Milestone Analytics 2.2 Generic VA Interface - Manual (Page 5)

Milestone XProtect Analytics 2.2 Generic VA Interface; Developer’s Manual
www.milestonesys.com Page 5 Introduction
Introduction
Video content analysis—VCA—has over the couple of years matured from research projects at labs
and universities into products that can add substantial help to companies in their day-to-day
surveillance tasks.
Currently, completely omitting the human monitoring part is not really realistic since most systems
rely heavily on having a human to validate the results produced from the VCA systems. However,
the VCA systems make it lot easier to secure large areas since the software is far better on keeping
an eye on the details than a human would be after only a very short amount of time.
The functionality of the VCA systems spans from face recognition over advanced motion detection
to complex behavioral analysis, where various types of abnormal behavior both of humans and
vehicles can be detected.
Currently, there are roughly 30 important players within the area of delivering VCA systems. This
number keeps growing, and the increased competition will keep improving the functionality and
performance of the systems.
False Alarms
One of the messages we often hear from the market in relation to the use of VCA systems is the
problem referred to as false positives. False positives are situations where the VCA system reports
some kind of observed behavior or motion, but where the reports turn out to be caused by
different types of distortions in the input video or observed scenery, and are insignificant seen from
a security perspective.
In certain cases up to several thousand false alarms are reported during a day, which surely
devaluates not only the functionality and success of the concrete installations, but also the
reputation and general perception of the whole area within digital video analysis.
One could of course argue that such high numbers of false alarms are results of bad system
decisions and poor configuration, and that may to some extent be true in many cases. However,
this is the reality for many customers and users, so—regardless of the reason behind the problem—
users will end up with a system that really does not solve their problem.
XProtect Analytics 2.2
One of the cornerstones in the Milestone surveillance product suite has always been the openness
and flexibility that allows for the customer to use more or less any IP camera he wants. Replacing
one camera with another—possibly even from a different manufacturer—should be an easy task.
The same basic idea can be applied to the Milestone XProtect Analytics 2.2 (XPA 2.2) framework.
Milestone XProtect Analytics 2.2 is an open, plugin-based platform in which VCA systems can be
integrated and hook in their functionality to Milestone.
Multiple VCA systems can co-exist at the same time within the same framework, and may even
work together to create an optimal solution for a given customer in a given situation.
The framework is an add-on product, and it builds on top of several of the existing Milestone
components:
 Milestone Surveillance Server (XProtect Enterprise or XProtect Corporate)