My recent posts on IP Video Management turned out be 7-part series.  Who knew it was such a fascinating topic to warrant such length, right?  If you gained anything at all from this long run it should at least be that there is a lot to consider with these systems.

And that’s because IP video management is a highly important component of your IP surveillance system.  It is your window to the world in front of your cameras.  Controls, configuration, video search, and live monitoring and recording are all done from this single interface.

To sum everything up, below is a condensed list of best practices to follow to make the right selection for your application.

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An advantage of network based IP cameras is the ability to monitor a range of business activities from:

• Transactions
• Employee and customer behavior
• Monitor restricted access entry/exits
• Manage your building’s utilities and fire alarm system

This can be done by customizing an IP video management system using an application programming interface (API) to integrate IP video into your other systems.  This is a way to further trigger alarms, recordings, and alerts by using information from other systems a business may be using such as:

• Point of Sale (PoS)
• Access Control
• Building Management
• Industrial Control Systems
• Radio Frequency Identification

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To provide more insight into the event management features of an IP video management system a post was dedicated to video motion detection and this one will detail an integrated feature that completes the circuit of responding to triggered events.

Input and output ports (I/O ports) that are built into IP cameras and video servers are used to connect to other devices in an IP surveillance system. 

These devices can be programmed to the users specifications to provide a response when, for example, motion is detected or the camera has been tampered with.

In the picture to the right you’ll notice that the Sony SNC-P1 Fixed IP Camera, for example, has a bank of (4) I/O ports.

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Responding to disasters or emergency medical situations requires triage — the process of determining the priority of treating patients based on the severity of their condition.

Video motion detection employs a similar process in that it prioritizes only the important events and area’s of a camera’s view that you specify to be included or excluded for motion detection.

By prioritizing video recordings, video motion detection (VMD) saves on storage space and bandwidth by not having to record everything making searching for occurences easier as well.

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Moving along in this IP Video Management series, event management is responding to events that have been triggered by built-in features of IP cameras, video servers, or intelligent monitoring software.

An event can be scheduled or triggered and once one has occured you can automatically program alerts and notifications to be sent to cell phones, via email, or even pop-up windows on a computer screen.

One of the most important functions of event managment is saving bandwidth and storage space.  That is, video will not be needlessly viewed or recorded unless an event has happened. 

Further, you don’t have to worry about constantly monitoring your IP camera surveillance – You will be notified if something happens.

There are several ways an event can be triggered and there are many options for setting up the responses.

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Managing the video captured from your IP cameras is an important function of your surveillance system.  I’ve talked about the hardware platform and software platform options that are available.  Once you’ve made the right hardware and software choices for your surveillance system what features and functions can you expect from the video management system?

This post is about recording and viewing features which probably sounds like the simplest and most obvious functions but, there are interesting options available that you may not have considered.

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IP video management plays an important role in your surveillance system.  I’ve already discussed the hardware platforms options.  The physical devices that manage video.  Now we need to move on to software platforms.

The IP camera software you choose allows you to view your IP video in different ways.  The platforms include:

• Built-in web interface
• Windows client-based programs
• Web-based software

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