Technology & Trends - CCTV cameras

(Image credit: Antonio Scorza / Shutterstock.com) The era of the “killer robot” hasn’t arrived, exactly, but it may not be far off. Police and the military have been using these machines for decades now to disarm bombs and provide reconnaissance in areas where it would be risky to send officers or soldiers. When Dallas Police equipped a robot with an explosive device and sent it in to take out a sniper who had killed five officers, it raised eyebrows and conjured images of a...

Part 8 of our healthcare series Hospitals are challenging environments. A hospital requires oversight 24 hours a day, seven days a week Access control in particular has advanced significantly to offer healthcare facilities the ability to control access remotely, through mobile applications, confirm identity quickly and easily and program varying levels of access for visitors, patients, doctors and staff. Hospitals are challenging environments. A hospital requires ov...

It’s become a hot topic lately, but what are the real prospects for the smart home and home automation market? More specifically, what role can the security industry play in what is seen as a growth area? Earlier this year, IFSEC International in London saw the launch of a new home automation zone featuring a replica smart home, showcasing a range of interconnected devices such as intruder alarms, CCTV, biometric readers, door entry solutions and locks, as well as wireless control of bli...

Part 7 of our healthcare series Integrators can sell a breadth of possible equipment into the healthcare market One appeal of the healthcare market for North Carolina Sound, an integrator covering central North Carolina, is the breadth of possible equipment they can sell into the healthcare market, including access control and video, of course, but also other technologies, such as audio-video systems in a dining room. North Carolina Sound has also installed sound masking in s...

Hospital security always counts. Patients may arrive from a crime scene and someone has to make sure they weren’t followed by trouble. Doctors, nurses and other medical personnel may come under blame for the death of a loved one and need protection. Heightened security needs Think for a minute, though, about the elevated need for security when the victims of a massacre — such as the Orlando massacre — arrive at the hospital. On the heels of the shooting at the Pulse Nightclu...

Part 5 of our Security in Healthcare series It’s difficult for hospital security directors to provide a quantified ROI in an updated security system Several forces are working in favour of greater adoption of hospital security and video surveillance technologies in the healthcare market. “Healthcare facilities and campuses are growing at a rapid rate to accommodate an aging population and the research and development of pharmacology and many different type...

Video surveillance plays a significant role in any comprehensive security plan, and the value derived from surveillance continues to expand Across the globe, organisations are challenged by a diverse risk landscape and a dynamic operational environment. The safety and security of people, assets and intellectual property are a No. 1 priority, and stakeholders look to gain continuous insight into what is happening at any given time. The ability to identify threats early and effi...

Part 4 of our Security in Healthcare series    Secure visitor management integrated with physical access control systems (PACS) is increasingly popular Controlling visitors to hospitals and healthcare facilities can directly impact security. Traditional methods of visitor management, such as paper visitor logs and handwritten badges are insufficient given today’s variety of security challenges. A hospital using paper-based systems cannot easily cross-c...

The LTO Program discusses how organisations are struggling to balance thebenefit of video surveillance with high costs and increasing legal parameters We live in a world where there is an increasing need for video surveillance for crime prevention and public security and safety. Video surveillance is being used in greater quantity and with higher quality expectations in airports, cities and workplaces around the globe. In fact, the average person is reportedly caught on a surv...

Part 3 of our Security in Healthcare series Megapixel and higher-definition cameras are meeting the security and surveillance needs of a variety of hospital and healthcare facilities Video is a major component of most hospital and healthcare security systems. Among the big video trends are greater integration of video with other systems, and increased use of higher-megapixel cameras and 180-degree and 360-degree-view cameras to monitor larger areas. Variety of video...

What factors should an end user consider when looking for a professional systems solution provider? Andrew Schonzeit, President of IDESCO Corp., New York, knows what it takes to have an award-winning, top-in-its class systems integration company. For more than seven decades, the company has grown, morphed and continued to move into the world of value-add integrated solutions contracting. They’ve received numerous industry and business accolades and increased their statur...

 Part 2 of our Security in Healthcare series The future is digital, and analogue systems are a thing of the past – or are they? The fact is, in the healthcare vertical at least, we may still have a way to go before the full potential of IP-based systems is realised. Obstacles include a lack of funding and the challenge of sharing IP bandwidth with other healthcare technologies. Bandwidth competition While many hospitals have invested significantly in IP syst...

Budget cuts are causing councils to scale down their systems, or decommission them altogether Budget cuts in England and Wales are leading to cameras being switched off to save money. But why is this happening and what could be done to minimise the impact on public space CCTV systems? The UK could be described as the CCTV “capital” of the world, with between 4 million and 6 million cameras deployed, according to a British Security Industry Association study in 201...

It is more complicated to search through video compared to text-based data Since the launch of Google’s search engine in 1998, Internet search has grown and expanded from desktops to mobile devices, generating over 3.5 billion searches of text, images and videos per day. One likely reason for this popularity is the search engine’s ability to immediately produce relevant results based on search criteria. The security industry, in contrast, has not always taken adv...

Angela White was sworn in as President-elect of ESA at the ESX show in June and will take office July 1 The Electronic Security Association (ESA) wrapped up its annual ESX conference June 8-10 at a new location in Fort Worth, Texas, with keynote speakers, educational sessions, networking events, exhibitions, awards and the installation of new officers. Logging its ninth year, ESX is jointly owned and sponsored by ESA and the Central Station Alarm Association (CSAA). This year&...

H.265 compression continued to be a popular topic from exhibitors on the second day of IFSEC Video beyond security, compression, HD over analogue and integration were on the lips of several exhibitors at IFSEC International 2016. Strangely for a security exhibition, there were plenty of exhibitors talking about non-security applications on the second day of IFSEC International in London. For Axis Communications, Atul Rajput, Regional Director for Northern Europe, said th...

H.265 compression, apps and the inherent security of security systems were some of the themes to be gleaned on the first day of IFSEC International. Almost every video exhibitor I saw on day one of the show mentioned that many of their products use H.265 compression in these days of high definition, bandwidth-hungry cameras. Over at Vivotek’s stand, for example, Emilio Sanchez, project consultant, spoke of the company’s H.265 Smart Stream compression algorithm. He said this saves an...

This SourceSecurity.com Technology Report will describe one of those analogue HD-over-coax technologies, HDCVI 3.0 by Dahua, which is poised to have a dramatic impact on the video market in the next several years. New capabilities of HDCVI 3.0 include broad compatibility with a range of other (even competing) technologies; higher resolutions including Ultra HD (UHD) or 4K; and intelligent functions comparable to those available in IP systems. What's inside? What is...

No matter how strong the security planning, it will take only one small failure tocreate an opportunity for unimaginable events(Photo credit: Marco Iacobucci EPP / Shutterstock.com) Successful security at UEFA Euro 2016 may well depend on the ability of the French to bring cohesiveness to disparate technologies. Given the scale of the threats, a variety of security solutions are being used visibly and behind the scenes – in addition to the presence of 90,000 police, gend...

IPVideo Corporation, Bay Shore, New York, recently announced a new OEM agreement with Milestone Systems Inc., Beaverton, Oregon, in an effort to provide deeper and wider options in its portfolio of video management solutions. According to Steve Rice, Director of Business Development, the partnership will allow the company to reach a broader number of enterprise customers and provide them with distinct choices – and two completely different video management system (VMS) offerings. On the t...

Porter will tell IFSEC attendees about an upcoming National Surveillance Camera Strategy The Surveillance Camera Commissioner for England and Wales, Tony Porter, will be speaking at IFSEC International 2016 on how compliance with the U.K. Surveillance Camera Code of Practice can ensure that CCTV systems are operated proportionately, transparently and effectively. Porter has certainly been busy in the two years since his appointment by the Home Secretary. He has the difficult...

The growing sales of IP-based solutions in the surveillance market is a well-discussed topic. Security companies are rushing to grab a slice of this lucrative pie. However, at the same time, analogue surveillance systems have continued to retain their appeal for many end users. Aware of this demand, some companies have continued to develop technology for analogue solutions despite the IP trend. One company driving this force is Nextchip, the company behind AHD™. Up until rec...

ONVIF's 1.0 Core Specification debuted in 2008 at Security Essen The adoption of the ONVIF protocol by manufacturers continues to grow. Last year, the number of member companies in the ONVIF forum exceeded 500 and more than 5,000 products are currently certified on the ONVIF website. How did ONVIF achieve this amazing result and experience this wild adoption? More than a decade ago, every manufacturer was defining their own protocols and pushing for Video Management Software...

Multiple trends point to a maturing video analytics market that is poised to meet or even exceed customer expectations Systems that use video analytics, also known as video content analysis, have a chequered history in the security market. Since the technology was introduced amid much fanfare a dozen or more years ago, opinions about video analytics have sometimes been undermined by systems that did not live up to the initial hype. In fact, early failures continue to taint per...

The landscape for end-to-end solutions is not designed to address thelong-term evolving needs of customers The video surveillance industry has reached an important crossroads where manufacturers can choose to continue in one direction that solely focuses on their own products and profits, or to move forward in another direction that emphasises building partnerships for the greater good of the community. On one side lies the short road of end-to-end, proprietary solutions fro...

The integration of H.265 technology may be hindered by the availability of optimised H.264 best encoding for surveillance systems Video compression technology has been a crucial element in surveillance system design since the advent of Internet Protocol (IP) in the 1990s. Since that time, standards for video encoding have been explored in various capacities. Currently, the industry is all abuzz around H.265 High Efficiency Video Coding – the next iteration beyond H.264,...

Research at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, is developing a technology that can provide clearer, more defined camera images by fusing RGB (red-green-blue) images with thermal imaging. Phusion is being developed by Spectral Edge, an IP licensing company spun out of the university’s Colour Lab and based in Cambridge. Phusion for security cameras The technology has the potential to deliver more detailed images than are usually available from conventional sec...

Drones can satisfy five commercial needs, today: surveillance, patrolling,incident response, mapping and site assessment The military uses drones. So do the police. Drones serve as weapons and surveillance tools.Today, businesses and institutions are applying drone technology to a variety of private security surveillance challenges. Private uses include patrolling facilities and installations such as pipelines from the sky. To be sure, private contractors sometimes weaponise d...

Automated CCTV lip reading is challenging due to low frame rates and smallimages, but the University of East Anglia is pushing the next stage of this technology Scientists at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, are working on the next stage of automated lip reading technology that could be used for deciphering speech from video surveillance footage. The visual speech recognition technology, created by Dr. Helen Bear and Professor Richard Harvey of UEA’s S...

With innovation continuing in HD CCTV, analogue video surveillancemay be around for some time What’s your stance on the analogue-to-IP video migration? When will it happen? Will analogue go away entirely? Talk to any security company and they’ll admit they love the simplicity of the installation and setup of analogue cameras. They know how to deploy it quickly, saving labour costs and also, can use the familiar and ever-present coaxial cabling network. That’s...