After several days researching Zoneminder, I've found the easiest route is to simply not use Zoneminder. It seems buggy and has poor documentation.
Interestingly, the package "Motion" is very similar to Zoneminder, albeit with a more primitive web interface, but works out of the box with any camera supporting a jpeg or mpeg stream. I guess I'm not going to waste any more of my time with Zoneminder.