Home » Magazine Archives » November 2006
Magazine Supplement
Most Read
Most Emailed
E-mail Article
Print Article
Intelligent Video: Ready or Not?
SecurityNet integrators test and review intelligent video products.
By Jim Coleman and SecurityNET
Intelligent video is a hot buzzword for a technology encompassing a wide range of functionality for the security industry. It includes facial recognition, object tracking, identification and counting, along with a rapidly expanding library of other specialized cognitions such as objects left behind or removed, wrong-way motion and a host of motion detection tasks.
Every major manufacturer of video equipment is doing or is planning to do something with intelligent video (IV). Whether built into the camera, an edge encoder, a DVR, an NVR or a stand-alone box, IV functionality is on virtually everyone's strategic roadmap. Many manufacturers are partnering with players specializing in IV. Other manufacturers are planning to leverage R&D efforts within their parent corporations as a go-to-market strategy. Still others are developing IV skills in-house or purchasing established IV companies as a path to this emerging marketplace.
The secret behind IV resides in the algorithms that are used to extract useful information from a constant stream of digital video. The original development of intelligent video algorithms was sponsored by national governments and first used in military and defense applications. Early commercial experiences were expensive and acquired a reputation for needing a lot of tweaking to realize reasonably reliable performance.
The bulk of the heavy lifting needed for IV is in analyzing the raw video pixels to garner target information. An added challenge is the need to ignore environmental conditions like shadows created by clouds, a setting sun shining through wind-blown tree limbs, lightning flashes or car headlights sweeping across a field of view at night. Such are the pesky real-world challenges that keep the designers of IV up late at night.
But intelligent video is here to stay. As costs come down and product features are refined, applications will emerge that present compelling business cases to push IV across the chasm to the “majority market” adoption stages. That journey will present both risk and reward to those with the vision to take the ride.
To help make that journey a little easier for you, SecurityNet, a network of North America 's top systems integrators, has tested 13 of the leading IV offerings to give you a quick, clear sense of what each one can do.
Some manufacturers on our contact list elected not to participate in the evaluations, and some others were unable to provide equipment for testing in a timely manner. In these cases, we've provided a text review of the product from literature and prior experience, but we haven't rated the products in our matrix on pages S17–S18.
