The study was undertaken by IMS Research, and senior analyst Simon Harris believes “the case for video content analysis is extremely compelling”.
“CCTV operators are being overloaded with video content they are not able to effectively monitor,” he said. “Experiments have shown that after 22 minutes, operators miss up to 95 per cent of all scene activity. We need intelligent video to improve the effectiveness of surveillance systems and ease the burden on the operators.”
The IMS report says that provision of additional information – pertaining to loss prevention, public liability issues and consumer behaviour in retail environments – makes it easier for end users to justify the expense of adding analysis capability to their video surveillance systems.
The study predicts that content analysis algorithms will increasingly be embedded in front-end surveillance equipment, such as cameras, video servers and recorders. “This greatly improves the use of network bandwidth, as the intelligent field devices can determine when something of interest occurs and only then transmit video, preserving bandwidth when nothing is happening,” IMS says.
“Moreover, manufacturers of IT infrastructure are expected to embed software for video analysis in their products so as to further improve the performance of video networks. By 2009, embedded applications are forecast to account for around 60 per cent of the video analysis software market.”
