zoneminder/README

     13/01/04        ZoneMinder 1.17.0 README                1
                                 
                        ZoneMinder v1.17.0

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

 A few months back my garage was burgled and all my wine and power
tools were nicked! 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 a 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.


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 miss much really.  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  Video  4  Linux
installed. I've not got too many machines so I've only really used
it  on various RedHat 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. 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.

That's the build configuration sorted out. The next thing you have
to  do  is  do  a  little  more  runtime  specific  configuration.
ZoneMinder  config  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 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.

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
'<your  first  username>'@localhost  identified  by  '<your  first
password>';

grant   select   on  <your  database  name>.*  to  '<your   second
username>'@localhost identified by '<your second 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.
  
  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.
  
  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  themself  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. In  theory  this  can  eb
   anything  you  like but some users have reported problems  with
   some  characters.  So to be on the safe side  choose  something
   fairly  brief  and  with  just  letters  and  numbers  and   no
   punctuation or spaces..
   
   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.
   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 hinking 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
   ZoneMidner  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  a  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 100 is usually ok. If you find that your  system
   will  not let you use the value you want it is probably  becase
   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.
   
'Misc' Tab

   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 it's 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  apply
   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 which allows you to cycle
through  a  shot  from  each  of your monitors  (unless  they  are
switched off) and get a streamed or still image from each in turn.
There  may also be a link titled 'Montage' which allows  you  view
all  your  enabled cameras 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 of the  frame.  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.
   
   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  Threshold  -  This represents 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  initialy.
   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 monitor 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.

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.

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.  Once  your  filter   is
specified,  clicking 'submit' will filter the events according  to
your specification. 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.

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.


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 it's 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.

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.  I
will  be the first to admit that this area of the package  is  not
particularly  well  implemented and needs  work,  and  probably  a
better encoder. 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. Specifiying 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.

Have fun, please report any bugs or features you'd like to see and
hopefully ZoneMinder can be your camera monitoring friend!

Philip Coombes (philip.coombes@zoneminder.com) - December  2003


6.   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 on 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.shor
t-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 wil 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\.curr
ent  or  download  the  registry script to  do  it  for  you  from
http://www.zoneminder.com/downloads/noIEClick.reg


7.   Change Log
   

7.1. 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.

7.2. Release 0.9.16
Major useability 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 function 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 occured. 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 perpertual 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
reorgs.
o    Compiler warnings. Various tweaks and mods 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 overwite 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 damon 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 padinated 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.

7.3. 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.

7.4. 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.

7.5. 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 readonly.
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 imagemap 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.

7.6. 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.

7.7. 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!

7.8. 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.

7.9. 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.

7.10.     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.

7.11.     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...

7.12.     Release 0.0.1
Initial release, therefore nothing new.


8.   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.
o    Mouseover help - A bit more help popping up when you
mouseover things would be handy. A bit more help full stop
actually.
o    WAP interface - A bit of a crusade of mine I'm afraid. I'd
like to put a WML interface on to allow you to view event listing
and perhaps the most significant image from each event on your
phone. Also simple management. From version 0.9.7 there is a very
basic crude initial version that probably won't work with your
phone but its there as a testbed.
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    Create .rpm packages (as there can be several dependencies)
and maybe other types of packages also, e.g. for Debian
distributions.
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.

9.   Bugs
   
  o    I'm not sure if this is a bug or by design but the timestamp
     is added to the image by the capture daemon. I _think_ this isn't
     necessary  as it may contribute to alarms, plus the  time  is
     associated with the image anyway. So I think this should be moved
     to the analysis daemon.
     
o    I suspect there may be a bug in zmaudit.pl if your monitor
names have spaces in them. I've not been able to reproduce it but
to be on the safe side don't put spaces in your Monitor names.
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.


10.  Non-Bugs
   
  o    Yes, those are tabs in the indents; I like tabs so don't go
     changing them to spaces or else. Also yes I also 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.


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



ZoneMinder README, $Date$, $Revision$

Copyright (C) 2003  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.

You  should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along  with  this  program; if not, write  to  the  Free  Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA   02111-
1307, USA.