We have been hearing a lot about big data lately. In essence, big data encompasses information gathered from sources such as social media, mobile ­devices, corporate databases, health records, law enforcement and video. In the last few years, video data has exploded, both in terms of its quantity and its applications. To put this in context, everyday Google processes 24 Petabytes of data, yet every day around the world 413 Petabytes of data is produced from surveillance cameras, mobile phones, drones and satellites. Clearly, when we speak about big data, video data should be a main focus of the conversation. But, although it seems like video data is a goldmine of information, it takes a lot to mine this data to make it relevant, meaningful and valuable.

Surveillance video has the potential to be one of the most valuable data sources, especially since it provides real-time data. Yet, most of the information and insights gained from video remains untapped. Extracting intelligence from video has mostly been a manual process and the majority of the video recorded goes unused since it is difficult to search, isn’t readily accessible to all users, and it’s costly and complex to store.
But similar to nesting Russian dolls, video data houses valuable insights and the more you can open and get to the next layer, the more power you have. Collecting large amounts of statistics and footage brings little benefit if there is no layer of added intelligence. So, companies like Vicon Industries, a pioneer in the video surveillance market, have been focused on seamlessly integrating video analytics into their line of camera products to transform video surveillance into actionable intelligence.

Turning Data into Actionable Insight
Vicon recognized that the future of video surveillance lies with offering powerful, high-resolution cameras that provide video analytics to simply and seamlessly provide basic intelligence such as motion and intrusion detection. To ensure security incidents don’t get missed and suspicious behavior is detected, Vicon has embedded video analytics into its line of IQeye cameras to help quickly identify and prevent incidents.
Video analytics, by definition, are software applications that generate alerts automatically to bring awareness to incidents occurring in an installation.  Analytics can help detect objects in a video stream and provide actionable insights that can quicky be addressed. With video analytics embedded in the IQeye family of Vicon cameras and seamlessly integrated into ViconNet video management software (VMS), video surveillance is no longer a passive tool, but an effective, proactive detection system.
Vicon includes a basic analytics package on all cameras in its IQeye camera line. Vicon’s suite of license-free basic edge-based analytics intelligently detects exception conditions or threats in real time, allowing security personnel to respond in a timely manner. The basic analytics package includes camera tampering detection, intelligent video motion detection and intrusion detection.
With Vicon Analytics, alerts can be generated in real-time for:

• Intelligent Video Motion Detection: Vicon’s Intelligent Video Motion Detection takes traditional Video Motion Detection to a new level. It reduces the number of false alarms by intelligently analyzing motion in a scene and filtering out false triggers, including lighting changes and non-human movements such as those made by animals and trees.
• Intrusion Detection: Vicon Intrusion Detection analyzes real-time video from secure areas and perimeters to provide alerts upon unauthorized encroachment. Intrusion Detector filters out noise such as lighting variations and tree movements and issues real-time alerts upon detecting people or vehicle intrusions into a preconfigured zone.
• Camera Tampering Detection: Vicon’s Camera Tampering Detector analyzes video from a camera in real time to identify camera failures or interference, including when a camera lens is partially or completely blocked or the field of view or camera angle has been altered. Alerting security personnel about tampering interferences with cameras allows security personnel to respond in a timely manner to maintain video recording for forensic purposes.

With an integration into the video management software (VMS), the system can now proactively assist the operator of the security installation and improve efficiency. This is typically accomplished by graphically enhancing video streams to show bounding boxes around the detected objects in live and playback. The system can also automatically generate alarms and automated tasks based on the metadata created by the cameras.
Vicon Analytics can be used in almost any application including border patrol, perimeter protection, at transportation facilities, government institutions, landmarks, bridges, retail stores and entertainment areas.
Video analytics yields many benefits to users such as lowering the overall cost of deployment, reducing operation costs and makes installations more efficient.  Notwithstanding, Vicon understands that some customers may have budget constraints that prevent upgrading to cameras with embedded analytics. In order to make video more search-friendly, Vicon recently introduced Museum Search into its latest ViconNet VMS for faster search of video footage.

Locate Evidence and Investigate ­Videos of Interest
Storing metadata generated by the camera can create a powerful search tool for the operator. Similar to creating an index or glossary in a book, the user no longer needs to manually search through all of the recorded video to find a particular incident.  Museum Search is a time-saving feature that allows for ultra-fast search of recordings. This powerful forensic tool allows operators to quickly sort through large amounts of recorded video evidence to locate all the video segments that contain specific actions or events within a defined region. For example, searches can be performed for the opening of a window or door or a specific car moving in a parking lot.
With Museum Search, Vicon has converted unmanaged video data that can only be used when manually playing back the video into data that can be rapidly searched like any database. This enables operators to search through hours or days of video in seconds.
The Museum Search feature improves the capability to prevent incidents, as well as providing the means to more effectively manage and respond to them if they do occur. This enhancement to the system is the result of extracting metadata out of the video inside the camera and then storing the metadata in the VMS and providing a simple method for the operator to search through the collected metadata.

Ultra-fast Search for Changes in ­Selected Areas of Recorded Video
After an incident, it’s important that video can be investigated to determine what happened, and when it occurred. Searching for an exact moment in hours of recorded video can be a daunting, time consuming task. Vicon’s Museum Search quickly and accurately identifies sequences with motion in specific operator-defined areas to help staff find and export relevant video in an efficient manner. Making better use of information is an important facet for Vicon. The system doesn’t require the operator to write a database search query based on understanding the different types of data that are stored but rather paint areas of interest on the scene and allow the software to create the search parameters in the database.
The Museum Search feature is part of Vicon’s latest release of ViconNet VMS, a high-performance, standards-based open platform solution.  Robust, scalable and exceptionally flexible, ViconNet VMS delivers complete access to live and recorded security video. Supporting industry-standard compression and transmission formats, including H.264, ViconNet displays and records clear, high-resolution video while minimizing bandwidth and storage requirements.