Video Recording Resilience

Stuart Bettle, Video Product Marketing Manager EMEA for Tyco, the security products division of Johnson Controls, addresses the importance of video failover redundancy.

The migration from analogue based CCTV systems to IP network based video surveillance systems has brought many benefits to users, not the least of which is the flexibility to record captured video at locations which are remote to where cameras have been installed. Companies which operate across multiple sites that may be scattered around the world have the option to record and store video at a central control room, instead of having to incur the cost of providing separate recording devices at each location.

For almost 99.99% of the time, remotely viewing activity at one or more sites over the network is likely to prove to be a cost effective, highly practical and reliable way to detect and react to any suspicious activity. There is always though the risk there will be network disruption or a power failure at precisely the time you may need to record important video evidence. Without any form of back- up or failover redundancy, the captured video is inevitably permanently lost. Whilst this is likely to be a problem for virtually any video surveillance project, it certainly is a crucial issue for mission critical and high security applications.

The Solution

In theory, the solution is quite simple. Most cameras nowadays have built-in SD card slots and so the captured images can be temporarily recorded onto an SD card if and when there is a loss in connectivity with the remote recording system. However, for most cameras, this does mean that an operator has to be aware of the problem and they then have to manually retrieve the video from the camera.

VideoEdge® TrickleStor technology to the rescue

Tyco’s talented software design team have developed an operator hands-free solution which automatically transfers and seamlessly backfills the video temporarily recorded onto an SD card. VideoEdge® TrickleStor places what was the missing video exactly within the timeline when the outage occurred.

VideoEdge® TrickleStor technology has been built into Illustra cameras, such as the recently launched Flex 2MP IR PTZ models. If communications between an exacq or VideoEdge® NVR is interrupted, a camera will automatically detect the anomaly and begin recording video onto an SD card. As soon as connection with the network is restored, the video recorded on the SD card is transferred to the NVR’s to provide the continuity of recording needed to ensure operators are able to investigate all events from within the VMS client.

Email BTS-EMEA-TycoSales@jci.com for more information about VideoEdge® TrickleStor technology and how it provides peace of mind by helping to ensure vital video evidence is not lost.