ZoneMinder 1.38.1 Release Notes

This is a maintenance release that includes bug fixes, performance improvements, and enhancements to ZoneMinder 1.38.

Key Highlights

🎯 ONVIF Improvements

• New unified ONVIF control module - Replaces four separate vendor-specific implementations with a single, more robust module
• Automatic SSL verification fallback for cameras with self-signed certificates
• Improved clock drift handling - Configurable timestamp validity window (10-600 seconds) to handle time differences between ZoneMinder and cameras
• Better authentication - Fixes for "not authorized" errors caused by clock synchronization issues in ONVIF Event Listener
• Direct protocol testing mode - zmcontrol.pl now supports --protocol flag for testing control modules without database access
• Enhanced event listener support - Better handling of ONVIF events and subscription renewals

🚀 Performance Optimizations

• Event thread improvements - Uses condition variables instead of sleep for faster response to decoded frames
• Decoder optimizations - Better queue management and flushing when decoding is no longer needed
• Persistent blend buffer - Eliminates per-frame allocations in image blending (significant performance gain)
• Optimized pixel operations - Faster color merging and highlight detection algorithms
• Binary search for event seeking - Dramatically faster seek operations in event playback

🐛 Critical Bug Fixes

• Event naming race condition - Fixed events being renamed during recording
• Memory leaks - Fixed leaks in Event_Tag, blend operations, and hardware frame transfers
• Tag filtering - Fixed "No Tag" (0) and "Any Tag" (-1) filter logic
• Timezone handling - Proper handling of camera vs. server time zones in event streams
• SSL verification - Automatic retry without verification for Go2RTC, Janus, and ONVIF connections

🔧 Stability Improvements

• Thread safety - Fixed race conditions in analysis, decoder, and event threads
• Proper cleanup - Events now properly signal termination and wait for threads
• Better error handling - Improved handling of codec errors, network failures, and resource exhaustion
• Shared memory fixes - Correct attachment counting and cleanup

Detailed Changes

Core Engine

• Fixed decoder queue flushing when decoding mode changes
• Improved packet notification system for faster inter-thread communication
• Better handling of on-demand decoding modes (KEYFRAMES, KEYFRAMESONDEMAND)
• Fixed last_write_time updates even when not decoding to prevent monitor stall detection false positives
• Event threads now use wait_for() instead of sleep for sub-millisecond response times
• Fixed Event destructor to properly stop and join threads before cleanup

Camera Support

• FfmpegCamera: Fixed secondary stream credential application
• LocalCamera: Better error messages for missing /dev devices (systemd PrivateDevices check)
• LibVNC: Fixed memory allocation error handling
• LibVLC: Added null pointer checks before stopping player
• Added MPEG4 decoder support
• Fixed RTSP stream timeout handling

Control Systems

• AxisV2: Complete rewrite with credential guessing, binary search optimizations, and configuration get/set support
• Dahua: SSL verification with automatic fallback
• Uniview: LAPI JSON API support, configuration management, better network probing
• ONVIF: Unified module replacing vendor-specific implementations
• Reolink/TapoC520WS: Fixed brightness case sensitivity bug and missing sendCmd calls
• All control modules now support direct protocol testing mode

Web Interface & API

• Fixed tag filter SQL for special values (0 = No Tag, -1 = Any Tag)
• Better handling of Events_Tags table LEFT JOIN null comparison issues
• Improved event name updates to preserve user changes during recording

Database

• Added migration zm_update-1.38.1.sql to increase ONVIF_Options column from 64 to 255 characters
• Fixed Event_Tag constructor to handle null assigned_by values
• Async database updates in Event destructor to avoid blocking

Build System

• Minimum CMake version raised to 3.12
• Fixed include directory handling (now uses ZM_INCLUDE_DIRS list)
• Fixed ZM_STRIP_NEON definition
• Better handling of add_definitions() vs target_compile_definitions()
• Fixed Perl executable detection (${PERL_EXECUTABLE} instead of hardcoded perl)
• Removed duplicate code in CMakeLists.txt

Configuration & Logging

• Fixed zm_config.cpp whitespace trimming logic
• ConfigItem copy constructor now properly copies all fields
• Better database command detection (supports MariaDB-native commands like mariadb and mariadb-dump)
• Improved logging in multi-server configurations
• Fixed version mismatch handling in zmpkg.pl to warn instead of fatal error

Scripts & Tools

• zmcontrol.pl: New --protocol mode for direct control module testing without database
• zmupdate.pl: Uses findDbCommand() for MariaDB compatibility
• zmcamtool.pl: Uses findDbCommand() for mysqldump
• zmonvif-probe.pl: Added events command to check ONVIF event support

Miscellaneous

• Expanded MacVendors.json with many more camera vendor MAC address prefixes
• Fixed zm_buffer.h null pointer check
• Fixed numerous typos in comments and debug messages
• Better error messages throughout the codebase
• Improved AGENTS.md developer documentation

Platform-Specific Changes

RedHat/Fedora/Rocky Linux

• Updated spec file to use mariadb-connector-c-devel instead of mariadb-devel
• Added cjson-devel build dependency
• Changed to fedora:43 from fedora:rawhide in CI
• Added arp-scan and iproute dependencies
• Fixed systemd conflicts in container builds
• Added explicit paths for network tools to avoid systemd PrivateDevices issues
• Removed static library packaging per Fedora guidelines

CI/CD

• Removed obsolete CI workflows (Debian Bullseye/Bookworm, Ubuntu Focal, CentOS 8)
• Renamed package build workflows for clarity
• Updated Fedora build matrix

Upgrade Notes

1. Database Migration: Run zmupdate.pl to apply schema changes (ONVIF_Options column expansion)
2. ONVIF Users: If you have custom ONVIF control configurations, you may want to switch to the new unified "ONVIF" control type for better reliability
3. Clock Drift Issues: If experiencing ONVIF authentication failures, add timestamp_validity=120 (or higher) to ONVIF Options field
4. Control Testing: Use new zmcontrol.pl --protocol ONVIF --address user:pass@ip --command get_config for diagnostics

Contributors

This release includes contributions from the ZoneMinder development team and community members who reported bugs, tested fixes, and provided feedback.

Full Changelog: 1.38.0...1.38.1