To keep cities safe, operators and law enforcement rely on video surveillance to detect and investigate theft, burglary, gang violence, drug dealing, and other crimes. As the number of network cameras and sensors deployed across the city increases, there is a need for a suitable video management software (VMS) to support these devices and present the data they produce in a way that is understandable and meaningful to operators.
The following is a list of features required for a good and efficient video surveillance VMS.
Scalability
When implementing a city surveillance project, it is likely that the user will want to add more network cameras over time. Therefore, scalability is of great importance. The installed systems should be able to accommodate a large number of network cameras and devices. It should be easy to expand a project, so it should be possible to add network cameras and servers easily and efficiently.
Integration and Consolidation
In addition to video management, video management software (VMS) also manages data received from access control systems, intrusion alarms, and systems from other brands and manufacturers; therefore, the software should allow interoperability between these devices. This makes the open platform discussion important. Many users certainly prefer the open platform feature, because this way they can buy the best products and get everything they want, from anywhere they want.
Another important point is the flexibility of VMS, which allows it to work with existing systems. Many cities have legacy devices and wiring infrastructure. In order for cities to capitalize on their investment in legacy systems, installers should always be asked to “use what’s left over as much as possible.” The VMS system should be flexible and open enough to meet these expectations.
Usability
Keeping the user interface simple is of utmost importance. If the user interface is simple, even operators without IT skills can learn the software in a short time. The main customer applications such as desktop, web and mobile should be usable quickly and on the first encounter of the user with the software. Advanced features should be reserved for admins, and standard user features should focus on three things: playing and displaying recorded video, responding to system alerts and quickly finding the desired video.
Intelligence
With the number of network cameras exceeding a thousand, it will be difficult for operators to constantly monitor and review this huge volume of video files. This is where intelligence comes into play. As systems grow larger, there is no choice but to find a way to detect related events, and for this, the old way of viewing videos by employees cannot be used. In these cases, the integration of video intelligence plays a prominent role, and this is where analytics comes in. Therefore, in addition to built-in or fixed analytics, the VMS software must also provide a user interface for interacting with new and additional analytics.
Reliability and other features
A failover mechanism is required so that if the main device fails to record, the VMS software can force the other device to work. It does not matter what the disturbance or failure is, what is important is to maintain live and continuous recording continuously. In the event of a video recording manager failure, the network cameras start recording individually. In the event of a primary memory failure, the secondary memory starts working. In the event of a network camera internet outage, the SD card stores the recorded file.
System maintainability and upgradeability is another important feature. The VMS software should allow operators to upgrade the entire system. It should be possible to update all devices in the system with just one click, without the installer having to visit each system to update them one by one.
Taken from a&s magazine