ZoneMinder 1.22.0 Released

[zoneminder]

I'm pleased to announce that ZoneMinder version 1.22.0 has been fully released today.

This release features some major new features as well as considerable architectural rework.

Key new features in this release include the facility for zones to be defined as being just about any shape, the addition of a number of presets to aid in monitor and zone configuration, detection of signal loss on local cameras and improvements to automatic filtering and many more.

The architectural changes mostly revolve around the extraction of a substantial portions of the script functionality into perl modules, allowing more efficient functonality sharing and providing the facility for ZoneMinder integration into other scripts just by including the modules. As well as this the configuration process has been simplified and the zmconfig.pl script is no more. This should make configuration and installation much easier. Finally, logging has been enhanced in the scripts and it is now possible to configure a consolidated log for all ZoneMinder components. Please read the Troubleshooting section of the README for further details on configuring this feature.

Full details of the changes (and there are a lot!) are described below (taken from the README) :-

o FEATURE – Zones can now be (virtually) any shape of polygon. This means that triangular, octagonal, duo decahedrons etc are now supported. The only exceptions to this are self-intersecting shapes which will be flagged. This adds a lot more flexibility to the definition of zones. Zones can be drawn semi-interactively.

o FEATURE – Certain preset zones settings are now supplied to allow quicker configuration of zones. These are intended to be a guide only, and not definitive settings but form a useful starting point.

o FEATURE – The zmpkg.pl scripts now attempts to determine the supported syntax of the ‘su’ command so it should work even with distributions like Slackware that don’t support the –shell option. Previously this required a hand edit.

o FEATURE – Some common perl functionality has been moved to perl modules which have been included. This also allows other scripts to use the ZoneMinder modules to create additional functionality particularly in the area of triggering. All scripts have been converted to use these modules.

o FEATURE – A (small currently) number of monitor presets have been added to the monitor configuration view. This allows quicker initial configuration of certain (mostly network) cameras without having to know all the paths. Contributions detailing other cameras will be gratefully accepted.

o FEATURE – Signal loss on locally attached video sources is now detected. This will create a short Signal Lost event on signal loss, followed by a Signal Reacquired event when it comes back. While the signal is lost no recording will take place in any mode.

o FEATURE – The zmtrigger.pl script has been completed revamped to support both incoming and outgoing triggers. Certain example triggers and connections have been included in the trigger modules but this is intended to be an example only and to provide a basis for users to customise and add their own functionality. Users will also be able to contribute modules tailored to specific external systems.

o FEATURE – More configuration has been moved to the zm.conf file. All components now use this file for initial configuration. Scripts may also use a local copy, in the same directory, to allow overrides etc.

o FEATURE – The zmconfig.pl script is no more! Building now only requires the ‘configure’ step and then make etc. Database parameters can be supplied to the configure script.

o FEATURE – The configure script now includes more system compatibility checking including checks for required and optional perl modules.

o FEATURE – Generation and management of thumbnail images is now improved. Thumbnail images (and any that are not directly created for the event) are now stored in the images directory under the web root, where zmaudit will periodically remove them.

o FEATURE – All libjpeg output is now trapped and handled as regular format debug.

o FEATURE – Some jpeg data is cached on first use instead of being regenerated each time. This should speed up jpeg handling to some degree.

o FEATURE – Event data can be optionally saved to COM fields in the jpeg file header.

o FEATURE – A system summary command has been added to zmu.

o FEATURE – Filtering can now be done on the event id field.

o FEATURE – Filtering can now be done on the event description field.

o FEATURE – The ‘check all’ on event lists etc is now a toggle checkbox.

o FEATURE – In Mocord mode, events can now be forced to close when the event has reached the section length even if an alarm is in progress. Previously this would have resulted in an extended event.

o FEATURE – The ‘groups’ view has been overhauled and rationalised.

o FEATURE – A default event replay rate has been added.

o FEATURE – Videos can now be created from filters.

o FEATURE – Added tokens for event cause (%EC%) and description (%ED%) for filter generated emails. The %ED% token was previously used for event length, this has now changed to %EL%. You will need to update any filters that use this token to use the new value.

o FEATURE – There is now a separate auto-execute checkbox from filters to allow definition of a script but not execution if this is not desired.

o FEATURE – When filters are loaded, a hint appears to indicate what automatic function options they have been saved with.

o FEATURE – Improved the behaviour of the automatic PTZ stop feature when using Pelco type PTZ cameras.

o FEATURE – The configure script now allows an option to compile all debug out from the binaries.

o FEATURE – The configure script now takes a generic ‘extra libs’ option to allow specification of any extra libraries that may be required for compilation due to additional ffmpeg options etc. The mp3lame option has been removed.

o FEATURE – Mime support for streaming has been enhanced to allow easy configuration of additional formats of data streaming. The streaming daemons themselves have also been improved to support the generation of other stream formats.

o FEATURE – The handling of video viewing via the ‘video’ view has been improved to allow embedded viewing of videos as well as easy saving locally.

o FEATURE – The alarm sound that can be configured to play when viewing a monitor with a current alarm has now been improved to not depend on the refreshing of the status which resulted in clipped audio.

o FEATURE – Script debug now follows the same format as all debug and uses the syslog facility. This means that all important messages go into the /var/log/messages file (or equivalent). This can be modified by redirecting the local1 facility in syslog.conf to go elsewhere, or be ignored, if so desired.

o FEATURE – A new raw streaming format has been added for live monitor streams. This produces a low cpu impact raw rgb feed.

o FEATURE – A zm.pid file is now placed in /var/run/zm when ZoneMinder is running, and removed when stopped. This can be used by other elements to check the status of ZoneMinder. The pid in the file is that of the master zmdc.pl server instance.

o FEATURE – The continuous/triggered settings for monitors have now been removed. They have been replaced by an Enabled flag that indicates whether a monitor is actually doing the task assigned to it. This can be used by scripts to disable or enable monitors depending on external triggers without having to change the Function or start and stop daemons. The state of this flag is now saved in ‘run states’ to allow ZoneMinder to be started with some monitors initially disabled.

o FEATURE – Restructured zmfilter.pl to better handle filters and ensure that auto functions are performed in a logical sequence (e.g. not deleted before being archived).

o FEATURE – Added link to Zones configuration to the live watch view.

o FEATURE – The event link in the xHTML interface now goes somewhere useful.

o FEATURE – Reformatted a number of xHTML views to use tables for better layout.

o FEATURE – The default reference image blend percentage has been changed to 7% to persist events slightly longer.

o FEATURE – The monitor configuration view has been re-organised slightly and some fields have moved between tabs.

o FEATURE – When motion is detected the centre of the region of motion is written to shared memory, where is can be used for tracking. This can now optionally be a simple median of the motion extents or (in blob mode) a weighted centre for better location of irregularly shaped events.

o FEATURE – Added event progress and navigation bar to event view (currently not on IE). This allows partial replay of events and an indication of how far through the event it is. This is off by default for low bandwidth settings as the image replay tends not to be able to keep up.

o FEATURE – Added --with-libarch to configure for 64 bit builds. This allows an alternative library path to be specified for 64 bit versions of system libraries.

o FEATURE – Made zmaudit optional and with a configurable delay. Systems with large numbers of events may wish to turn zmaudit off and run manually at off peak hours or increase the execution interval.

o FEATURE – All logging now done via Debug.pm. This helps bring script logging more into line with that in the binaries. The process is not yet complete however.

o FEATURE – Language selection now a dropdown showing available languages.

o FEATURE – The zmcontrol-kx-hcm10.pl script has been renamed to the more generic zmcontrol-panasonic-ip.pl script as it should work with all Panasonic IP cameras.

o FEATURE – Added PTZ control script for Neu-Fusion NCS370 IP cameras.

o FIX – The zms script has been corrected to accept any authentication method regardless of what has been configured to be used.

o FIX – The zmc processes now exit if any 4xx error is reported from remote network image sources.

o FIX – The experimental zmtrack.pl script was broken and didn’t work. This has now been corrected.

o FIX – Versions 0.4.8, 0.4.9-pre1 and CVS ffmpeg are now supported correctly.

o FIX – A problem with event statistics not always being output was fixed.

o FIX – A problem with the JPEG file quality setting being ignored was fixed.

o FIX – A problem with brackets in filters has been fixed.

o FIX – The console view previously could spawn instances of zmdc.pl when ZM wasn’t running. This has now been corrected.

o FIX – The console view has been optimised to speed up display by up to a factor of ten.

o FIX – Scaling of stills event views has now been rationalised to not ever be smaller than 100% as the image is always sent at at least this resolution.

o FIX – A problem with zmaudit.pl mishandling recovered events has been fixed.

o FIX – Fixed number of minor memory access issues.

o FIX – Fixed ‘undefined pid’ error in zmdc.pl.

o FIX – Changed a bunch of Info calls to Debug to reduce log clutter.

o FIX – Fixed a couple of problems with the authentication relay methods in zms.

o FIX – Fixed issue with control permissions whereby a user also needed monitor edit permissions to be able to control a monitor.

o FIX – Logs created by root are chowned to web user to help prevent permission issues.

o FIX – Problems with different type sizes when accessing shared memory on 64 bit systems have been fixed.

o FIX – The zmvideo script now quotes filenames correctly and so won't die if they have unusual characters in them.

o FIX – Fixed issue with streaming events with out of sequence frames causing immense timeouts.

o FIX – Most mysql queries in the web interface did not have their result resources freed. This was untidy but generally did not have any deleterious consequences. However all queries are now properly freed.

o FIX – Password handling in the user configuration form was a bit ugly. This has been tidied up.

o FIX – Some configuration has had default values changed.

o LANGUAGE – A Czech translation has been included.