20/02/04 ZoneMinder 1.18.0 README 1
ZoneMinder v1.18.0
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 ZoneMinder up and running and
find it useful then please feel free to visit
http://www.zoneminder.com/donate.html where any donations will be
appreciated and will help to fund future improvements of
ZoneMinder. This would be especially appreciated if you use
ZoneMinder as part of your business or to protect your property.
2. Requirements
ZoneMinder needs a couple of things to work.
Firstly, it uses MySQL so you'll need that. In order to compile
you need to make sure you have a development installation and not
just a runtime; this is because it needs to use the MySQL header
files. If you are running an RPM based distribution then it's
probably worth installing all the pure mysql rpm files to be sure
you have the right ones.
Next it does things with JPEGs so you'll need at least libjpeg.a
which I think come as standard nowadays with most distributions.
It also uses the netpbm utilities in a very limited way to
generate thumbnails under certain circumstances though this can be
modified.
ZoneMinder can generate MPEG videos if necessary, for this you'll
need either ffmpeg (recommended) or the Berkeley MPEG encoder
(mpeg_encode). If you don't have either, don't worry, as the
options will be hidden and you'll not really miss much. 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 configuration is scattered around various files in the
distribution so to make things easier for you there is a
ZoneMinder configuration utility included. Type
perl ./zmconfig.pl
to get it started. It is an interactive utility and will prompt
you by asking you various questions. For most questions typing '?'
will give you additional help if you need it. Once you've answered
all the questions it will write out a configuration file called
'zmconfig.txt' and then process various files to substitute the
information in them. If you run it again it will remember your
answers from. If you just want to rerun the substitutions you can
run zmconfig.pl in non-interactive mode by typing
perl ./zmconfig.pl -noi
which will just read your file and do the substitutions with no
questions asked. There are two classes of options, 'core' options
which much be specified with zmconfig which detail things such as
database passwords which are compiled into ZoneMinder and other
options with are stored in the database and which can be modified
dynamically via the 'options' section of the web interface. Only
the first set need to be completed with zmconfig at this stage. If
you want to change just a few options and can't access the options
dialog via the web you can append them as parameters to zmconfig
and it will just ask you about those. So for example,
perl ./zmconfig.pl ZM_STRICT_VIDEO_CONFIG
however it is fairly dumb 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.
zmupdate.pl - Currently this script is responsible for checking
whether a new version of ZoneMinder is available and other
miscellaneous actions related to upgrades and migrations.
Eventually it is intended to be a 'one stop shop' for any
upgrades and will execute everything necessary to update your
installation to a new version.
zm - This is the (optional) ZoneMinder init script, see below
for details.
Finally, check zm_config.php in the web directory and amend any
configuration necessary in there. Most will have already been done
by the configuration utilities but some scripts have a 'VERBOSE'
flag you can set to get more debug out.
At this stage typing 'make install' will install everything to the
desired locations, you may wish to su to root first though. The
installation routine will copy the binaries and scripts to your
chosen install location, usually /usr/local/bin and then move zms
to your cgi-bin area. It will then copy the web files to your
chosen directory and ensure they have the right permissions.
Finally it tries to link zm.php to index.php but will not
overwrite an existing file if it already exists.
The 'zm' script does not get installed automatically as it is not
necessary for the operation of the ZoneMinder setup per se and is
not necessarily supported for distributions other than RedHat
However if you want to ensure that the ZoneMinder daemons are
started on reboot etc copy it to your init.d directory, usually
something like /etc/rc.d/init.d and then add it by doing
chkconfig --add zm
or similar command for your distribution. ZoneMinder will then
start up when your machine reboots and can be controlled (by the
root user) by doing 'service zm start' or 'service zm stop' etc.
You may need to use the '-levels' parameter to chkconfig to ensure
that ZoneMinder is started when you need it to.
Now start your web browser and point it at your zm.php and off you
go.
5. Tutorial
What you see now (and subsequently) depends on whether you chose
to run ZoneMinder in authenticated mode or not. This is an option
that lets you specify whether anyone that goes to the ZoneMinder
web pages must authenticate themselves in order to be given
permissions to perform certain tasks. If you chose this mode then
you will need to log in here. By default a fully privileged user
'admin' has been created with a password also of 'admin'. You
should change this password as soon as possible.
Once you've logged in, or if you are running in un-authenticated
mode, you will now see the ZoneMinder Console window. This will
resize itself to avoid being too intrusive on your desktop. Along
the top there are several informational entries like the time of
the last update and the current server load. There will also be an
indication of the system state which will probably say 'stopped'
to start with. This is a link that you can click on to control the
ZoneMinder system as a whole. Below that are various other links
including one detailing the current user (in authenticated mode
only) and one allowing you to configure your bandwidth. This last
one enables you to optimise your settings depending on where you
are, the actual values relating to this are defined in the
options. If you are using a browser on the same machine or network
then choose high, over a cable or DSL link maybe choose medium and
over a dialup choose low. You can experiment to see which is best.
This setting is retained on a per machine basis with a persistent
cookie. Also on this line are a number of other links that will be
covered below.
Please bear in mind that from here on the descriptions of the web
pages are based on what you will see if you are running as a fully
authenticated user. If you are running in un-authenticated mode or
as a less privileged user then some elements may not be shown or
will be disabled.
5.1. Defining Monitors
To use ZoneMinder properly you need to define at least one
Monitor. Essentially, a monitor is associated with a camera and
can continually check it for motion detection and such like. So,
next click 'Add New Monitor' to bring up the dialog. You will see
a bunch of things you have to fill in.
To help you get started on the video configuration the best thing
is to us a tool like 'xawtv' (http://bytesex.org/xawtv/) to get a
picture you're happy with, and to check your camera works. Then
run 'zmu -d <device_no> -q -v' to get a dump of the settings
(note, you will have to additionally supply a username and
password to zmu if you are running in authenticated mode). You can
then enter these values into the video related options of the
monitor configuration panel. The 'device_no' referred to here is a
number corresponding to the digit at the end of your device file,
so /dev/video0 has a 'device_no' of 0 etc. If 'zmu' gives you an
error related to permissions run 'zmfix -a' to make sure you can
access all the video devices.
The options are divided into a set of tabs to make it easier to
edit. You do not have to 'save' to change to different tab so you
can make all the changes you require and then click 'Save' at the
end. The individual option are explained in a little more detail
below,
'Monitor' Tab
Name - The name for your monitor. This should be made up of
alphanumeric characters (a-z,A-Z,0-9) and hyphen (-) and
underscore(_) only. Whitespace is not allowed.
Function - This essentially defines what the monitor is doing.
This can be one of the following;
<20> 'None' - The monitor is currently disabled and no streams can
be viewed or events generated.
<FA> 'Monitor' - The monitor will only stream feeds but no image
analysis is done and so no alarms or events will be generated,
<FA> 'Modect' - or MOtion DEteCTtion. All captured images will be
analysed and events generated where motion is detected,
<FA> '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.
<FA> '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 thinking is that one in every 'Frame Skip
+ 1' frames is saved. The point of this is to ensure that
saved events do not take up too much space unnecessarily
whilst still allowing the camera to capture at a fairly high
frame rate. The alternate approach is to limit the capture
frame rate which will obviously affect the rate at which
frames are saved.
Run Mode - Two choices are available here. 'Continuous' is the
usual setting and means that the monitor is expected to be
performing the function selected above at all times and should
one or more of the daemons fail or not be running it will be
automatically restarted. By contrast 'Triggered' means that
the decision about whether the daemons should actually be
active is devolved to an external triggering mechanism.
Triggers - This small section lets you select which triggers
will apply if the run mode has been set to 'triggered' above.
The most common trigger is X10 and this will appear here if
you indicated that your system supported it during
installation. Only X10 is supported as a shipped trigger with
ZoneMinder at present but it is expected that other triggers
will become available as necessary. You can also just use
'cron' jobs or other mechanisms to actually control the camera
and keep them completely outside of the ZoneMinder settings.
Source Type - This determines whether the camera is a local
one attached to a physical video or USB port on your machine
or a remote network camera or similar. Choosing one or the
other affects which set of options are shown in the next tab.
'Source' Tab (local device)
Device Number/Channel - For a local camera enter the device
number that your camera is attached to. If it is /dev/video0
enter '0' etc. Some video devices, e.g. BTTV cards support
multiple cameras on one device so in this case enter the
channel number in the Channel box or leave it at zero if
you're using a USB camera or one with just one channel.
Device Format - For a local camera enter the video format of
the video stream. This is defined in various system files
(e.g. /usr/include/linux/videodev.h) but the two most common
are 0 for PAL and 1 for NTSC.
Capture Palette - Finally for the video part of the
configuration enter the colour depth. ZoneMinder supports a
handful of the most common palettes, so choose one here. If in
doubt try grey first, and then 24 bit colour. If neither of
these work very well then YUV420P or one of the others
probably will. There is a slight performance penalty when
using palettes other than grey or 24 bit colour as an internal
conversion is involved. These other formats are intended to be
supported natively in a future version but for now if you have
the choice choose one of grey or 24 bit colour.
Capture Width/Height - The dimensions of the video stream your
camera will supply. If your camera supports several just enter
the one you'll want to use for this application, you can
always change it later. However I would recommend starting
with no larger than 320x240 or 352x288 and then perhaps
increasing and seeing how performance is affected. This size
should be adequate in most cases. Some cameras are quite
choosy about the sizes you can use here so unusual sizes such
as 197x333 should be avoided initially.
Orientation - If your camera is mounted upside down or at
right angles you can use this field to specify a rotation that
is applied to the image as it is captured. This incurs an
additional processing overhead so if possible it is better to
mount your camera the right way round if you can. If not set
the orientation here. If you choose one of the rotation
options remember to switch the height and width fields so that
they apply, e.g. if your camera captures at 352x288 and you
choose 'Rotate Right' here then set the height to be 352 and
width to be 288.
'Source' Tab (remote device)
Remote Host/Port/Path - For remote cameras use these fields to
enter the full URL of the camera. Basically if your camera is
at http://camserver.home.net:8192/cameras/camera1.jpg then
these fields will be camserver.home.net, 8192 and
/cameras/camera1.jopg respectively. Leave the port at 80 if
there is no special port required. If you require
authentication to access your camera then add this onto the
host name in the form <username>:<password>@<hostname>.com.
Remote Image Colours - Specify the amount of colours in the
captured image. Unlike with local cameras changing this has no
controlling effect on the remote camera itself so ensure that
your camera is actually capturing to this palette beforehand.
Capture Width/Height - As per local devices.
Orientation - As per local devices.
'Timestamp' Tab
Timestamp Label Format - This relates to the timestamp that is
applied to each frame. It is a 'sprintf' style string. It is
actually passed through sprintf and then through printf to add
the monitor name so a format of '%%s - %y/%m/%d %H:%M:%S'
(note the double % at the beginning) would be recommended
though you can modify it if necessary. If you don't want a
timestamp or have a camera that puts one on itself then leave
this field blank.
Timestamp Label X/Y - The X and Y values determine where to
put the timestamp. A value of 0 for the X value will put it on
the left side of the image and a Y value of 0 will place it at
the top of the image. To place the timestamp at the bottom of
the image use a value eight less than the image height.
'Buffers' Tab
Image Buffer Size - This option determines how many frames are
held in the ring buffer at any one time. The ring buffer is
the storage space where the last 'n' images are kept, ready to
be resurrected on an alarm or just kept waiting to be
analysed. It can be any value you like with a couple of
provisos, (see next options). However it is stored in shared
memory and making it too large especially for large images
with a high colour depth can use a lot of memory. A value of
no more than 100 is usually ok. If you find that your system
will not let you use the value you want it is probably because
your system has an arbitrary limit on the size of shared
memory that may be used even though you may have plenty of
free memory available. This limit is usually fairly easy to
change, see the Troubleshooting section for details.
Warm-up Frames - This specifies how many frames the analysis
daemon should process but not examine when it starts. This
allows it to generate an accurate reference image from a
series of images before looking too carefully for any changes.
I use a value of 25 here, too high and it will take a long
time to start, too low and you will get false alarms when the
analysis daemon starts up.
Pre/Post Event Image Buffer - These options determine how many
frames from before and after an event should be preserved with
it. This allows you to view what happened immediately prior
and subsequent to the event. A value of 10 for both of these
will get you started but if you get a lot of short events and
would prefer them to run together to form fewer longer ones
then increase the Post Event buffer size. The pre-event buffer
is a true buffer and should not really exceed half the ring
buffer size. However the post-event buffer is just a count
that is applied to captured frames and so can be managed more
flexibly. You should also bear in mind the frame rate of the
camera when choosing these values. For instance a network
camera capturing at 1FPS will give you 10 seconds before and
after each event if you chose 10 here. This may well be too
much and pad out events more than necessary. However a fast
video card may capture at 25FPS and you will want to ensure
that this setting enables you to view a reasonable time frame
pre and post event.
'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 its options will only appear if you have
indicated that your system supports the X10 home automation
protocol during initial system configuration.
X10 Activation String - The contents of this field determine
when a monitor starts and/or stops being active when running
in 'Triggered; mode and with X10 triggers. The format of this
string is as follows,
n : If you simply enter a number then the monitor will be
activated when an X10 ON signal for that unit code is
detected and will be deactivated when an OFF signal is
detected.
!n : This inverts the previous mode, e.g. !5 means that the
monitor is activated when an OFF signal for unit code 5 is
detected and deactivated by an ON.
n+ : Entering a unit code followed by + means that the
monitor is activated on receipt of a ON signal for that unit
code but will ignore the OFF signal and as such will not be
deactivated by this instruction. If you prepend a '!' as per
the previous definition it similarly inverts the mode, i.e.
the ON signal deactivates the monitor.
n+<seconds> : As per the previous mode except that the
monitor will deactivate itself after the given number of
seconds.
n- : Entering a unit code followed by - means that the
monitor is deactivated on receipt of a OFF signal for that
unit code but will ignore the ON signal and as such will not
be activated by this instruction. If you prepend a '!' as per
the previous definition it similarly inverts the mode, i.e.
the OFF signal activates the monitor.
n-<seconds> : As per the previous mode except that the
monitor will activate itself after the given number of
seconds.
You can also combine several of these expressions to by
separating them with a comma to create multiple circumstances
of activation. However for now leave this blank.
X10 Input Alarm String - This has the same format as the
previous field but instead of activating the monitor with will
cause a forced alarm to be generated and an event recorded if
the monitor is Active. The same definition as above applies
except that for activated read alarmed and for deactivated
read unalarmed(!). Again leave this blank for now.
X10 Output Alarm String - This X10 string also has the same
format as the two above options. However it works in a
slightly different way. Instead of ZoneMinder reacting to X10
events this option controls how ZoneMinder emits X10 signals
when the current monitor goes into or comes out of the alarm
state. Thus just entering a number will cause the ON signal
for that unit code to be sent when going into alarm state and
the OFF signal when coming out of alarm state. Similarly 7+30
will send the unit code 7 ON signal when going into alarm
state and the OFF signal 30 seconds later regardless of state.
The combination of the X10 instruction allows ZoneMinder to
react intelligently to, and also assume control of, other
devices when necessary. However the indiscriminate use of the
Input Alarm and Output Alarm signals can cause some horrendous
race conditions such as a light going on in response to an
alarm which then causes an alarm itself and so on. Thus some
circumspection is required here. Leave this blank for now
anyway.
Finally, click 'Save' to add your monitor.
On the main console listing you will now see your monitor and some
of its vital statistics. Most columns are also links and you get
to other functions of ZoneMinder by choosing the appropriate one.
Describing them left to right, they are as follows.
The first column is the Id, clicking on this gives you the
opportunity to edit any of the settings you have just defined your
monitor to have.
The next column is the Name column, clicking on this will give you
the watch window where you can view a live feed from your camera
along with recent events. This is described more fully below.
Following that are the Function and Source columns, which may be
represented in various colours. Initially both will be showing
red. This means that that monitor is not configured for any
function and as a consequence has no zmc (capture) daemon running
on it. If it were orange it would mean that a zmc daemon was
running but no zma (analysis) daemon and green means both are
running. In our case it is red because we defined the Monitor to
have a Function of None so no daemons are required. To get the
daemons up and running you can either click on the source listed
in the Source column and edit the monitor properties or click on
the Function listed and change it to 'Monitor', which will ensure
that one or more appropriate daemons are started automatically.
Having a device status of red or orange does not necessarily
constitute an error if you have deliberately disabled a monitor or
have just put it into Passive mode.
If you have several cameras (and thus monitors) on a device the
device status colour reflects all of them for the capture daemon.
So if just one monitor is active then the daemon is active for
both even if all the other monitors are switched off.
Once you have changed the function of your monitor, the main
console window will be updated to reflect this change. If your
device status does not go green then check your system and web
server logs to see if it's something obvious.
You can now add further monitors if you have cameras set up to
support them. Once you have one or more monitors you may notice
the '<n> Monitors' title becomes a link 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 Check Method -This is a new addition to Zone
definitions. It allows you to specify the nature of the alarm
checking that will take place, and more specifically what
tests are applied to determine whether a frame represents an
alarm or not. The three options are 'AlarmPixels',
'FilteredPixels' and 'Blobs' and depending on which option is
chosen some of the following other settings may become
unavailable. The first of these indicates that only a count of
individual alarmed pixels should be used to determine the
state of a image, the second indicate that the pixels should
be filtered to remove isolated pixels (see below) before being
counted, and the third uses a more sophisticated analysis
which is designed to aggregate alarmed pixels into continuous
groups, or 'blobs'. Blob analysis is the method ZoneMinder has
always used previously (before it became optional) and so this
is the default. However this method takes slightly longer and
so if you find that one of the other methods works just as
well for you and you wish to maximise performance you can opt
for that instead. Some of the more useful alarm related
features such as highlighted analysis images are only
available with the 'Blob' setting.
Min/Maximum Alarm Threshold - These setting are used to define
limits for the difference in value between a pixel and its
predecessor in the reference image. For greyscale images this
is simple but for colour images the colours are averaged
first, originally this used an RMS (root mean squared)
algorithm but calculating square roots mugs performance and
does not seem to improve detection. Using an average does
means that subtle colour changes without any brightness change
may go undetected but this is not the normal circumstance.
There is also the option to use a more sophisticated integer
algorithm to calculate a Y (or brightness) value from the
colours themselves.
Min/Maximum Alarmed Area - The following two settings define
the minimum and maximum number of pixels that exceed this
threshold that would cause an alarm. If the units are Percent
this (and following options) refers to the percentage of the
frame and not the zone, this is so these values can be related
between zones. The minimum value must be matched or exceeded
for an alarm to be generated whereas the maximum must not be
exceeded or the alarm will be cancelled. This is to allow for
sudden changes such as lights coming on etc, which you may
wish to disregard. In general a value of zero for any of these
settings causes that value to be ignored, so you can safely
set a maximum to zero and it will not be used. The use of just
a number of pixels is however a very brute force method of
detection as many small events dispersed widely are not
distinguished from a compact one.
Filter Width/Height - To improve detection of valid event
ZoneMinder applies several other functions to the data to
improve its ability to distinguish interesting signals from
uninteresting noise. The first of these is a filter that
removes any pixels that do not participate in a contiguous
block of pixels above a certain size. These options are always
expressed in pixels and should be fairly small, and an odd
number, three or five is a good value to choose initially.
Application of this filter removes any tiny or discontinuous
pixels that don't form part of a discrete block.
Min/Maximum Filtered Area - These are two additional bounds
that specify the limits of pixels that would cause an alarm
after this filtering process. As the filtering process can
only remove alarmed pixels it makes no sense for the Minimum
and Maximum Filtered Area to be larger than the equivalent
Alarmed Area and in general they should be smaller or the
same.
Min/Maximum Blob Area - The next step in the analysis phase is
the collation of any remaining alarmed areas into contiguous
blobs. This process parses the image and forms any pixels that
adjoin other alarmed pixels into one or more larger blobs.
These blobs may be any shape and can be as large as the zone
itself or as small as the filtered size. The Minimum and
Maximum Blob Size settings allow you to define limits within
which an alarm will be generated. Of these only the Minimum is
likely to be very useful.
Min/Maximum Blobs - Finally the Minimum and Maximum Blobs
settings specify the limits of the actual number of blobs
detected. If an image change satisfies all these requirements
it starts or continues an alarm event.
5.3. Viewing Monitors
As this point you should have one or more Monitors running with
one or more Zones each. Returning to the main Console window you
will see your monitors listed once more. The columns not explored
so far are the Monitor name, and various event totals for certain
periods of time. Clicking on any of the event totals will bring up
a variation on the same window but click on the Monitor name for
now. On doing so up will pop another window which should be scaled
to contain a heading, an image from your monitor, a status and a
list of recent events if any have been generated. Depending on
whether you are able to view a streamed image or not the image
frame will either be this stream or a series of stills. You have
the option to change from one to the other (if available) at the
centre of the top heading. Also along the top are a handful of
other links. These let you change the scale of the image stream,
modify image settings (for local devices) or close the window.
The image should be self-explanatory but if it looks like garbage
it is possible that the video configuration is wrong so look in
your system error log and check for or report anything unusual.
The centre of the window will have a tiny frame that just contains
a status; this will be 'Idle', 'Alarm' or 'Alert' depending on the
function of the Monitor and what's going on in the field of view.
Idle means nothing is happening, Alarm means there is an alarm in
progress and Alert means that an alarm has happened and the
monitor is 'cooling down', if another alarm is generated in this
time it will just become part of the same event. These indicators
are colour coded in green, red and amber.
By default if you have minimised this window or opened other
windows in front it will pop up to the front if it goes to Alarm
state. This behaviour can be turned off in 'options' if required.
You can also specify a sound file in the configuration, which will
be played when an alarm occurs to alert you to the fact if you are
not in front of your computer. This should be a short sound of
only a couple of seconds ideally. Note that as the status is
refreshed every few seconds it is possible for this not to alert
you to every event that takes place, so you shouldn't rely on it
for this purpose if you expect very brief events. Alternatively
you can decrease the refresh interval for this window in the
configuration though having too frequently refreshing may impact
on performance.
Below the status is a list of recent events that have occurred, by
default this is a listing of just the last 10 but clicking on
'All' will give you a full list and 'Archive' will take you to
the event archive for this monitor, more on this later. Clicking
on any of the column headings will sort the events appropriately.
From here you can also delete events if you wish. The events
themselves are listed with the event id, and event name (which you
can change), the time that the event occurred, the length of the
event including any preamble and postamble frames, the number of
frames comprising the event with the number that actually contain
an alarm in brackets and finally a score. This column lists the
average score per alarm frame as well as the maximum score that
any alarm frame had.
The score is an arbitrary value that essentially represents the
percentage of pixels in the zone that are in blobs divided by the
square root of the number of blobs and then divided by the size of
the zone. This gives a nominal maximum of 100 for a zone and the
totals for each zone are added together, Active zones scores are
added unchanged, Inclusive zones are halved first and Exclusive
zones are doubled. In reality values are likely to be much less
than 100 but it does give a simple indication of how major the
event was.
5.4. Filtering Events
The other columns on the main console window contain various event
totals for your monitors over the last hour, day, week and month
as well as a grand total and a total for events that you may have
archived for safekeeping. Clicking on one of these totals or on
the 'All' or 'Archive' links from the monitor window described
above will present you with a new display. This is the full event
window and contains a list of events selected according to a
filter which will also pop up in its own window. Thus if you
clicked on a 'day' total the filter will indicate that this is the
period for which events are being filtered. The event listing
window contains a similar listing to the recent events in the
monitor window. The primary differences are that the frames and
alarm frames and the score and maximum score are now broken out
into their own columns, all of which can be sorted by clicking on
the heading. Also this window will not refresh automatically,
rather only on request. Other than that, you can choose to view
events here or delete them as before.
The other window that appeared is a filter window. You can use
this window to create your own filters or to modify existing ones.
You can even save your favourite filters to re-use at a future
date. Filtering itself is fairly simple; you first choose how many
expressions you'd like your filter to contain. Changing this value
will cause the window to redraw with a corresponding row for each
expression. You then select what you want to filter on and how the
expressions relate by choosing whether they are 'and' or 'or'
relationships. For filters comprised of many expressions you will
also get the option to bracket parts of the filter to ensure you
can express it as desired.
There are several different elements to an event that you can
filter on, some of which require further explanation. These are as
follows, 'Date/Time' which must evaluate to a date and a time
together, 'Date' and 'Time' which are variants which may only
contain the relevant subsets of this, 'Weekday' which as expected
is a day of the week. All of the preceding elements take a very
flexible free format of dates and time based on the PHP strtotime
function (http://www.zend.com/manual/function.strtotime.php). This
allows values such as 'last Wednesday' etc to be entered. I
recommend acquainting yourself with this function to see what the
allowed formats are. However automated filters are run in perl and
so are parsed by the Date::Manip package. Not all date formats are
available in both so if you are saved your filter to do automatic
deletions or other tasks you should make sure that the date and
time format you use is compatible with both methods. The safest
type of format to use is '-3 day' or similar with easily parseable
numbers and units. are in England
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 its usefulness may vary. It can use either the
Berkeley MPEG encoder or the faster and new ffmpeg encoder. Either
of these will generate a short video, which will be downloaded to
your browsing machine to view. Due to the relatively slow frame
rate that ZoneMinder will capture at and the high minimum frame
rate that the Berkeley encoder uses videos created by this method
will be very quick. However when using the ffmpeg encoder,
ZoneMinder will attempt to match the duration of the video with
the duration of the event. This has the useful effect of making
the video watchable and not too quick while having the unfortunate
side effect of increasing file size and generation time. Ffmpeg in
particular has a particularly rich set of options and you can
specify during configuration which additional options you may wish
to include to suit your preferences.
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. Specifying a language here is done in the same way as
for the system default language described above.
There are also four values that define the user permissions, these
are 'stream', 'events', 'monitors' and 'system' Each can have
values of 'none', 'view' or 'edit' apart from 'stream' which has
no 'edit' setting. These values cover access to the following
areas; 'stream' defines whether a user is allowed to view the
'live' video feeds coming from the cameras. You may wish to allow
a user to view historical events only in which case this setting
should be 'none'. The 'events' setting determines whether a user
can view and modify or delete any retained historical events. The
'monitors' setting specifies whether a user can see the current
monitor settings and change them. Finally the 'system' setting
determines whether a user can view or modify the system settings
as a whole, such as options and users or controlling the running
of the system as a whole. As well as these settings there is also
a monitor ids setting that can be used for non-'system' users to
restrict them to only being able to access streams, events or
monitors for the given monitors ids as a comma separated list with
no spaces. If a user with 'monitors' edit privileges is limited to
specific monitors here they will not be able to add or delete
monitors but only change the details of those they have access to.
If a user has 'system' privileges then the 'monitors ids' setting
is ignored and has no effect.'
That's pretty much is it for the tour. You should experiment with
the various setting to get the results you think are right for
your. Naturally, letting thousands of events build up is not good
for the database or your file system so you should endeavour to
either prevent spurious events from being generated in the first
place or ensure that you housekeep them strictly.
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) - February 2004
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 the ZoneMinder FAQ at
http://www.zoneminder.com/faq.html and then the forums at
http://www.zoneminder.com/forums.html first and see if anyone has
had the same problem in the past. If not then feel free to get in
touch and I'll see if I can suggest something else. The best
places to look for errors are in the system error log (normally
/var/log/messages on RedHat), the ZoneMinder logs, and the web
server log (/var/log/httpd/error_log unless otherwise defined).
There should be something in one of those that gives you some kind
of tip off.
Some things to check.
o Device configuration. If you can't get your cameras to work
in ZoneMinder, firstly make sure that you have the correct
settings. Use xawtv or something like that to check for settings
that work and then run zmu -d <device_no> -q -v to get the
settings. If you can't get them to work with that then the
likelihood is they won't work with ZoneMinder. Also check the
system logs (usually /var/log/messages) for any video
configuration errors. If you get some and you're sure they're not
a problem then switch off ZM_STRICT_VIDEO_CONFIG in zmconfig.pl or
the 'options' tab.
o Start simple. Begin with a single monitor and single zone.
You can run the zmc capture daemon from the command line as 'zmc -
-device 0' (or whatever your video device is). If it returns
immediately there's a problem so check the logs, if it stays up
then your video configuration is probably ok. To get more
information out of it use debug as specified below. Also check
that the shared memory segment has been created by doing 'ipcs -
m'. Finally, beware of doing tests as root and then trying to run
as another user as some files may not be accessible. If you're
checking things as root make sure that you clean up afterwards!
o Web server. Ensure that your web server can serve PHP files.
It's also possible that your php.ini file may have some settings
which break ZoneMinder, I'm not a PHP guru but setting safe mode
may prevent your PHP files from running certain programs. You may
have to set configuration to allow this. Also since the daemons
are started by your web server, if it dies or is shut down then
the daemons may disappear. In this version the daemons are run
under the control of a script which should trap expected signals
but it is possible this doesn't cover all circumstances.
o One of the more common errors you can see in the log files is
of the form 'Can't shmget: Invalid argument'. Generally speaking
this is caused by an attempt to allocate an amount of shared
memory greater than your system can handle. The size it requests
is base on the following formula, ring buffer size x image width x
image height x 3 (for 24 bits images) + a bit of overhead. So if
for instance you were using 24bit 640x480 then this would come to
about 92Mb if you are using the default buffer size of 100. If
this is too large then you can either reduce the image or buffer
sizes or increase the maximum amount of shared memory available.
If you are using RedHat then you can get details on how to change
these settings at http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/database/RHDB-
2.1-Manual/admin_user/kernel-resources.html
o You should be able to use a similar procedure with other
distributions to modify the shared memory pool without kernel
recompilations though in some cases this may be necessary. Note,
this error also sometime occurs if you have an old shared memory
segment lying around from a previous run that is too small. Use
the ipcs and ipcrm system commands to check and remove it if
necessary.
o If you get odd javascript errors and your web console or
other screens come up with bits missing then it's possible that
there is a problem with the PHP configuration. Since version 0.9.8
ZoneMinder has used short PHP open tags to output information, so
instead of something like this '<?php echo $value ?>', it will be
something like this '<?= $value ?>' which is easier and quicker to
write as well as being neater. More information about this
directive can be seen at the following location,
http://www.php.net/manual/en/configuration.directives.php#ini.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 will correct the problem. However in some
cases you may have explicitly switched it off, so that XML
compliant documents can be more easily served, or you may even not
have permission to edit the file. In this case you can go into the
web directory of ZoneMinder and run 'sh retag.sh' which will
replace all the short open tags in the files themselves with the
longer variant. You will obviously have to remember to do this for
each subsequent version of ZoneMinder that you install as well.
o Use debug. ZoneMinder has various debug in it that by default
will go into your system log (via syslog). These will be of the
form of
"Sep 14 14:50:11 localhost zma-0[1975]: INF [Front: 221000 -
Processing at 4.26 fps ]"
where the zma-0 part identifies the daemon and the device it
is running on. Entries with INF in are informational and not
an error, if you see ERR then it is one, though not all are
fatal. You can prevent this information from being emitted by
setting the ZM_DBG_LEVEL_zmc environment variable to -1 or
less once things are working. If you want to run any of the
daemons from the command line to test, setting ZM_DBG_PRINT
to 1 will output the debug on the console. You can also use
the USR1 and USR2 signals to increase or decrease the amount
of debug being emitted.
o Paths. I admit it, the various paths in ZoneMinder can be bit
of a nightmare. Make sure that they are all correct and that
permissions are such that the various parts of ZoneMinder can
actually run.
o Missing perl modules. There are various perl modules used by
the various scripts. If you get errors about missing ones, the
easiest way to install them is to type the following (you will
probably need to be root),
perl -MCPAN -eshell
this will then (eventually, after some configuration if it's
your first time) present you with a prompt. From there you
can type install module, e.g. Archive::Zip and the rest
should be more or less automatic as it will chase any
dependencies for you. There may be some initial configuration
questions it might ask you on startup if you've never run it
before and to speed things up I would not install a new
Bundle at this point (it can end up building you a whole new
perl if you're not careful) if it asks you but everything
else should be quite straightforward.
o Unsupported palettes. ZoneMinder currently is designed to use
the simple palettes of greyscale and 24 bit as well as now the
YUV420P and some other palettes. This should cover most cameras
but it's possible that there are ones out there that might want to
use more esoteric formats that ZoneMinder doesn't support. This
will often show up as the capture daemon being unable to set
picture attributes. If this occurs try using different palettes
starting with greyscale and if you can't get anything to work let
me know and I'll try and add it.
o USB bus problems. If you have multiple USB cameras on one bus
then it can appear as if ZoneMinder is causing your cameras to
fail. This is because the bandwidth available to cameras is
limited by the fairly low USB speed. In order to use more than one
USB camera with ZoneMinder (or any application) you will need to
inform the driver that there are other cameras requiring
bandwidth. This is usually done with a simple module option.
Examples are usb_alt=<n> for the OV511 driver and cams=<n> for
CPIA etc. Check your driver documentation for more details. Be
aware however that sharing cameras in this way on one bus will
also limit the capture rate due to the reduced bandwidth.
o Incorrect libjpeg.a detection. It seems to be the case that
in some cases the library file libjpeg.a is reported as missing
even when apparently present. This appears to actually be down to
the g++ compiler not being installed on the host system. Since
ZoneMinder contains both C++ and C files you need to be able to
compile both of these file types and so usually need to ensure you
have gcc and g++ installed (though they are often the same
binary).
o Httpd and zms memory leaks. It has been reported by some
users with RedHat 9 that the zms process fails to terminate
correctly when the controlled window is killed and also that it,
and it's associated httpd process, continue to grow in memory size
until they kill the system. This appears to be a bug in early
versions of apache 2. On other systems it may appear that zms is
leaking and growing. However what grows is the total and shared
memory size while the non-shared memory size stays constant. It's
a little odd but I think what it happening is that as zms picks
images out of the shared memory ring buffer to display, as each
slot is read the size of that bit of memory is added to the shared
memory total for the process. As streamed images are not read
consecutively it's a semi-random process so initially most of the
buffer slots are new and the shared memory size grows then as time
goes on the remaining unaccessed slots reduce until once all have
been read the shared memory use caps out at the same size as the
actual segment. This is what I would have expected it to be in the
first place, but it seems to do it incrementally. Then once this
total is hit it grows no further. As it's shared memory anyway and
already in use this apparent leak is not consuming any more memory
than when it started.
o Cambozola. There appears to be an issue with recent versions
of Cambozola that causes image corruption in the stream. If you
are getting this then I suggest you stick with version 0.22 which
is available from the Downloads section of www.zoneminder.com.
Also, if you are using IE under Windows and get lots of annoying
clicks when various windows refresh then you'll need to edit your
registry and remove the value for
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\AppEvents\Schemes\Apps\Explorer\Navigating\.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 1.18.0
Major optimisations, important new features and some bugfixes.
o Optimisations and Performance Improvements. This release
contains several major performance improvements in various areas.
The first of these is that image processing for YUV style input
formats are now pretty much handled at almost the same speed as
native RGB formats. As this is what the capture daemons spend most
of their time doing, the improvement helps reduce the amount of
CPU time by a significant degree. Application of these changes
also highlighted a bug that had existed previously in YUV
conversion which caused incorrect conversions for certain values.
The other two main areas of optimisation are in the Blend and
Delta image functions. Normally when doing motion detection the
analysis daemons spend about 99% of their time comparing a
captured image with the reference image and then blending the two
ready for the next capture. Both of these functions have been
significantly improved. In previous versions there were two
options for calculating image deltas (or differences), a simple
RGB average and a Y channel calculation. Historically the RGB one
was faster however with the optimisations the Y channel
calculation (which is more accurate) is now 15-20% faster and so
has become the default though you can select either method by the
ZM_Y_IMAGE_DELTAS configuration option. A new method of image
blending has also been added which is up to 6 times faster than
the old one which is retained for compatibility and because in
some unusual circumstances it may still be more accurate (see the
ZM_FAST_IMAGE_BLENDS option for details). Altogether these
optimisations (along with other common sense ones such as not
maintaining a reference image in 'Record' mode where it is not
used) significantly reduce the CPU load for most systems,
especially when alarms are not in progress. If an alarm is
detected then a lot of file system and database activity takes
place which is limited by the speed of these resources so the gain
will not be as much.
o Remote Authentication. This document has previously indicated
that basic authentication for network cameras could be used by
entering a hostname of the form of <user>:<pass>@<hostname>. This
was not actually the case as the relevant authentication header
was never sent. This is now fixed and addresses of this form can
now be used.
o Filter Date Parsing. The zmfilter.pl date parsing now
correctly reports when dates or times which it cannot parse are
used.
o Monitor Independent Filters. Previously filters were closely
tied to a monitor and a new filter had to be created for each
monitor. This has now changed and filters can now specify an
associated monitor in the same was as other parameters. Links have
now been added to the main console view to allow you to view lists
of events from all monitors in one and saved filters can now
affected as many or as few monitors as you wish..
o New Filter Operators. Two new filter operators and their
inverse have been added. You can now indicate whether a value is
in a set of other values, for example 'cat' is in the set of 'cat,
dog, cow, horse'. You can also use regular expressions so 'cat'
matches '^c.*'. The 'not in set' and 'not matches' operators are
also available.
o Additional Scales. Enhancements to the scaling algorithm mean
that non binary scales are now just as easy to apply, thus new
scales such as 0.75x have been added. Others can be easily
included if necessary.
o Montage Sizing. The montage view allows you to view all of
your active cameras in one window. However if your cameras are
different sizes then this becomes very untidy. You can now
constrain the image size of each monitor in this view to a fixed
size with the ZM_WEB_MONTAGE_WIDTH and ZM_WEB_MONTAGE_HEIGHT
configuration options. Monitor images will be enlarged or reduced
as necessary.
o Compact Montage. The traditional montage view includes
individual small menus for each monitor and a status display. This
results in a somewhat cluttered display and the refreshing of the
status displays may generate more accesses than desirable. Using
the ZM_WEB_COMPACT_MONTAGE configuration option allows this
montage view to only include the monitor streams and one overall
menu bar with no status displays.
o Monitor Name Constraint. The name given to a monitor is used
in file paths and several other areas. Thus it is important that
it follows certain conventions but up until this release these
names were unrestricted. The monitor form now limits monitor names
to alphanumeric characters plus hyphen and underscore.
o Timestamp Change. Traditionally ZoneMinder has time-stamped
each image as it is captured. This ensures that all images have
their capture time recorded immediately. However there are several
side-effects which may be undesirable. Firstly the time and
resource is spent time-stamping images that are not recorded and
which are discarded, secondly the timestamp is included in any
motion detection and may potentially trigger an alarm if detection
parameters are very sensitive. The third effect is that as the
timestamp is added to the image at it's native resolution, if the
image is scaled then the timestamp is scaled also. This may not be
a problem for enlargement but if the image size is reduced then it
may become illegible. This version now allows you, via the
ZM_TIMESTAMP_ON_CAPTURE configuration option, to indicate whether
the timestamps should be added on capture, as before, or only
added when the image is viewed or recorded. Setting it to this
later value allows timestamps to be added to scaled images. This
is little performance impact either way.
o Scaleable Stills View. The stills view of a monitor (when
streaming is not available or desired) is now scaleable in the
same way as the streamed view.
o Double Buffered Stills View. The stills view has now been
restructured to allow a double buffering approach. Thus a new
image is loaded in the background and only written to screen when
complete. This removes the refresh flicker that means that the
screen blanks periodically however uses more JavaScript so may not
be suitable for all platforms. Whether ZoneMinder uses double
buffering or not is controlled by the ZM_WEB_DOUBLE_BUFFER
configuration option.
o Fixed Length Event Bug. A bug was reported whereby the fixed
length events that could be specified for use in Record or Mocord
mode could sometimes result in events a multiple of that length.
So events that were meant to be 15 minutes long could sometimes be
30 or even 45 minutes. This was especially the case with monitors
that had low frame rates. This is now fixed.
7.2. Release 1.17.2
Minor features, bug fixes and additional languages.
o Pending Process Bug. A bug was found whereby a process that
was scheduled to be started in the future (due to repeated
failures) would drop out of the pending queue if a further
explicit restart was attempted. This is now fixed.
o Strsignal Function. The strsignal function was included from
version 1.17.1 however this is not ubiquitous on all
distributions. The existence of this function is now tested for by
the configure script and it is not used if not present.
o Add Max Alarm Threshold. Previously the alarm threshold
(which is the amount a pixel has to differ from it's counterpart
in the reference image) existed only in a 'minimum' form meaning
pixels that were more different matched. A maximum has now been
added to assist in screening out large changes in brightness. In
addition to this a number of new consistency checks have been
added to the zone definition form to try and prevent bogus or
invalid settings.
o Diagnostic Zone Images. A regularly requested feature is that
of adding extra information to allow diagnostics of the process of
image detection. This has previously been somewhat hit and miss
but in this version a new configuration option
ZM_RECORD_DIAG_IMAGES has been included to allow this. This option
will generate several images for each captured frame in an alarm
including each reference image and a series of images containing
the image differences at various stages in the process. It is not
possible to record these for the image prior to an alarm but those
following it are included and should assist in tuning the zones to
provide optimal motion detection.
o Event Images Renamed. The capture and analysis images
recorded during an event have been renamed from capture-???.jpg to
???-capture, and from analyse-???.jpg to ???-analyse.jpg. This is
to allow all images (including diagnostic ones) to be associated
with the frame sequence number more easily. This means that old
events will no longer be able to be viewed as the wrong image will
be being searched for. To avoid this you can use the new
'zmupdate.pl' utility to rename all your old images by doing 'perl
zmupdate.pl -r' as an appropriately privileged or root user.
o Version checking. ZoneMinder will now optionally check for
new versions of itself at zoneminder.com. This is done with a
simple http get and no personal information otherwise than your
current version of ZoneMinder is transmitted or recorded. If new
versions are found you may be alerted of them via the web
interface. This is an initial step towards enhancing and
automating the upgrade process.
o Force Java. Previously ZoneMinder could be forced to override
it's detection of browser capabilities to prevent the Cambozola
Java applet being used. However sometimes the opposite effect was
desired and using the applet was preferred to native image
handling. This has now been made possible by making the
ZM_CAN_STREAM option tri-state allowing 'auto', 'yes' or 'no' to
be used to provide all alternatives.
o Alarms Cleared on Exit. In previous versions if an alarm was
present when the analysis daemon (zma) exited the alarm would
remain flagged. This had little effect except if the monitor was
being watched however it was a bit annoying so any alarm flag is
now cleared when this daemon exits.
o New Languages. Translations for Japanese (ja_jp), French
(fr_fr) and Russian (ru_ru) are now included.
7.3. Release 1.17.1
Bugfixes and additional languages.
o Login Bug. A bug was identified whereby an unauthorised user
could gain access to the console view of ZoneMinder. This was the
only view available and no access to any camera views or
configuration was possible. This bug is now fixed.
o New Languages. Two new language files were added. These allow
ZoneMinder to use the German (de_de) and Polish (pl_pl) languages.
o Language File Format. The format of the language file was
changed to allow the specification of character set and locale as
well as have more flexibility in the calculation of plural forms.
o Option Language. The prompts and help text for the options is
now also available for translation. A guide is included in the
language file to allow this if necessary. Currently language
translations exclude the options settings as this is a rarely
accessed area and contains a great deal of text. The new format
allows individual options to be translated piecemeal as the
opportunity arises.
7.4. 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.
7.5. Release 0.9.16
Major usability enhancement and fixes.
o Run States. Instead of the old 'start/stop' links the current
system state is now a link which takes you to a dialog which
allows you to start, restart or stop the system. You can also save
the current run state which basically takes a snapshot of the
current monitor functions and saves that. You can then reselect
that state later which basically involves resetting the monitors
to have these saved functions and then doing a system restart.
o New Monitor Functions. Instead of Passive, Active, and X10,
the modes are now Monitor (= old Passive) which just allows you to
watch the feed, Modect (= old Active) which is MOtion DetECT and
which will capture events as previously, Record which continuously
records with no analysis and MoCord which is a hybrid of Modect
and Record and which will continuously record but also do motion
detection and highlight where this has occurred. The Record and
Mocord functions both records events whose length in seconds is
defined by the 'Section Length' monitor attribute. You can
additionally specify a 'Frame Skip' value to tell it to not record
'n' frames at a time, when not alarmed.
o X10 Function removed. The X10 mode has been removed and
replaced by an indication of whether the monitor is 'continuous'
or 'triggered'. This basically just indicates whether it may be
controlled outside of zmdc and zmpkg. Additionally the X10
triggers may now be specified in an X10 section. This has changed
to allow for other types of triggers to be added more easily.
o Paginated Event listings. The event listings are paginated by
default. You can list all of the events if you like by choosing
the appropriate option. There are shortcuts to pages of events at
the top of the listing. If these produce strange looking sequences
like 1,2, 3, 5, 9, 17, 37 etc this is deliberate and uses an
exponential algorithm intended to allow you to quickly navigate
through the list to a particular page in the minimum number of
clicks.
o Scaleable Streams. Event and monitor streams can now be
scaled to a certain extent allowing you to view at a different
resolution than that captured. This area may be somewhat
incomplete especially in terms of monitoring at a higher screen
size where the frame is not adjusted properly.
o Variable Frame Rates. Event streams can now be viewed at
various rates allowing faster review (if your bandwidth allows) to
long events, or slower for more precision.
o Scaleable/Variable MPEG generation. Generation of MPEG videos
now also allows you to specify the scale relative to the original
image and also the frame rate. Again, for long events captured in
the perpetual recording modes this will allow a faster review of
the period the event covers.
o Tabbed Monitor options. Specification and modification of
monitors is now in a tabbed form for easier navigation.
o Additional stream headers. The stream headers have been
changed to hopefully ensure that they are less likely to be
cached.
o Maximum process restart delay. zmdc.pl now has an upper limit
(15 minutes) to the time it waits before restarting continuously
crashing processes.
o Intelligent Module inclusion. zmfilter.pl now includes
Archive::Zip and other modules on an as needed basis so won't
complain about them being missing unless they have been explicitly
configured to be used.
o Adaptive Watchdog. zmwatch now more adaptive to actual frame
rates.
o Fixed zmfilter CPU sucking bug. zmfilter.pl will now restart
on failure to read shared memory. Previously this could go into a
nasty CPU sucking loop!
o New zmconfig options. zmconfig.pl has a new option to run
with no database if necessary
o File reorganisation. Various administrative file changes and
reorganisations.
o Compiler warnings. Various tweaks and modifications to reduce
compiler and memory warnings.
o SQL Buffer size. Increased SQL buffer size to cope with large
pre-event buffers, plus a couple of other buffers have been
enlarged.
o Incorrect Frame time offsets. The time offsets in alarmed
frames were incorrect and based on the time of storage rather than
capture. This gave the impression that there was a delay after the
first alarmed frame and messed up some streaming timings. This has
been fixed.
o Event Frame listing. You can now view details of the frames
captured such as their time and score etc by clicking on the
scores in the events views.
o Refined shared memory handling. Fixed zmfilter, zmwatch and
zmx10 to allow zero as a valid shared memory id to allow them to
keep on working if the segment has been marked for deletion
o Frame daemon stability. Changed image buffer in zmf to be
static rather than dynamic. This has made zmf much more stable.
o MPEG overwrite option. Fixed the 'Overwrite' checkbox in
video generation to actually overwrite the video. Modded the page
slightly also.
o Daemon control improved. Changing between monitor functions,
e.g. Modect, Mocord etc now restarts the correct daemons.
o Improved time based filters. Filters that include time based
clauses now get executed regardless of whether new events are
being generated.
o Audit daemon started unconditionally. zmaudit is now started
regardless of the setting of FAST_DELETES as zmfilter depends on
it being there.
o Filtering more active. zmfilter is now started in 'Monitor'
mode. It does not run in when monitors are completely off however.
o Stills paged. The stills view of events is now paginated for
easier navigation.
o Archive images optional. Normally when an alarm is detected a
set of raw images is saved along with a mirror set of images
containing motion highlighting. This second set can now optionally
be disabled.
o Settings in auth mode. Control of camera brightness, contrast
etc did not previously work when running in authorised mode. This
is now fixed.
o zms parameter bug fixed. The streaming server incorrectly
parsed and assigned one of it's arguments. This is now fixed.
o zmu brighness bug. Previously camera brightness was not
correctly parsed from command line options passed to zmu.
o Event window width variable. Event windows now scale to fit
the event image size.
7.6. 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.
7.7. 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.
7.8. Release 0.9.13
Beta version of several features and fixes, never generally
released.
o Following a number of requests the .sock file directory is
now configurable in zmconfig.
o Changed some of the core video calls to be V4L2 compatible.
This primarily involved opening the video devices and memory maps
as read/write and not just read-only.
o Shared memory has now been rationalised to prevent some
common problems. Remember to shutdown the whole ZM package before
installing, from this version on it will remove all old shared
memory segments.
o Fixed not numeric comparison in zmwatch which was causing, or
appeared to be causing, some errors.
o Fixed zone image map bug for percentage zones. When you had
defined a zone in percentage terms, the image map used to select
it for editing was broken. This is now fixed.
o New contrast/brightness etc adjustments feature. This
accessible from the Settings link on the monitor window. It's
fairly basic at present but should work for most types of cameras.
If you have any device or driver specific auto-brightness, auto-
contrast etc enabled the changes you make may appear to work but
may be overridden by the auto feature immediately so check for
that if your changes do not appear to be having an effect. Also if
you have a number of cameras being multiplexed onto one device
then any changes here will probably affect all your cameras.
o Some redundant window scrollbars removed.
o Added user and access control. If enabled in config
(ZM_OPT_USE_AUTH) then you will need to define and login as ZM
users. There will be one users already defined, with username
'admin' and password 'admin'. This user is defined will full
permissions and clicking on the 'Options' link from the main
console window will allow you to modify and create users with
various permission sets which hopefully will satisfy most
requirements. These users (except any defined with 'system' edit
capability) can be restricted to certain cameras by adding the
monitor ids as a comma-separated list (no spaces) to the
appropriate field. Users limited to specific monitors may not
create or delete monitors even if defined with monitor edit
permissions.
o Some windows now (optionally) use a JavaScript timeout to
refresh themselves rather than a refresh header. Since refresh
headers were interrupted if a link of the page was linked there
were previously various forced refreshes from child windows to
restart the refresh process. By using JS refresh timers which are
not interrupted these extraneous refreshes have been mostly
eliminated.
7.9. 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.
7.10. 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!
7.11. 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.
7.12. 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.
7.13. 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.
7.14. 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...
7.15. 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 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.
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