The evolution of video systems has enabled us to generate highly actionable data from vast amounts of videos.
There are billions of cameras deployed in various industry verticals. Add to it another billion cameras embedded in our smartphones and personal devices.
Together, they create a mind-boggling ecosystem that is generating an unimaginable amount of video data every minute.
This data is not just shot to view but to analyze and draw insights. The technical ability that helps us analyze video data is called video analytics.
Video analytics (or video content analytics) is the ability to analyze videos, automatically detect temporal and spatial events and abnormalities, and predict forthcoming incidents.
It is integrated with video systems and touted as a solution to assist with providing security by identifying different objects, actions, and behaviors.
Video analytics is used for several purposes, such as event shooting, television broadcasting, surveillance, and monitoring. Many industries benefit from the application of video analytics as powerful means to track various behaviors and get alerts.
With that in mind, let’s look at five industries (although there are more of them) that have implemented intelligent video analytic capabilities and how video analytics is helping them.
However, before going straight into those details, it is essential that you know how video analytics work and what functionalities it has:
How Does Video Analytics Work?
Video analytics is an advanced technology that can integrate with video monitoring systems to process signals using algorithms.
The algorithms can be installed as software or hardware in video processing systems. Using the algorithm, the system performs a specific task such as identifying a number plate or detecting motion in a video.
Video analytics is used in various domains, including entertainment, health care, home automation, transport, retail, flame and smoke detection, automotive, safety, and security.
Regardless of the industry, video analytics processes digital video signals for security purposes. Once it identifies the signal, a video analytics application performs a particular function in response to the trigger.
Functionalities in Video Analytics
Video analytics systems can have many functionalities or modules. Functionalities can be simple like video motion detection or advanced like ego-motion estimation.
The list of some known or commonly found functionalities includes:
Dynamic Masking
Dynamic Masking covers blurs or anonymizes certain parts of the video, which can be sensitive data. It helps protect privacy in video surveillance by applying a detailed transparent mask on the areas of interest.
Flame and Smoke Detection
Video analytics transforms IP (internet protocol) cameras and video surveillance infrastructure into business intelligence. The analytics enables cameras to detect flame and smoke in livestock less than 15 to 20 sec through its built-in DDP chip.
The chip uses algorithms that analyze the videos to identify flame and smoke characteristics such as chrominance, color, shape, pattern, flickering ratio, and moving direction.
Motion Detection
Video motion detection analyzes differences that occur in a series of images. It works on changing pixels which means any change in the video can trigger motion.
This detection functionality is crucial to extracting information from scenes in video surveillance.
5 Industry Applications Of Video Analytics
1. Sports and Event Management
In event management, a variety of IP cameras are installed to monitor live events. By linking them with devices like emergency alarms, smoke sensors, speakers, metal detectors, and GPS devices, organizers generate live video analytical data.
Video analytics has been used in sports for quite a while. Coaches and analysts take advantage of this technology to analyze the performance of a player and how it is affecting his/her performance and the team’s performance.
Real-world Example
In NBA All-Star Saturday Night coverage, RSPCT launched its shot-tracking technology consisting of a small Intel RealSense Depth Camera. It can predict field goals for players for their next 100 shots. This piece of technology can even suggest players hit their next shot from a particular location in order to win.
2. Healthcare
Observing patient behavior, patient traffic, and surveillance of patient health vitals are a few areas that video analytics can facilitate.
In hospitals, medical staff can monitor patient fall detection using AI-powered video analytics solutions and get alerts to approaching patients who need assistance.
Real-world Example
When the security team of Massachusetts General Hospital could not keep up with the security, it integrated BriefCam Syndex Pro with its video management software. This set of tools reduces the time needed to conduct reviews and real-time video monitoring.
3. Retail
Video analytics is becoming a pot of gold for retailers as it provides a huge amount of insights about customer behavior that regular data analytics is not capable of. Retailers get accurate store traffic analytics to determine staffing needs, supplement store inventory planning, and improve customer experience.
Real-world Example
Uniqlo, a Japanese retail giant, implemented a video surveillance system developed by March Networks. The system provides retailer reports on voids and refunds along with video options to watch internal theft in stores.
Retailers can integrate this system with the “MegaPX Indoor Analytics Dome” camera to collect information on customer behavior, operations, and promotional success to make future decisions and derive performance.
4. Smart cities / Transportation
Tremendous use of video analytics is in transportation which is helping develop smart cities.
An increase in traffic in urban areas can result in accidents or traffic jams if adequate traffic management measures are not in place. In this scenario, intelligent video analytics can play an essential role. To make cities smart, video analytics enables traffic analysis.
Traffic analysis can assist in adjusting traffic light control systems and monitoring traffic jams. It can also help detect dangerous situations, such as a car going in the wrong direction, a vehicle stopping in an unauthorized area, or vehicles moving erratically.
Real-world Example
An Israeli developer of intelligent behavioral understanding in video analytics, viisights was recognized by Ayalon Highways as one of the best video analytics vendors. Ayalon Highways aims to use the system in its future projects.
viisights is an agile and effective solution that helps monitor an ever-growing amount of video recordings of highways and streets security cameras, parking monitors, bus stations, and more.
5. Security Systems
Performing video surveillance is an old job in the security domain. However, today, the security systems have significantly altered from the time when humans were responsible for monitoring to current video analytics systems.
Facial and license plate recognition and crowd management are some of the latest functions of security systems. Using these techniques helps monitor people and vehicles in real-time.
Video analytics tools have a greater impact in places such as hospitals, shopping malls, airports, and stadiums. They can provide estimated crowd count, trigger alerts, and analyze crowd flow to detect crowds moving in the wrong direction.
Real-world Example
A large retail and entertainment complex, Eden Shopping Centre has replaced its obsolete system with an IP-based video surveillance system by FLIR. The FLIR recording solution is flexible and offers ongoing system upgrades. It is capable of more than just controlling CCTV cameras and equips businesses with multiple modern functionalities that help enhance on-site operations techcrams.
Summary
Video analytics is a relatively new technology and an interesting aspect of data analysis.
The videos which, in the past, were used for entertainment purposes can now serve as solutions for major security tasks in a large number of industries.
With the development of video analytics systems, the industries can now easily pull valuable insights from huge amounts of video data to make accurate decisions and predict future happenings.
