I love it when people get it that surveillance video cameras are incredibly powerful tools for collecting information and understanding behavior — they can enable people to save lives, prevent injuries and theft, and make things all-around easier and more profitable for people.
Caltrain in California is going to use cameras to reduce injuries and deaths on its tracks. (Security Director News) Bravo!
Abigail
Who knew a little 1" gizmo could do so much?
Abigail
A fun Talent Zoo post about Obama's magnificent marketing effort hit the mark with me. In a few ways. I'll start here:
Then there’s the citizen-generated content. YouTube videos, posters, songs – much of it generated by ordinary citizens, some created by professional musicians, artists, and ad people. This is the kind of marketing that’s being preached by the “let’s have a engaging two-way conversation with our customers-as-friends” crowd. With Barack Obama, it’s become fully realized.
We've always believed in two-way marketing, and we are always seriously weirded out when companies seem to perceive their customers as adversaries trying to take advantage. We're hoping more of our customers will visit and benefit from dialogues they strike up on our Airship Community site...it could become SO cool and anti-corporate, business-as-usual I can taste it!
Perhaps it’s no surprise that the least impressive portion of the campaign appear to be the official TV ads. They’re good, but hardly different from most political commercials.
We totally feel that ads, in our industry at the very least, are all about credibility ("being there") and awareness. They matter, but not half as much as when customers come to the Web site and engage with us as a company who doesn business in a way that supports them and their customers. And in a fun, real way. Because people who operate in a fun and real way are people who like what they do and are WAY more likely to offer responsive, personalized support.
In the face of all this hype, adulation and fast success, Obama supporters have been called a cult. That’s OK. So are Apple fans and Harley-Davidson owners. If you think this is bad for America and politics, remember: This is the world advertising created, one where a name or a product can be made to stand for more than its functionality.
I bet you alrteady know how much we would love to achieve this status through the coolness of both the products we make and the way we do business.
But product performance is still the key. Let’s say Obama gets elected President on the strength of this brand he created. He still has to give good customer service for 4 years. And people will be disappointed if the product doesn’t reflect the hype.
I think I already covered that one in this post. 'Cause really, support is not a separate topic. Support has to be part of everything we do if we're going to meet our ambitious goals.
Abigail
We've always been amazed there hasn't been much standards development in the surveillance industry (We feel kinda alone with our open platform) and so it's nice to see awareness of the need building (Security Director News).
"The general benefits are obvious," said [keynote speaker David Bunzel, managing partner at industry analyst Santa Clara Consulting], "lower cost of ownership, more features, higher customer satisfaction, which means more customers, and that means a bigger pie, a bigger market."
Abigail
Came back from Vegas last night after exhibiting our new stuff at the World Gaming Protection show. WGP is attended by about 400 surveillance pros that are focused on catching cheaters at casinos. There were two full days of seminars on how to spot the cheaters and make sure they don’t come back.
This is a great audience for us, since their needs go way beyond the typical DVR recording/playback.
What they need is a video management system and tools to make the video really useful. So we showed new modules to manage surveillance assets across the extended casino, provide a framework to report incidents and archive the associated video. We also showed examples of video analytics and POS data integrated with our core recording technology.
There were some very cool technologies being shown by other small, nimble companies as well. There were some new video analytics tools for identifying playing cards and chips, and tracking their movement around the card table. There were new ways to count people and cars, recognize faces and match them to an “undesirables” database.
These are the kind of tools that surveillance managers are looking for. Casinos will need to pick and choose the best of each of these new technologies as the cheaters become more sophisticated.
At the same time, I heard grumbling about how the incumbent vendors haven’t taken to the idea of integrating tools and software from other companies. They want to keep their customers in the “walled garden”.
We’re betting that the ability to integrate tools from many different vendors is going trump the proprietary approach of the big surveillance system vendors sooner than later.
Karl Crabs
Our boys on the floor at Paris, Las Vegas have the booth all set up and ready for guests. Drop in if you're there, say hi, and try out all the new stuff. Here are a few snaps taken during setup:
Abigail
Recently, a potential customer of ours was given false information about a competitor's DVR server product.
The customer was told that every channel would record 4CIF at 30fps at the same time. Untrue.
The customer was told that they would get something over 64 channels in a single server. Untrue.
The competitor told the customer "the salesperson was misinformed". The software user guide clearly spells out that to get 4CIF at 30fps on every channel, you have to cut the channel count in half. This means that this customer is not getting what they were told they would get for their money — they are literally getting half the DVR they were told they would get.
I've recently heard from other folks who were getting the same sort of quote from this DVR 'manufacturer.' I've also noted that these claims are not spelled out on their website.
Whether it's misinformation or not, this sort of inaccuracy can get casinos and cardrooms in trouble with state regulators. They can get shut down and lose money. These are not trivial details, and this is not something to play 'plausible deniability' games with.
But the worst part is the feeling of being duped by a bait and switch. I hope to update this story later.
Gryphon MacThoy
This article was published over a year ago, but it remains an interesting look at why casinos, with their image of state-of-the-art surveillance technology, have been so slow to adopt the latest in digital video surveillance. Some things have changed since the article ran.
For instance, Airship records 4CIF at real time across a network of thousands of cameras. Airship provides powerful ROI to a casino upgrading from VCR recording; searching for video alone can save hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, since with a VCR you're going through tape footage in sequence instead of searching across a network and diving in right where you want to look.
The only thing digital-only systems can't yet do for casinos is to play back IP camera video over a virtual matrix. With an analog-IP hypbrid system, however, you can use your IP cameras strategically where playback latency is not an issue, and analog cameras where live monitoring is critical.
Abigail
WHAT a raging pain in the ASS!
If you've never had to mount a big heavy server in a rack before, try it sometime. It sucks. All of the rack mounting systems I've ever seen totally suck.
And this style also sucks.
However, I like this style. That's right. It's just a shelf. Works fine. The whole drawer slider from some Titan's dresser is just too complex, and who ever really works on a Server while it's halfway hanging out the front of the rack? Seriously.
Anyway, at a customer site yesterday, wrestling with Example #1's BS wasted like an hour or two.
Someday, Apple will design a new server rack mounting system.
iRack.
Aw, SMACK! :
Gryph
Real-Time recording refers to recording frame rates that look smooth to the human eye.
Video is made up of frames. A frame is a single still image. Showing frames in chronological order give the appears of motion, flip-book style.
In video-speak, the frame rate is the rate at which frames are shown. In normal human terms, video looks "jerky" until you get into the upper 20 frames per second.
Normal television in the US and Japan (NTSC) uses 29.97 Frames Per Second (fps). Normal television in other countries (PAL) uses 25 fps.
The computer you are reading this on likely shows you 60 fps, often shown as refresh rate. Many computers run faster refresh rates, 120 or even higher, so that video games and other applications give a more realistic image to the viewer.
Real-Time is essentially any recording frame rate that gives the illusion of smooth video to the naked human eye. Unfortunately there's no scientific rule about this, but most experts agree that (Here's the answer!):
Real-Time = 25 to 30 frames per second.
Some experts will allow 20 frames per second to pass as 'real-time', even though most people can look at 20 fps and see the herky-jerky look of the video.
Why does 5 frames per second matter?
So glad you asked! In Digital Video Surveillance, we deal with A LOT of video. DAYS, WEEKS of video. We have to store it all on a hard drive. And, because of video compression, the difference in storage required can vary greatly. A 5 fps difference can make the difference between storing 7 days of video, or 9 days.
Or, put in more simple terms, 16-25% difference in the amount of history you can store on a system. 25% of 18 TB is 4.5 TB, a cost of about $1000.
OK, but Gryph, why are you REALLY fired up about this?
Well, I'll tell you. It's because some competitors are selling 20-25 fps as Real-Time. And they are selling it to people for whom the naked-eye judge of Real-Time is a government inspector with the power to shut their customers down.
That's all. I just don't like BS.
Real-Time = 25-30 fps. PREFERABLY 30 fps.
Gryphon MacThoy
Enterprise Surveillance Video Systems that just plain work.
Superior H.264 Surveillance DVRs
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