An Innovative Video Solution

Dec 1, 2005 12:00 PM, By Corrina Stellitano

DVTEL'S SCENETRACKER provides the user with a real-time perspective combining multiple cameras into a single integrated scene.

Today's video systems are smart, flexible and are becoming more affordable. Strategically placed high-resolution cameras and intelligent recording systems now make a bird's-eye view more easily available to security professionals in a variety of industries. But what if security professionals could instead use a “fly's eye” view of their facility — with their many cameras combining like the quick insect's 6,000 retinas into a high-resolution, easily monitored image?

This capability is available today in SceneTracker, a software solution introduced by Ridgefield Park, N.J.-based DVTel Inc. in April of 2005. SceneTracker has been named the 2005 New Product of the Year by Access Control & Security Systems.

SceneTracker combines the information from local cameras, distantly located cameras and non-overlapped cameras, such as those hidden between walls or above ceilings, into a single cohesive view. Users can follow entities from area to area in real-time and zoom to capture detail, all without losing track of the entity as it moves from one camera view to another.

SceneTracker joins a series of software utilities integrated into DVTel's core product, the intelligent Security Operations Center (iSOC). Previously known for its integrated IP surveillance systems, DVTel acquired Israel-based OmniVee Ltd. this summer. Along with OmniVee's talented engineering staff, DVTel also acquired its patent-pending Adaptive Visualization Technology (AVT), originally developed to improve real-time situational awareness in the military and aerospace markets.

It has been clear for some time that the long-term monitoring of multiple screens produced a lack of threat correlation and a tendency toward loss of interest by the security personnel viewing the many monitors. However, few solutions had been able to provide a more coherent view at an affordable price.

“As a user, it's becoming harder and harder to process all this information. You get more data than you can understand in real-time. One of the challenges we faced was ‘how do you use all of this video information in real time to make good use of the investment in your system?’” says Eyal Eshed, manager of DVTel's AVT team.

Being able to stitch scenes from cameras in various locations while maintaining the appropriate visual perspective differentiates SceneTracker, says Ed Thompson, DVTel's vice president of product management.

“There are other companies that have looked at stitching video scenes together, but generally those companies have looked at co-located cameras,” Thompson says. In order to provide a 360-degree view, those systems may use four cameras mounted in the ceiling of a large room.

With SceneTracker, the images captured might be somewhat disjointed, “but the perspective continues from stitched image to stitched image, so you can more easily track what's going on in the scene,” Thompson says. “This is a new way to look at the world.”

“Suppose you are in an office and one of the walls adjoins a warehouse. If there is a camera on the other side of the wall to the warehouse, I can stitch the office and the warehouse scenes together, with the people and objects in the warehouse shown in complete perspective — effectively rendering that wall invisible.”

Looking at the big picture

DVTel's President and CEO Eli Gorovici says the technology reduces the importance of individual cameras in exchange for the vitality of an entire scene.

“This is really breaking the barrier of the limitations of today's technology in viewing video on square tiles. With SceneTracker, users are viewing it as it should be seen by their own eyes. The camera becomes meaningless,” he says. “We are moving from the camera concept to the scene concept. When someone calls and says something has happened in the parking lot, the guard has to know ‘north or south’ and which camera to view. With SceneTracker, he only has to know the event occurred in the parking lot.”

SceneTracker allows the combination of low- and high-resolution image data, negating the need to capture both essential and non-essential items in bandwidth-gobbling high-resolution. “I can take a single wide-angle of the scene in low-res (including all the objects of low interest like sky and trees),” Thompson says. “Then I can take a camera and zoom to the area where trucks drive into a warehouse to get the driver and the license plate and a wide-angle picture of the side of the truck. But you do not have to record the low interest items in high-resolution.”

In airports, this technique provides a low-resolution view of the entire tarmac with high-resolution excerpts reserved for the cockpit and the area around the engines.

Integral to the value of the SceneTracker solution is its ability to provide these capabilities using off-the-shelf, open standards networking and existing computer and surveillance equipment, product developers say.

“That's the beauty of this,” Eshed says. “It makes the cost much lower because you do not have to buy additional hardware. This permits an organization to buy the system and then grow with the system.

“One of the major complications with a CCTV system with more than one user is that the users want to view different areas in different perspectives,” Eshed continues. “There are often conflicts between users and managers, but with SceneTracker, you do not have these conflicts. One person can zoom to a desired area while another person can zoom to a different area, both viewing, in addition to the panoramic view, a personalized zoom view simultaneously.”

For future use, the SceneTracker system records the source video feed rather than the stitched view. “If you want to see the stitched view, you can generate it again,” Eshed says. “The important thing is that we do not lose the untouched video from each camera.”

Eshed compares the difficulty of use for SceneTracker to the skill level required to operate a computer mouse. “Our salesmen are now stitching demonstrations at customer sites with just 15-20 minutes of preparation,” he says.

DVTel first beta-tested SceneTracker at the Jerusalem traffic management control center (MANTI). Surveillance personnel there asked if DVTel could generate a view of the highway tunnels in which the traffic was visible as if the very low ceilings had disappeared. The first test in the United States was completed at the Newark Liberty Airport.

Since then, SceneTracker has become a player in a range of industries, including the European soccer industry. The Video Coach, a British company that provides performance analysis for second-tier professional soccer clubs in the United Kingdom, has installed the system at the stadium used by the Queens Park Rangers. Competing companies of similar purpose use animated software to show the players on the field.

“When we saw the view ScreenTracker could give us, we realized what it could provide us with,” says John Dukes, sales director for the Video Coach. “It allows us to give the coaches a complete view of the whole field. It is said that a coach can only remember 30 percent of what's happening in the game. With SceneTracker they can remember 100 percent. And with the animated systems, it does not actually show you the game. You can see an animated figure kick, but you do not know his body position.”

Airports have developed into a key market for SceneTracker, demonstrating the solution's benefits in both the security and operations arenas. Like casinos and retail environments, airports demand quick situational awareness, Thompson says.

The Continental Airlines terminals at Newark Liberty airport comprise the company's second largest hub, fielding more than 800 arrivals and departures each day. As Hub Opertional Coordinator, Continental's Russell Rego tries to make the task of monitoring these flights easier for the Newark Operations Coordination Center (NOCC) staff.

“I try to design systems that make people's jobs easier,” Rego says. The flight control team is organized in zones, with zone coordinators coordinating all flight activity on their gates, including gate agents, maintenance staff, marshallers and baggage handlers.

Communication is done primarily by phone and two-way radio, but the area is noisy, causing it to become difficult, Rego says. “So the zone coordinator has to watch his gate, and from years of experience, they know the things that must happen to make the flight depart on time. A typical zone coordinator has five gates and at certain times of day, they could have five flights going out at the same time. They watch for any abnormalities from the daily routine that could cause flight delays. A million things can happen, and if we are not alerted a flight can potentially go into delay.”

Several years ago, the NOCC worked in a room without windows; cameras forming its only link to the activity on the tarmac. Camera numbers coordinated with the relatively small number of gates, and “everyone knew the camera numbers off the top of their head,” Rego says. With the introduction of a new wing came new cameras and a new video recording system, “and memorizing all the cameras became a challenge,” Rego says. Moving to a new tower with windows overlooking the tarmac helped, but they were still “dependent on cameras,” he says. And at least one terminal is not in direct line of site for the NOCC staffers. So, when Rego first heard of SceneTracker, he was excited by the possibilities.

First, the team did real-time tests of the system at the airport. The initial results were good, but not completely accurate. Then, DVTel developers made some changes and “returned with an overall view as if you were looking out the window,” Rego says.

“We put the test system up in a tower for our users, and like with many new things, there were skeptics and people who do not like change.”

DVTel spent the day with two shifts of employees and implemented their suggestions in less than a week. “Then we had users who wanted use the system,” Rego says. “We were impressed.”

Today, SceneTracker covers 10 gates at Continental's Terminal C, and the company is considering applying DVTel's enterprise system for Terminal A, the terminal located out of the line of sight of the flight control team. “In Terminal A, we anticipate a greater impact in terms of cost savings by using the SceneTracker technology to create a ‘virtual tower’ control capability,” Rego says. “This technology will enable our headquarters in Houston to monitor Newark airport as well.” Eventually, the Houston headquarters team could monitor the Houston and Newark hubs and another in Cleveland, from one control center.

These functions are ideal for SceneTracker, Thompson says. “What has CCTV typically done? It takes a view of a place when you cannot be at a time where you cannot be there. Continental has had access to CCTV since it came out. Yet, nothing — until they saw SceneTracker — had convinced them to the extent that they would actually rethink human resources and the placement of terminals. So the notion of virtualization of your presence, which is rather new, we see this really starting to take place in their thoughts and plans.”

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