‘Playback’ Comparisons between a VMS/NVR/DVR and COM-SUR

Preamble: How to empower everyone to audit surveillance video as an SOP

In today’s world, the proliferation of CCTV cameras has made surveillance a critical component of every infrastructure. However, a major challenge persists: the vast majority of CCTV footage goes unseen. This is not due to a lack of interest, but rather a lack of practical means to efficiently review and audit footage. Traditional methods of video playback are cumbersome, time-consuming, and resource-intensive, making it impractical for organizations to systematically review their surveillance data.

Investigation

When it comes to investigations, smooth playback, frame by frame, going back and forth, efficient zoom and pan into every corner of the frame, enhancing the contrast, brightness, and introduction of forensics filters (false colours), flagging, tagging, and working with multiple videos in a dashboard view (side by side) become very important. Unfortunately, most of these features are missing in media players available today.

COM-SUR: A Revolutionary Approach to Surveillance Footage Auditing

COM-SUR offers a groundbreaking solution to these challenges by transforming the way surveillance footage is captured, stored, and reviewed. Instead of relying on traditional video streams, COM-SUR converts video feed into images at regular intervals, typically every second. This approach offers several key advantages:

Comparison between VMS/NVR/DVR and COM-SUR

Frame Retrieval and Decoding

VMS/NVR/DVR: Decodes video streams in real-time, requiring significant processing overhead and potential delays.

COM-SUR: Converts video into images at regular intervals, eliminating the need for real-time decoding and ensuring smoother playback.

Data Processing Overhead

VMS/NVR/DVR: High computational overhead due to video decoding, error correction, and synchronization.

COM-SUR: Minimal processing required for displaying pre-captured images, leading to smoother and faster playback, including remote playback over the internet.

Storage Access Patterns

VMS/NVR/DVR: Accessing specific portions of video requires seeking through large files, introducing delays.

COM-SUR: Each image is a separate file, allowing for rapid access to specific points in time without delays.

Playback Synchronization

VMS/NVR/DVR: Synchronizing multiple camera streams can lead to latency and synchronization issues.

COM-SUR: Simplified synchronization by displaying pre-captured images from multiple cameras simultaneously.

Impact of Network Latency

VMS/NVR/DVR: Network latency and bandwidth limitations can affect playback smoothness, requiring buffering and rebuffering.

COM-SUR: Playback occurs locally from stored images, eliminating network-related delays and ensuring consistent smooth playback.

Efficiency of Image Playback

VMS/NVR/DVR: Real-time decoding and reconstruction of video streams can introduce stuttering.

COM-SUR: Captures the “moment” when I, P, & B frames converge into a single image, reducing data volume and enhancing playback efficiency.

Additional Benefits of COM-SUR

1. Cost-Effective Disaster Recovery: By storing images instead of video streams, COM-SUR significantly reduces the amount of storage required (TB to GB). This not only lowers storage costs but also simplifies data management and retrieval. In case of a disaster, the reduced data size facilitates faster recovery and lessens the risk of data loss.
2. Reduced Bandwidth Requirements: Traditional centralized monitoring systems require substantial bandwidth to stream video data from remote sites. This can be prohibitively expensive and technically challenging. COM-SUR, on the other hand, only needs to transfer images at regular intervals. These images can be sent to a central server or cloud storage services like Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, or Azure. The central team can then access these images and use COM-SUR to audit the footage, greatly reducing the bandwidth needed compared to streaming video.

Conclusion

COM-SUR addresses the long-standing challenge of efficiently auditing CCTV footage. By capturing multiple video streams and converting them into images at regular intervals, it provides a smooth playback experience, reduces storage and bandwidth requirements, and offers a cost-effective solution for disaster recovery. This revolutionary approach not only makes it practical to review surveillance footage but also enhances the overall effectiveness of security operations.

In an era where information is paramount, COM-SUR stands out as a vital tool for organizations looking to maximize the value of their surveillance systems while minimizing costs and complexity. While automated systems can assist in detecting only specific incidents, COM-SUR ensures a comprehensive and context-rich review process, integrating automation with essential human oversight.

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