Network Video Surveillance Systems

Analog cameras has been used most of the installation of security systems until a couple of years, but more and more IP cameras or network cameras are installed recently developed video security projects in many different countries around the world.

There is a growing deman for IP cameras in the security market. The market leader of IP camera manufacturers is Axis Communications from Sweden. Sony, Panasonic, Mobotix are the other major IP camera market sharers.

Unlike analog camera systems, when we talk about IP camera systems or network video surveillance systems, the most important part of the system is the software, video surveillance software. The software manages cameras, records video footage coming from IP cameras and has a graphical user interface for viewing live and recorded video.

The market leader of video surveillance software manufacturers is Milestone Systems from Denmark. Major IP camera manufacturers have their video recording softwares. These softwares support only their IP camera brand but not the IP cameras manufactured by the other IP camera manufacturers. So using a third party software, such as Milestone, has advantages of supporting a lot of major IP camera brands.

Some video surveillance softwares have features of recording and viewing live and recorded images, but some more sofisticated softwares have some intelligent or smart features that they can recognise humans trying to intrude a special area or a car going in the wrong direction or detect an unattended object left in a metro station for some time and raise an alarm for the security operators so that they can take immediate actions.

Smart video surveillance softwares have different features. Some have only video analytics and alarm features, but some have object recognition, classification and object catalouging for quick SQL searching of interested objects in the recorded video.

Aralia Systems from the UK has an intelligent software, called ilex, having object recognition and classification such as pedestrian, car, train or stationary objects and stores these objects in a digital catalogue, intelligent video alarm management software, called iberis, and a smart video search software, called Aster, for SQL based quick video search that is very valuable in forensic investigations. This software does continuous video recording and live object recognition, and intelligent database thinning.

iOmniscient from Australia has an intelligent software that can detect intrusion, loitering, removed objects and can count people or cars. This software records video only when an alarm raised, but not continuous recording.

ObjectVideo, Verint and Vidient are the other major market sharers of smart video surveillance software.