has now changed and filters can now
specify an associated monitor in the same was as other
parameters. Links have now been added to the main console view
to allow you to view lists of events from all monitors in one
and saved filters can now affected as many or as few monitors
as you wish. IMPORTANT: Please note that as part of the
upgrade process all your filters will have any automatic
actions unset. This is because the previous affinity to a
particular monitor has now been removed and you may be left
with several filters all doing the same thing to all of the
events or have filters which for instance delete events on
only one monitor but which now would delete them for all of
them. It is recommended that you review your list of saved
filters and delete duplicates before adding any monitor
specific terms and resetting the actions for any that remain.
o    New Filter Operators. Two new filter operators and their
inverse have been added. You can now indicate whether a value
is in a set of other values, for example `cat' is in the set
of `cat, dog, cow, horse'. You can also use regular
expressions so `cat' matches `^c.*'. The `not in set' and `not
matches' operators are also available.
o    Additional Scales. Enhancements to the scaling algorithm
mean that non binary scales are now just as easy to apply,
thus new scales such as 0.75x have been added. Others can be
easily included if necessary.
o    Montage Sizing. The montage view allows you to view all
of your active cameras in one window. However if your cameras
are different sizes then this becomes very untidy. You can now
constrain the image size of each monitor in this view to a
fixed size with the ZM_WEB_MONTAGE_WIDTH and
ZM_WEB_MONTAGE_HEIGHT configuration options. Monitor images
will be enlarged or reduced as necessary.
o    Compact Montage. The traditional montage view includes
individual small menus for each monitor and a status display.
This results in a somewhat cluttered display and the
refreshing of the status displays may generate more accesses
than desirable. Using the ZM_WEB_COMPACT_MONTAGE configuration
option allows this montage view to only include the monitor
streams and one overall menu bar with no status displays.
o    Monitor Name Constraint. The name given to a monitor is
used in file paths and several other areas. Thus it is
important that it follows certain conventions but up until
this release these names were unrestricted. The monitor form
now limits monitor names to alphanumeric characters plus
hyphen and underscore.
o    Timestamp Change. Traditionally ZoneMinder has time-
stamped each image as it is captured. This ensures that all
images have their capture time recorded immediately. However
there are several side-effects which may be undesirable.
Firstly the time and resource is spent time-stamping images
that are not recorded and which are discarded, secondly the
timestamp is included in any motion detection and may
potentially trigger an alarm if detection parameters are very
sensitive. The third effect is that as the timestamp is added
to the image at it's native resolution, if the image is scaled
then the timestamp is scaled also. This may not be a problem
for enlargement but if the image size is reduced then it may
become illegible. This version now allows you, via the
ZM_TIMESTAMP_ON_CAPTURE configuration option, to indicate
whether the timestamps should be added on capture, as before,
or only added when the image is viewed or recorded. Setting it
to this later value allows timestamps to be added to scaled
images. This is little performance impact either way.
o    Scaleable Stills View. The stills view of a monitor (when
streaming is not available or desired) is now scaleable in the
same way as the streamed view.
o    Double Buffered Stills View. The stills view has now been
restructured to allow a double buffering approach. Thus a new
image is loaded in the background and only written to screen
when complete. This removes the refresh flicker that means
that the screen blanks periodically however uses more
JavaScript so may not be suitable for all platforms. Whether
ZoneMinder uses double buffering or not is controlled by the
ZM_WEB_DOUBLE_BUFFER configuration option.
o    Fixed Length Event Bug. A bug was reported whereby the
fixed length events that could be specified for use in Record
or Mocord mode could sometimes result in events a multiple of
that length. So events that were meant to be 15 minutes long
could sometimes be 30 or even 45 minutes. This was especially
the case with monitors that had low frame rates. This is now
fixed.

8.10.     Release 1.17.2
Minor features, bug fixes and additional languages.

  o     Pending Process Bug. A bug was found whereby a process
    that  was  scheduled to be started in the future  (due  to
    repeated failures) would drop out of the pending queue if a
    further explicit restart was attempted. This is now fixed.
    
o    Strsignal Function. The strsignal function was included
from version 1.17.1 however this is not ubiquitous on all
distributions. The existence of this function is now tested
for by the configure script and it is not used if not present.
o    Add Max Alarm Threshold. Previously the alarm threshold
(which is the amount a pixel has to differ from it's
counterpart in the reference image) existed only in a
`minimum' form meaning pixels that were more different
matched. A maximum has now been added to assist in screening
out large changes in brightness. In addition to this a number
of new consistency checks have been added to the zone
definition form to try and prevent bogus or invalid settings.
o    Diagnostic Zone Images. A regularly requested feature is
that of adding extra information to allow diagnostics of the
process of image detection. This has previously been somewhat
hit and miss but in this version a new configuration option
ZM_RECORD_DIAG_IMAGES has been included to allow this. This
option will generate several images for each captured frame in
an alarm including each reference image and a series of images
containing the image differences at various stages in the
process. It is not possible to record these for the image
prior to an alarm but those following it are included and
should assist in tuning the zones to provide optimal motion
detection.
o    Event Images Renamed. The capture and analysis images
recorded during an event have been renamed from capture-
???.jpg to ???-capture, and from analyse-???.jpg to ???-
analyse.jpg. This is to allow all images (including diagnostic
ones) to be associated with the frame sequence number more
easily. This means that old events will no longer be able to
be viewed as the wrong image will be being searched for. To
avoid this you can use the new `zmupdate.pl' utility to rename
all your old images by doing `perl zmupdate.pl -r' as an
appropriately privileged or root user.
o    Version checking. ZoneMinder will now optionally check
for new versions of itself at zoneminder.com. This is done
with a simple http get and no personal information otherwise
than your current version of ZoneMinder is transmitted or
recorded. If new versions are found you may be alerted of them
via the web interface. This is an initial step towards
enhancing and automating the upgrade process.
o    Force Java. Previously ZoneMinder could be forced to
override it's detection of browser capabilities to prevent the
Cambozola Java applet being used. However sometimes the
opposite effect was desired and using the applet was preferred
to native image handling. This has now been made possible by
making the ZM_CAN_STREAM option tri-state allowing `auto',
`yes' or `no' to be used to provide all alternatives.
o    Alarms Cleared on Exit. In previous versions if an alarm
was present when the analysis daemon (zma) exited the alarm
would remain flagged. This had little effect except if the
monitor was being watched however it was a bit annoying so any
alarm flag is now cleared when this daemon exits.
o    New Languages. Translations for Japanese (ja_jp), French
(fr_fr) and Russian (ru_ru) are now included.

8.11.     Release 1.17.1
Bugfixes and additional languages.

  o    Login Bug. A bug was identified whereby an unauthorised
    user could gain access to the console view of ZoneMinder. This
    was the only view available and no access to any camera views
    or configuration was possible. This bug is now fixed.
    
o    New Languages. Two new language files were added. These
allow ZoneMinder to use the German (de_de) and Polish (pl_pl)
languages.
o    Language File Format. The format of the language file was
changed to allow the specification of character set and locale
as well as have more flexibility in the calculation of plural
forms.
o    Option Language. The prompts and help text for the
options is now also available for translation. A guide is
included in the language file to allow this if necessary.
Currently language translations exclude the options settings
as this is a rarely accessed area and contains a great deal of
text. The new format allows individual options to be
translated piecemeal as the opportunity arises.

8.12.     Release 1.17.0
Language changes and other enhancements.

  o     Version Numbering. ZoneMinder version numbers have now
    changed. This is to allow more frequent `point' releases which
    are  expected to happen for instance whenever new language
    files  are included. Previously all releases had the  same
    version increment so it was difficult to tell the significance
    of any particular release. Now the version number is in the
    x.y.z format where a change in x signifies a major fundamental
    or architectural rework, a change in y will indicate a new
    release  containing incremental feature changes  or  fixes
    recommend to all users and a change in z will generally mean
    minor non-functional or critical modifications which would not
    be recommended as important to all users. As ZoneMinder has
    been referred to by the point release up until now, e.g. .15,
    .16 etc the next number in that sequence has been retained for
    continuity  and to avoid having any ambiguity  in  version
    numbers.
    
o    Language Support. ZoneMinder now allows specification of
system and user specific languages other than UK English.
These languages are given in language files named
zm_lang_nn_mm.php which can be created from the default
zm_lang_en_gb.php file. If your language is not included then
please consider doing a translation by checking this file and
submitting your changes back for inclusion in future releases.
o    Syntactic Improvements. Previously setting `NOTICE'
errors on in PHP would flag tens or hundreds of violations in
the ZoneMinder web files. Whilst not strictly errors this
represented sloppy coding and sometimes covered up genuine
bugs. All the files have been revisited and revised to ensure
that a many of these problems as possible have been eliminated
and only the very few where the fix would be significantly
less optimal than the problem remain.
o    Stream Scaling Resizing. Previously when watching a
stream and modifying the scale of the streamed feed only the
actual feed would change size and the containing frames and
windows would remain the same. This was fine for changes to
smaller scales but problematic for larger scales. This has
been changed for that the window and frames will now resize
appropriately.
o    Mmap Return Value. A problem identified by users in the
forum relating to checking of return values from the mmap
function call has been corrected.
o    Minor Bugs. A number of minor bugs and inconsistencies
were corrected.

8.13.     Release 0.9.16
Major usability enhancement and fixes.

  o     Run States. Instead of the old `start/stop' links  the
    current system state is now a link which takes you to a dialog
    which allows you to start, restart or stop the system. You can
    also  save the current run state which basically  takes  a
    snapshot of the current monitor functions and saves that. You
    can then reselect that state later which basically involves
    resetting the monitors to have these saved functions and then
    doing a system restart.
    
o    New Monitor Functions. Instead of Passive, Active, and
X10, the modes are now Monitor (= old Passive) which just
allows you to watch the feed, Modect (= old Active) which is
MOtion DetECT and which will capture events as previously,
Record which continuously records with no analysis and MoCord
which is a hybrid of Modect and Record and which will
continuously record but also do motion detection and highlight
where this has occurred. The Record and Mocord functions both
records events whose length in seconds is defined by the
'Section Length' monitor attribute. You can additionally
specify a 'Frame Skip' value to tell it to not record 'n'
frames at a time, when not alarmed.
o    X10 Function removed. The X10 mode has been removed and
replaced by an indication of whether the monitor is
'continuous' or 'triggered'. This basically just indicates
whether it may be controlled outside of zmdc and zmpkg.
Additionally the X10 triggers may now be specified in an X10
section. This has changed to allow for other types of triggers
to be added more easily.
o    Paginated Event listings. The event listings are
paginated by default. You can list all of the events if you
like by choosing the appropriate option. There are shortcuts
to pages of events at the top of the listing. If these produce
strange looking sequences like 1,2, 3, 5, 9, 17, 37 etc this
is deliberate and uses an exponential algorithm intended to
allow you to quickly navigate through the list to a particular
page in the minimum number of clicks.
o    Scaleable Streams. Event and monitor streams can now be
scaled to a certain extent allowing you to view at a different
resolution than that captured. This area may be somewhat
incomplete especially in terms of monitoring at a higher
screen size where the frame is not adjusted properly.
o    Variable Frame Rates. Event streams can now be viewed at
various rates allowing faster review (if your bandwidth
allows) to long events, or slower for more precision.
o    Scaleable/Variable MPEG generation. Generation of MPEG
videos now also allows you to specify the scale relative to
the original image and also the frame rate. Again, for long
events captured in the perpetual recording modes this will
allow a faster review of the period the event covers.
o    Tabbed Monitor options. Specification and modification of
monitors is now in a tabbed form for easier navigation.
o    Additional stream headers. The stream headers have been
changed to hopefully ensure that they are less likely to be
cached.
o    Maximum process restart delay. zmdc.pl now has an upper
limit (15 minutes) to the time it waits before restarting
continuously crashing processes.
o    Intelligent Module inclusion. zmfilter.pl now includes
Archive::Zip and other modules on an as needed basis so won't
complain about them being missing unless they have been
explicitly configured to be used.
o    Adaptive Watchdog. zmwatch now more adaptive to actual
frame rates.
o    Fixed zmfilter CPU sucking bug. zmfilter.pl will now
restart on failure to read shared memory. Previously this
could go into a nasty CPU sucking loop!
o    New zmconfig options. zmconfig.pl has a new option to run
with no database if necessary
o    File reorganisation. Various administrative file changes
and reorganisations.
o    Compiler warnings. Various tweaks and modifications to
reduce compiler and memory warnings.
o    SQL Buffer size. Increased SQL buffer size to cope with
large pre-event buffers, plus a couple of other buffers have
been enlarged.
o    Incorrect Frame time offsets. The time offsets in alarmed
frames were incorrect and based on the time of storage rather
than capture. This gave the impression that there was a delay
after the first alarmed frame and messed up some streaming
timings. This has been fixed.
o    Event Frame listing. You can now view details of the
frames captured such as their time and score etc by clicking
on the scores in the events views.
o    Refined shared memory handling. Fixed zmfilter, zmwatch
and zmx10 to allow zero as a valid shared memory id to allow
them to keep on working if the segment has been marked for
deletion
o    Frame daemon stability. Changed image buffer in zmf to be
static rather than dynamic. This has made zmf much more
stable.
  o    MPEG overwrite option. Fixed the 'Overwrite' checkbox in
     video generation to actually overwrite the video. Modded the
     page slightly also.
     
  o     Daemon  control  improved.  Changing  between  monitor
    functions, e.g. Modect, Mocord etc now restarts the correct
    daemons.
    
o    Improved time based filters. Filters that include time
based clauses now get executed regardless of whether new
events are being generated.
o    Audit daemon started unconditionally. zmaudit is now
started regardless of the setting of FAST_DELETES as zmfilter
depends on it being there.
o    Filtering more active. zmfilter is now started in
'Monitor' mode. It does not run in when monitors are
completely off however.
o    Stills paged. The stills view of events is now paginated
for easier navigation.
o    Archive images optional. Normally when an alarm is
detected a set of raw images is saved along with a mirror set
of images containing motion highlighting. This second set can
now optionally be disabled.
o    Settings in auth mode. Control of camera brightness,
contrast etc did not previously work when running in
authorised mode. This is now fixed.
o    zms parameter bug fixed. The streaming server incorrectly
parsed and assigned one of it's arguments. This is now fixed.
o    zmu brighness bug. Previously camera brightness was not
correctly parsed from command line options passed to zmu.
o    Event window width variable. Event windows now scale to
fit the event image size.

8.14.     Release 0.9.15
Various bug fixes from the last release and before.

  o     Bandwidth. A bug was introduced in .14 which caused  a
     corrupted  console  display and manic  refreshes  on  new
     installations. This was due to a missing bandwidth setting
     when no existing cookie was detected. This is now fixed.
     
o    Again in .14 a problem occurred for a new release whereby
zmconfig wanted to know the database details and but also
previously wanted to access the database before it had asked
the questions. This has now been addressed though it does
require that zmconfig is run twice initially, once to created
the scripts and once to import the configuration into the
database.
o    In association with the previous error, the
zm_config_defines.h file was not created in the absence of the
database as this was what was used to assign configuration
ids. This now takes place regardless of the database.
o    The SQL to create the Users table was mistakenly omitted
from the .12 database upgrade script this has now been
corrected.
o    A bug in zmfilter was pointed out whereby the dynamic
loading of the Zip or Tar archive modules depending on a
preference actually wasn't. It was looking for both and
loading both at compile time. This has now been modified to be
fully runtime.
o    The database user definitions in the zmvideo script
indicated one database user while the database connection used
a different one. This prevented any videos being generated.
o    A problem was found if using the zmf frame server and
greyscale images. The option to colourise JPEG images is
intended to be used to ensure that all JPEG files are written
with a 24 bit colourspace as certain tools such as ffmpeg
require this. However in the circumstances described above
images written by zma directly were colourised whereas those
written by  zmf weren't. A change has been made whereby if set
all greyscale JPEG images are colourised in all circumstances.

8.15.     Release 0.9.14
Major new feature and important bug-fixes.

  o     Web configuration. Following many requests and to make
     ZoneMinder easier to administer the configuration system has
     been changed slightly. You should now still run zmconfig.pl to
     specify an initial configuration but you now only need to
     answer the first few questions to give a core set of options
     including the database options. The remainder of configuration
     options can then be ignored to start with and all but the core
     options will be written to the database. You can then view and
     modify these options from the web interface and apply then
     without recompilation, which is now only necessary if you
     change the core configuration.
     
o    Following a number of requests the .sock file directory
is now configurable in zmconfig.
o    Y channel bug. When using colour cameras a motion
detection problem was present if fast RGB images deltas
(ZM_FAST_RGB_DIFFS) was off. This was an overflow error in the
calculation of the Y channel and caused excessive image
differences to be calculated. This has now been fixed.
o    The use of the Term::Readkey perl module in zmaudit.pl
has been removed. This module had been removed from
zmconfig.pl previously but had lingered in this script.
o    A bug was found in zmx10.pl causing a crash if time
delayed X10 events were used. This has now been fixed.
o    Removed use of `zmu' binary from zmwatch.pl and zmx10.pl.
Previously these scripts had used zmu to determine last image
time and alarm state information. The use of this script was a
bit overkill and the introduction of user permissions
complicated matter slightly so these scripts now access the
shared memory directly.
o    Shared memory permissions. Following introduction of a
user permissions system the previous 777 mode for shared
memory was deemed insecure. Consequently from now on shared
memory is only accessible from the owner. This means that zmu
will only work when run as root or the web user unless you set
it setuid where it should still be secure as it will require
authentication.
o    All SQL buffers in the C++ code have been enlarged. There
was previously an issue with a buffer overflow on certain
occasions.

8.16.     Release 0.9.13
Beta  version  of several features and fixes, never  generally
released.

  o    Following a number of requests the .sock file directory
     is now configurable in zmconfig.
     
o    Changed some of the core video calls to be V4L2
compatible. This primarily involved opening the video devices
and memory maps as read/write and not just read-only.
o    Shared memory has now been rationalised to prevent some
common problems. Remember to shutdown the whole ZM package
before installing, from this version on it will remove all old
shared memory segments.
o    Fixed not numeric comparison in zmwatch which was
causing, or appeared to be causing, some errors.
o    Fixed zone image map bug for percentage zones. When you
had defined a zone in percentage terms, the image map used to
select it for editing was broken. This is now fixed.
o    New contrast/brightness etc adjustments feature. This
accessible from the Settings link on the monitor window. It's
fairly basic at present but should work for most types of
cameras. If you have any device or driver specific auto-
brightness, auto-contrast etc enabled the changes you make may
appear to work but may be overridden by the auto feature
immediately so check for that if your changes do not appear to
be having an effect. Also if you have a number of cameras
being multiplexed onto one device then any changes here will
probably affect all your cameras.
o    Some redundant window scrollbars removed.
o    Added user and access control. If enabled in config
(ZM_OPT_USE_AUTH) then you will need to define and login as ZM
users. There will be one users already defined, with username
'admin' and password 'admin'. This user is defined will full
permissions and clicking on the 'Options' link from the main
console window will allow you to modify and create users with
various permission sets which hopefully will satisfy most
requirements. These users (except any defined with 'system'
edit capability) can be restricted to certain cameras by
adding the monitor ids as a comma-separated list (no spaces)
to the appropriate field. Users limited to specific monitors
may not create or delete monitors even if defined with monitor
edit permissions.
o    Some windows now (optionally) use a JavaScript timeout to
refresh themselves rather than a refresh header. Since refresh
headers were interrupted if a link of the page was linked
there were previously various forced refreshes from child
windows to restart the refresh process. By using JS refresh
timers which are not interrupted these extraneous refreshes
have been mostly eliminated.

8.17.     Release 0.9.12
Mostly bug-fixes with a couple of minor features.

  o     Double  first images. Fixed a problem where the  first
     image of an event was being recorded twice. I don't think this
     was at the cost of any of the other images but one copy was an
     extra.
     
o    Made zmdc connect more intelligent. On the suggestion of
a couple of people I have made the zmdc.pl server spawning and
waiting a bit more intelligent. Rather than waiting a fixed
(short) amount of time, it now polls every second for a while,
stopping if the connection is made. Thanks to Todd McAnally
for the initial suggestion.
o    Added image view to events lists. Again a partial
implementation of a suggested feature. If you click on the
score column you will now get a snapshot of the event frame
with the highest score. This is to enable you to quickly see
what the event was about without having to watch the stream or
view all the static images.
o    Make delta times variable precision. A couple of problems
had been reported where long events got negative durations.
This was due to an overflow in a time difference routine. This
had been operating on fixed precision allowing high precision
for short deltas. This routine has been changed to allow
variable precision and events will now have to be several days
long to wrap in this way.
o    Fixed round detection problem. Although the existence or
otherwise of the `round' function is correctly detected, the
appropriate header file with the results of this test was not
included which was not helpful. This has been corrected.
o    Fixed monitor rename bug. Renaming a monitor did not
correctly modify the events directory to reflect this. This
has now been fixed.
o    OPT_MPEG bug. A bug was reported (by Fernando Diaz) where
the results of the ZM_OPT_MPEG configuration variable was not
correctly imported into the scripts. This now happens as
intended.
o    Fixed zmvideo.pl event length bug. The zmvideo.pl script
which is used to generate video MPEG files tries to calculate
the correct frame rate based on the length of the event and
the number of frames it contains. Previously it did not take
account of the pre and post event frames and so passed a much
shorter value to the mpeg encoder than it should. This will
only have affected short events encoded with ffmpeg but will
have resulted in much faster frame rates than necessary. This
has now been corrected to take the whole event length into
account.
o    Fixed remote camera memory leak. A memory leak was
reported when capturing with remote cameras, this is now
fixed.
o    Orientation. Added option to rotate or invert captured
images for cameras mounted at unusual angles.
o    Fixed filter bug. A bug in the zmfilter.pl script was
detected and reported by Ernst Lehmann. This bug basically
meant that events were not checked as often as they should
have been and many may have been left out for filters that had
no time component. The script has now been updated to reflect
Ernst's suggested changes.
o    Stylesheet change. Previously the stylesheet didn't
really work very well on Mozilla, Netscape and browsers other
than IE. This turned out to be because I was using HTML style
comments in there instead of C style ones. This has now been
corrected so you should see the correct styles.
o    Zmconfig.pl ReadKey. Thanks to a ridiculously sensible
suggestion from Carlton Thomas this module has been removed
from zmconfig.pl. Originally Term::ReadKey was in there for
funky single character unbuffered input but that has long
since disappeared so just regular perl input methods are used
now. This removes one of the most irritating features about
ZoneMinder installs.
o    Delete monitor confirm. Due to some unfortunate accidents
by users, attempts to delete monitors will now require
confirmation.
o    Detect linmysqlclient.a. Added better detection script
into `configure' top spot when libmysqlclient.a is missing.

8.18.     Release 0.9.11
Various new features and fixes.

  o     Added  stats view - If you have the RECORD_EVENT_STATS
     directive set and are viewing a still image from an event you
     can now view the statistics recorded for that frame. This
     tells you why that frame triggered or participated in  an
     alarm.  This  can be useful in tuning the various  motion
     detection parameters and seeing why events occurred.
     
o    Tabulated events - The main events view is now tabulated
to look a bit nicer.
o    New video palette support - As well as the existing
greyscale and 24 bit RGB palettes, you can now choose YUV420P
and RGB565. Rewrote the palette/colours area a bit to enable
support for other palettes in the future if requested. Bear in
mind though that YUV palettes are converted into RGB
internally so if you have the choice RGB24 may be faster as
it's the 'native' format used within.
o    Added preclusive zones - Added a new zone type, the
preclusive zone. For full details see the relevant section
above but in brief this is a zone type that if alarmed will
actually prevent an alarm. This completes the pantheon of zone
types I think.
o    Fixed Mozilla JavaScript - Various JavaScript
functionality did not function on Mozilla, Netscape and other
browsers. This is now (hopefully) fixed.
o    Allow image and mpegs to be attached to emails - Added
new tokens (%EI1%, %EIM% and %EV%) to the filter emails. This
allows the first alarm image, most highly scored alarm image
and an alarm MPEG to be attached to alarm notification emails.
Use %EV% especially with care!
o    Fixed possible motion detection bug - I found a few
double declared local variables left over from the rewrite.
This may have affected the motion detection algorithm. Fixed
now anyway.
o    Modified scoring - Alarm scoring has been modified to
give more granularity for smaller events. This will have the
effect of raising the scores for small events while large ones
will still be about the same.
o    Fixed /cgi-bin path problem - Previously you could
specify the real path to you cgi-bin directory if you have one
but not the web path. You can now do both.
o    Improved video handling in browser - The MPEG/video area
of the web GUI had been a bit neglected and looked somewhat
ugly. This has now been improved to a degree and looks a bit
nicer.
o    Added ffmpeg support - Historically ZoneMinder has only
supported the Berkeley mpeg encoder which was slow and rather
limited. ZoneMinder now supports the ffmpeg encoder as well
which is much much faster and makes generation of MPEG videos
at realistic frame rates more of a reality. As ffmpeg has so
many options and everyone will probably want a different
emphasis you can now also specify additional ffmpeg options
via zmconfig.pl.
o    Colourise greyscale image files - In past versions,
captured greyscale images were stored as JPEG files with a
corresponding greyscale colourspace. This saved a small amount
of space but meant that mpeg_encode had to do a conversion to
encode them, and ffmpeg just fell in a heap. Now you can
optionally opt to have greyscale images saved as full 24 bit
colourspace images (they still look the same) at the price of
a small penalty in CPU and disk but allowing you to easily and
quickly create MPEG files. This option is one by default but
can be switched off if you do not require any MPEG encoding.
o    Fast RGB diffs - Previously ZoneMinder used quite a loose
method for calculating the differences between two colour
images. This was basically averaging the differences between
each of the RGB components to get an overall difference. This
is still the default but by setting ZM_FAST_RGB_DIFFS to 'no'
you can now make it calculate the Y (or brightness value) of
the pixels and use the difference between those instead. This
will be more accurate and responsive to changes but is may be
slower especially on old machines. There is a slight double
whammy here if you have a YUV palette for capture and set this
option off as the image will be converted to RGB and then
partially converted back to get the Y value. This is currently
very inefficient and needs to be optimised.
o    Fixed STRICT_VIDEO_CONFIG - Previously this actually
behaved the opposite of what it was supposed to, ie. if you
wanted it strict it wasn't and vice versa. Thanks to Dan
Merillat for pointing this one out.
o    Web colour change - I thought the old red, green and
amber text colours were just a bit too gaudy so I've toned
them down a bit. Hope you like them!

8.19.     Release 0.9.10
Many bug-fixes and major feature enhancements.

  o     Configure  `round'  bug - Fixed  a  problem  with  the
     configure script that didn't  detect if the 'round' function
     was already declared before try to do it itself.
     
o    Low event id bug - Fixed bug where events with an id of <
1000 were being cleaned up by zmaudit.pl by mistake.
o    Source file restructuring - The source files have been
broken up and renamed extensively to support the first stage
of the code being straightened out. Likewise the class
structure has been rationalised somewhat. The php file names
have also changed in some cases so it might be best to delete
all your php and css files from the zone minder install
directory first as the old ones won't be overwritten and will
be left behind.
o    Streamed cycle view -  The monitor cycle view (the one
where each monitor is displayed sequentially) now supports
streams as well as stills.
o    New `montage' view - Added a montage view showing all
your cameras simultaneously either streaming or stills. The
width of this window (in terms of number of monitors) is a
configuration option.
o    Network camera support - A major change in this version
is support for remote or network cameras. This is currently
implemented as series of http grabs of stills rather than
being able to break up motion jpeg streams. However frame
rates of from 2-10 should be achievable depending on your
network proximity to the cameras.
o    Option BGR->RGB swap - Added the option to switch on or
off the inversion of RGB to BGR for local cameras. It is on by
default to maintain compatibility with previous releases.
o    zmu suspend alarm option - Added new -n option to zmu to
effectively suspend alarm detection for a monitor. This is
intended for short term use and to support PTZ cameras where
alarm detection is desired to be suspended while the camera
changes orientation or zoom level.
o    FPS limiting - Added a new option to monitors to add a
maximum capture rate. This allows you to limit the amount of
hits a network camera gets or to reduce the system load with
many cameras. It also works with multi-port cards and limiting
the capture rate on one camera allows the spare FPS to be
allocated to other devices. For instance with two cameras and
no throttle, I get about 4FPS each. Throttling one to 2FPS
allows the other to operate at 6FPS so you can allocate your
capture resources accordingly. This limiting can be disabled
while alarms are occurring as a global option in zmconfig.pl.
o    Alarm reference update - Added option to not blend
alarmed images into the reference image. See the help in
zmconfig.pl for caveats.
o    Disappearing monitors - Fixed the disappearing monitor
problem in the console view where monitors with no events were
randomly not being shown.
o    Clean and tidy - Cleaned up a load of compiler warnings
and miscellanea to ensure a cleaner happier build.
o    Streamed image headers - Made all headers in streamed
images have full CRLF termination which will hopefully now
prevent the problems with broken streams that had existed
mostly with Mozilla (and hopefully won't break anything else).
o    Expire streams - Added expiry headers to streamed images
so they will always display fully.
o    Event navigation - Added next, prev, delete & next,
delete & prev navigation to events to allow you to quickly
review events in sequence as had been requested by a number of
people.
o    USR blocking - The debug USR signals were not being
blocked properly leading to nasty effects in zmc mostly.
o    zmfilter execution - Previously zmfilter execution was
not synchronised with the monitor state or the analysis daemon
leading to it sometimes being run unnecessarily. From now on
the zmfilter process will only run when a monitor is active
and so actually potentially generating alarms.
o    zmdc short statuses - Removed the logging of the short
status values that zmdc.pl returns to it's clients which had
been clogging up the log file.
o    Bugs and pieces - Fixed various bug(ettes) that I came
across that that I don't think had been reported or noticed so
I don't think we need to talk about them here do we.

8.20.     Release 0.9.9
Mainly bug-fixes and minor feature enhancements.

  o     Added zmu -q/--query option - There is now a new query
     option for zmu. When combined with -d it gives the config of
     the device and when used with -m it dumps the current settings
     for the monitor and zones. Mostly useful for bug reporting.
     The  previous version of zmu used with just -d gave  this
     information for a video device by default. This now requires
     the -q option also to bring into line with it's -m equivalent.
     
o    Added creation of events directory - Previously the
'events' directory was not created on install, this has been
fixed.
o    Can now retag PHP files if necessary - Version 0.9.8 was
the first version to use short_open_tags in the PHP files.
This caused grief to some people so this script will put them
back to the long verion.
o    Frame and event lengths fractional - A new field has been
added to the Frames table. This is 'Delta' and is a fractional
number of seconds relative to the event start time. This is
intended to support the real-time playback of events rather
than just 'as fast as possible' or with a configured delay as
at present. The event length is now also fractional.
o    Corrected extraneous Width to be Height - The last
version of zmu included a Width comment which should have been
height.
o    Changed colour depth to bits - Having colour depths
expressed in bytes has caused no end of problems. This is now
changed to be bits and can be changed via a dropdown to limit
what can be entered. Don't forget to run the zmalter script to
update your DB.
o    Renamed terminate to zm_terminate - The use of
'terminate' in zmc.cpp caused a conflict on some systems so
renamed it to something more specific.
o    Zone deletion problem - A problem was found such that
when deleting zones the appropriate daemons were not being
asked to restart daemons correctly.
o    Console changes - The current version number is now
displayed in the console. A refresh button has also been added
along with a minor reorg.
o    Added delete button enable to checkAll - Using the 'Check
All' button in the main monitor window previously did not
enable the delete button. This is now fixed.
o    Reload on click - In previous versions the console window
would reload if a monitor window for example was clicked. Thsi
was removed in the last version which meant that sometimes the
console never go refreshed as it's timing loop was broken.
This functionality has now been reinstated.

8.21.     Release 0.9.8
Several new features and bug-fixes

  o     Upgrade note - If you have installed 0.9.7 and wish to
     save your configuration then copy your existing zmconfig.txt
     file  over  to  your 0.9.8 directory and  before  running
     zmconfig.pl.
     
o    Added multiple options to zmu - You can now give multiple
options to zmu and get all the responses at once. However this
is currently in a deterministic order and not related to the
order you give them.
o    Added -v/--verbose option to zmu - Zmu has been made more
human friendly though it still remains primarily for daemon
use. Giving the -v or --verbose option prints out a bit more
as a response to each command.
o    Add -d/--device to zmu - This option is designed to allow
you to get your video device working with another application
such as xawtv and then use zmu -d to print out the settings
it's using
o    (especially with the -v option). These options can then
be used as a starting point for your ZoneMinder configuration.
o    Added FPS in status field - The status field in the web
monitor views now contains an FPS setting as well as the
status.
o    Zmconfig changes - zmconfig handles missing options
better and rewrites config file even in non-interactive mode.
o    Fixed config problems in zmcfg.h - Some config was not
being set up correctly in zmcfg.h.
o    Zmwatch now works on image delay and not fps - Previously
the zmwatch daemon detected capture daemon failure by trying
to use the FPS setting. This was imprecise and prone to false
readings. It now uses the time delay since the last captured
image.
o    Added zmpkg.pl and zm scripts - There are now two new
scripts. zmpkg.pl is in charge of starting and stopping
ZoneMinder as a whole package and zm is designed to be
(optionally) installed into your init.d directory to use
ZoneMinder as a service.
o    Fixed bug in Scan mode - The monitor cycle or scan mode
had stopped working properly due to images not being
generated. This is now fixed.
o    Revamped the console window slightly - The console window
has now been reformatted slightly to give more and better
information including server load.
o    Added email and messaging to filters - Filters now allow
you to send emails or messages (basically just short emails
intended for mobile devices) on alarms. The format and
possible content for these emails is in zmconfig_eml.txt and
zmconfig_msg.txt.
o    Made zmdc more aggresive in killing old processes - The
zmdc.pl daeamon will now kill any ZoneMinder processes it
finds on startup or shutdown to prevent orphans from being
left around.
o    Configuration changes - Previously there were a lot of
files generated by configure. Now only zmconfig.pl is
generated this way and all the other configuration files are
created by zmconfig.pl (from .z files) to centralise
configuration more.
o    Fixed cambolzola opt bug - There was a bug in the
Cambozola options, I can't remember what it was but it's
fixed!
o    Retaint arguments in zmdc.pl - In some installations zmdc
was complaining about tainted arguments from the socket. These
are now detainted prior to sending and after receiving.
o    Forced alarms - You can now force alarms when looking at
the monitor window should anything catch your attention. You
have to remember to switch them off as well though.
o    Looser video configuration - Some video configuration
errors can now be ignored via the STRICT_VIDEO_CONFIG option.
o    Monitor window refresh on alarm - When the monitor window
is active and an alarm has occurred the most recent alarms
list is immediately refreshed to show it.

8.22.     Release 0.9.7
Yes,  a  big jump in release number but a lot of changes  too.
Now somewhat more mature, not really an alpha any more, and  a
lot of bugs fixed too.

  o    Added zmconfig.pl script to help with configuration.
     
o    Revamped to work better with configure scripts
o    Monitors now have more configuration options, including
some that were statically defined before such as location and
format of the image timestamps.
o    Removed Alarms table from schema as not required, never
was actually...
o    Added a number of new scripts, see the scripts directory
o    Added Fast delete to PHP files. This allows the web
interface to only delete the event entries themselves for
speed and then have the zmaudit script periodically tidy up
the rest.
o    Added event filter to enable bulk viewing, upload or
deletion of events according to various attributes. Filter can
be saved and edited.
o    Added last event id to shared memory for auto-filtering
etc.
o    Changed zmu -i option to write to monitor named image
file.
o    Made shared memory management somewhat more sensible.
o    Now stores DB times as localtime rather than UTC avoiding
daylight saving related bugs.
o    Fixed bug with inactive zones and added more debug.
o    Changed main functions to return int.
o    Added help and usage to zmu.
o    Fixed browser acceptance problem, more easily defaults to
HTML.
o    Split out the PHP files into a bunch with specific
functions rather than one monolithic one.
o    Fixed NetPBM paths and changed _SERVER to
HTTP_SERVER_VARS.
o    Added HUP signal on zone deletion.
o    Added NETPBM_DIR and conditional netpbm stuff.
o    Removed hard coded window sizes, all popup window
dimensions can be specified in zmconfig.php
o    Changed form methods to 'get' from 'post' to avoid
resubmit warnings all the time.
o    Added conditional sound to alarm on web interface.
o    Fixed syntax error when adding default monitor.
o    Some of the web views have changed slightly to
accommodate the separate events view.
o    And much much more, probably...

8.23.     Release 0.0.1
Initial release, therefore nothing new.


9.   To Do
   
Seeing  as  ZoneMinder is so young and  has  kind  of  evolved
rather  than  being planned there are a bunch of  improvements
and enhancements still to do, here is just a sample.

  o     Perhaps  split  out devices - I think  devices  should
     probably be a separate table and class from monitors. Not
     critical but would represent a better model.
     
o    Comments - Needs many more, but that's just me I'm
hopeless at commenting things out. I'll get round to it soon
though honest! You're lucky to even get this document.
o    Optimised zones - The zones could do with being sorted
out a bit to optimise the processing of overlapping ones, at
the moment you can waste resource unless your zones are kept
very tidy.
o    Create zones using server side image maps - This would
make it easier to precisely define and see where your zone is
going to go. Not critical but handy but a bugger to do.
o    Zone Definitions - Allow zones to be defined according to
a colour coded bitmap or as polygons. Currently all zones are
rectangular this would add a bit of flexibility. Would need a
bit of a rewrite though. This will incur a slight penalty on
startup and a very slight one on processing for all reasonably
shaped zones. Work has already begun on this feature.
o    Mouseover help - A bit more help popping up when you
mouseover things would be handy. A bit more help full stop
actually.
o    Automatic device configuration - Video 4 Linux supports
various device queries, it should be possible to get most of
the device capability information from the device itself. The
zmu utility does this now but it's not yet integrated into the
web pages.
o    Extend the API. Well ok it's not really got an API yet
but the image data is held in shared memory in a very simple
format. In theory you could use the capture daemon to gab the
images and other things could read them from memory or the
analysis daemon could read images from elsewhere. Either way
this should be done through an API, and would need a library I
think. Also the zmu utility could probably do a whole lot more
to enable other things to manage when the daemons become
active etc.
o    Allow ZoneMinder to 'train' itself by allowing the user
to select events that are considered important and to discard
those that should be ignored. ZoneMinder will interpolate, add
a bit of magic, and recommend settings that will support this
selection automatically thereafter. The hooks for this are
already in to some extent.
o    Add sound support to allow a captured audio channel to be
associated with a video device. Work on this feature has
already begun.

10.  Bugs
   
  o    When opening a link to an event etc from a notification
     email the window that is opened is just a regular browser
     window and not in the context of a proper ZoneMinder  web
     interface. Thus it comes up too big usually (not a  major
     issue) and also things like 'Delete' don't work as it wants to
     do things to its parent (which is more of a major issue).
     
o    The .sock files used by the *nix sockets I suspect may
have the odd permission issue now and again. I think
everything recovers from it but it needs checking out.
Probably bucket loads more, just fire them at me.


11.  Non-Bugs
   
  o    Yes, those are tabs in the indents; I like tabs so don't
     go  changing them to spaces please. Also, yes I  like  my
     opening braces on their own line most of the time, what's the
     point of brackets that don't line up?
     
Everything  else  that  isn't definitely  broken  is  probably
deliberate, or was once anyway.


12.  License
   
ZoneMinder is released under the GPL, see below.



ZoneMinder  README, $Date$,  $Revision:
1.9 $

Copyright (C) 2004  Philip Coombes

This  program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of
the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This  program  is  distributed in the hope  that  it  will  be
useful,  but  WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even  the  implied
warranty  of  MERCHANTABILITY  or  FITNESS  FOR  A  PARTICULAR
PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License for more details.