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What is Video Analytics

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Published: 23Sep2008
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Video Analytics (VA) is one of the most rapidly growing fields of the video surveillance industry. It is also known as Intelligent Video Surveillance. Video Analytics greatly enhances the power and analytical capabilities of network camera software.

As the name suggest, the purpose of Video Analytics is to carefully analyze video surveillance footage. Most forms of VA network camera software are even able to perform these analyses in real time. The analyses can take many shapes and forms. One of the more common (and simplest) forms is that of motion detection.

Taking video from network cameras which record images in a digital format, the video analytic software examines images not just frame by frame but pixel by pixel. A pixel is the most basic unit of information contained in a digitized image or video. What might appear to be only a minor change when looking at the full picture might actually cause a major change to a group of pixels, which the software recognizes and then informs the user. Video analytics software can catch even the slightest changes in an image from frame to frame by catching differences in the information sent.

When using VA software, then, it is good to have high resolution images. The higher the resolution of the video, the more precisely the software can analyze. This is because the higher the resolution of the camera, the more pixels are used to capture the image and thus there is more information for the software to analyze.

This network camera software can also be configured to recognize and distinguish certain objects, or tell objects apart. For example, if you are monitoring a specific item your shop, you could program the software to recognize that object and notice if it should change at all or go missing. Because it can differentiate between objects, it would also be able to tell if the item were replaced with something else.

Video analytics network camera software can also be used to do things such as count people walking on a sidewalk or cars passing down a busy street. With its detailed analyzing capabilities it is able to tell people and cars apart from each other and from the background, providing accurate statistics on these occurrences.

While an important part of network camera software, video analytics is not the only part. It is used to analyze information, but the software in general can also be used for many other purposes. For example, should the VA tool pick up something unusual, such as a missing object, or motion when there should be no motion or something of that sort, it can activate alarms in the building, contact the police or other authorities and even send you an e-mail notification of the event. This is known as advanced event management and is one of the many added capabilities of network camera software which utilizes video analytics tools.

Milestone Systems is a global thought leader and developer of open platform IP network camera software. The XProtect™ platform, now including video analytics, is easy to use, robust and proven in more than 35,000 customer installations around the world. For more information, visit http://www.milestonesys.com

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