Honeywell Digital Video Manager latest release enables smart building surveillance

Honeywell, a global provider of connected buildings, announced an enhanced version of Honeywell Digital Video Manager (DVM) that offers smarter security and surveillance capabilities for today’s increasingly complex building environments. The new release, DVM R620, enables organisations to more easily secure large-scale security operations with features that improve operator efficiency and situational awareness for faster incident identification and resolution, and power more accurate and reliable security operations.

Edge recording capabilities

DVM R620 is well suited for a range of facilities, including complex security installations with stringent requirements—such as airports, correctional facilities, hospitals, higher education campuses and smart cities. It features an enhanced user interface and includes major updates to how operators can capture, access and manage live and recorded video, reliably and efficiently.

Based on a highly available distributed architecture, the system features edge recording playback and backfill capabilities, capturing video footage on camera memory cards, and then backfilling the footage to the system’s main server. These features make the system more resilient in response to interruptions ranging from routine system maintenance, to network or server failures and cybersecurity issues, and ensure cameras more consistently and reliably capture video footage, wherever they are located.

Intuitive user interface

In addition, DVM R620 includes an improved and more intuitive user interface and features that improve the user experience, making it easier to learn and operate, which helps improve operator productivity for faster incident response. New productivity features include bookmarking, which lets operators easily annotate and navigate video footage. This enables faster footage identification and retrieval for evidentiary purposes—critical in today’s security environments, which can include thousands of cameras capturing hours of footage.

“As buildings become smarter, driven by trends like the Internet of Things and our increasingly connected world, security operations must follow suit. This can be a tall order, however, when you consider the scope and size of today’s connected organisations—and the number of cameras and other endpoints personnel must manage,” said John Rajchert, President, Honeywell Building Solutions. “DVM R620 serves as a conduit for improved operator productivity and risk mitigation, leveraging connectivity for smarter surveillance that can more easily grow and expand as needs change and evolve.”

Interoperability with open standard support

DVM R620 also supports open standards like the Open Network Video Interface Forum (ONVIF) standard, driving deeper levels of interoperability and connectivity so organisations can more easily integrate an even wider range of video cameras and third-party systems like analytics as they adapt to changing security threats.

“Our security department’s primary mission is to keep students and faculty safe and secure, and we look to technology to bolster these efforts so we can be as effective as possible,” said Myron Marcinek, director of facilities for Marywood University, which covers 115 acres in Scranton, Pennsylvania. “DVM R620 makes finding footage—from our more than 80 campus cameras—easier so security officers can spend more time where they’re most effective: on foot, observing our campus and interacting with our community.”

DVM R620’s additional benefits

In addition to improved resiliency, usability and interoperability, DVM R620 enables organisations to:

• Seamlessly authenticate video footage – When exporting video for evidence purposes, operators can add watermarks or use digital signatures to prove video authenticity and its source, reducing the need for third-party applications.
• Keep footage secure – DVM R620 exports footage in password-protected files to promote safety and security.
• Use network and hardware resources more efficiently – The system uses a lower resolution for video streams, freeing up valuable network bandwidth and requiring less from individual monitors for decompressing and video rendering. As a result, organisations can lower hardware costs and view more cameras within a single view.

Wayne Memorial Hospital, a 114-bed, not-for-profit facility in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, has implemented DVM R620 to improve its safety and security operations and standardise the way in which it compiles video footage for multiple uses. “Our organisation’s core security operations entail collecting video footage around the clock, from 20 cameras across our facilities, to ensure the safety and security of our patients and staff,” said John Conti, facilities director, Wayne Memorial Hospital. “DVM R620 makes retrieving and packaging footage fast and easy—and allows us to do so in a consistent, uniform way that meets legal standards for outside purposes, including video evidence gathering.”

Improved visibility and intelligence

DVM is a component of Honeywell Enterprise Buildings Integrator (EBI), an award-winning building management system that ties all aspects of a security solution together, including video surveillance, access control and intrusion detection. EBI also integrates comfort, life safety, energy and other core facility controls, providing users a single point of access to the essential information and resources needed to monitor, manage and protect a facility, campus or multi-site operation. As a result, security operators have improved visibility and intelligence, and the ability to deploy their staff and resources more efficiently and effectively.

DVM and EBI are designed to work with systems from Honeywell Home and Building Technologies, which creates products, software and technologies found in more than 10 million buildings worldwide. Its connected buildings services help make facilities more comfortable, intuitive and productive.