Megatrends in Video Surveillance - Part 3. A big advantage for organisations moving from analogue to IP video surveillance is that digital video storage is less costly and requires less space than analogue video storage. This represents significant savings for surveillance operations that need to record massive amounts of surveillance video. Casino security systems are a prime example.

Megatrend 7: Improvements in Storage Costs and Reliability

Until recently, casinos required a room full of VCRs to record the video feed from the dozens of cameras keeping an eye out for cheaters. Today, a small stack of computer servers running digital video software can replace the room full of VCRs. Running video surveillance on an IP network also enables greater archiving capabilities and storage reliability. Recorded video can be transferred over the network to off-site storage.

IP storage components also make it less expensive to increase redundant infrastructure (server and storage architecture) to provide backup storage. In general, the use of standard server and network equipment makes redundant systems and replacement considerably less expensive and time-consuming than proprietary solutions.

New innovations are making video surveillance storage options even better and more reliable. The latest installations are using Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) drives for firstday recording and Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) arrays for archiving. This improves both write performance and reliability since SCSI drives are fast and more reliable for applications that frequently write to disk, such as first-day recording.

SATA drives, though less expensive, are not designed for the frequent (24/7) writing to disk required in first-day recording. They are best deployed as a cost-effective solution for long-term archiving. What is next? Solid state drives built entirely from flash memory that have no moving parts and offer dramatically improved performance. These drives have read and write speeds that approach 100 Mb/s (many times faster than today’s fastest hard drives), plus having no moving parts for greater reliability and resistance to impact. Mean time between failure (MTBF) is almost 2 million hours (nearly 228 years!). Solid state drives are ideal for first-day storage. They also make great edge device storage, consuming about half the power of a standard hard drive.

Take Advantage of the Future Today

There is a good reason every one of the megatrends mentioned in this series of articles involve IP technology. IP video surveillance is the technology of today – and tomorrow. Now is the time to invest in it for the extra business value and the capabilities this technology provides and promises for the future. These include further advances in video analytics, camera intelligence, wireless technologies, mesh networking, IP network cameras (especially megapixel), video surveillance management software, and network storage.

All are going to continue to improve in price/performance and expand the ways video surveillance can be used more effectively by an organisation. It simply does not make sense to invest in a sunset technology such as analogue video surveillance when all the innovation and energy is directed at a superior technology offering greater business benefits.

Relating it to a purely personal level, what kind of camera would you buy today – film or digital? Many organisations with large investments in analogue video surveillance can begin to reap the benefits of IP video surveillance by turning their systems into hybrid solutions that digitise analogue feeds.

The ability of IP video surveillance management platforms such as Milestone Systems’ XProtect to integrate digitised video from analogue cameras with digital camera data enables you to manage all your surveillance operations with a single solution.

John Blem
Eric Fullerton

The first two parts of this series were published in GIT Security + Management 11/12 in 2007 and issue 1 in 2008.

Contact:

Milestone Systems A/S,
Brøndby, Denmark
Tel.: +45 88 300 300
Fax: +45 88 300 301

Stefan Teuber
Milestone Systems De,
Haag, Germany
Tel.: +49 8072 44 2173
www.milestonesys.com