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Video Content Analysis: Look Smart

Video content analysis (AKA video analytics) is getting better all the time, but it's still new enough that buyers should proceed with eyes wide open

Increasingly, however, the industry is moving toward embedding the software into hardware devices and selling the whole thing as a package, says James McManus, research analyst at IMS Research. Longtime market leader ObjectVideo has stopped selling its software to end users. Instead, the company develops software that runs on digital signal processing (DSP) chips that are manufactured by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) such as Cisco, EMC and Texas Instruments. The OEMs then install the DSP chips onto back-end storage devices, networks, digital cameras or encoders.

(An encoder is a device that translates analog video feed into digital information. In other words, you don’t need to have digital cameras in place to do video analytics, as long as your analog cameras are compatible with encoders that can translate the signal into a digital feed.)

Some large companies, including Bosch, Honeywell and Sony, are building analytics into the digital cameras they already sell. Other specialty companies such as Verint Systems and NICE Systems focus on analytics but develop and sell the whole kit and caboodle—from video management software, to cameras and encoders, to the analytics software itself. This shifting marketplace leads to some strange bedfellows. ObjectVideo and Verint Systems are competitors but partners as well: Verint has developed some of its own algorithms and also licenses some of ObjectVideo’s algorithms and sells them on its own hardware.

Tip 2 - Start With Your Business Need—Then Select the Technology

The latest video analytics tools claim to do very sophisticated activities, from identifying loiterers to detecting vandalism to monitoring crowds for dropped baggage. When evaluating your options, you may be tempted to get carried away. Don’t. Always start with the business need, then see if there is technology that could fill it—not the other way around.

“It’s like every other decision,” Jones says. “What is the return on investment, what is the value it can bring my organization, and what can it help me accomplish that I can’t accomplish any other way?” Could analytics allow you to reduce your security guard force? Could it let you monitor a site remotely and save money on gasoline? Could it help manage all the video information you’re collecting or let you conduct investigations more efficiently? Prices have come down, Jones says, but the technology is still expensive.

One way vendors are dealing with this is by moving to packaged models, with groups of algorithms targeted at specific industries. Cernium, for instance, got its start selling software that allows airports to monitor for people entering through an exit lane. Now the company (which has licensed its software to the OEM Toshiba) sells packages for education, cultural institutions, gaming, governments, retail and other industries. Even within these packages, however, you might not need all the tools.