BriefCam Bytes: Custom ClassifID

A behind the scenes look into BriefCam’s newest innovation

With our next generation platform release hot off the press, we want to take you behind the scenes of one of BriefCam 2023 M1’s most exciting innovations, Custom ClassifID. BriefCam users can now independently tailor BriefCam’s leading video analytics technology to meet their specific and evolving needs at scale. Without sending data off-site or outsourcing classifier network training, users can define and leverage environment-specific classifications – such as unique vehicle types or uniformed employees – for video search, alerting, and intelligence, on top of the ever-expanding set of detected classes available in the BriefCam Video Analytics Platform.

Today, Igal Dvir, Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Haggai Abramson, Video Analytics Director, and Yogev Wallach, Product Management Director, will share their expertise and provide insider perspective on BriefCam 2023 M1 and Custom ClassifID.

Question 1: What was the inspiration behind the BriefCam Custom ClassifID solution?

Haggai: Like all great ideas, Custom ClassifID originated based on the needs and asks of our valued customers. While streamlining our market leading platform for maximized performance, we were fielding many end user requests for customized capabilities, and quickly realized we needed to strike a balance between individual customer demands and a solution that could meet the needs of many companies and industries.

By developing and migrating to our Linux-based platform, released in 2023 M1, we have accelerated our ability to deliver on customized requests. Custom ClassifID empowers our users to define, train, and use new networks that will bring value to their organization and enable them to use BriefCam for even more impact.

Yogev: As Haggai mentioned, the more we expanded into new markets, there were a lot of requests for vertical specific use cases which required customization of the platform. For example, our airport users needed to granularly differentiate between vehicle types – from snowplows to fuel tankers and lavatory trucks – all in an effort to optimize operations.

With these requests in mind, we started experimenting in a new artificial intelligence field called “Few Shot Learning” which drives detection and classification based on a small number of visual samples used for training. This is one part of the secret sauce for custom classification – and the idea evolved from there.

Igal: When taking a vision to reality, we root our innovation in the requests of our active and prospective customers. While the BriefCam Platform offers a broad, ever-expanding set of classes, many of our customers were still coming to us with their own unique project and requirement requests: from the airport vehicle requests referenced before to the ability to differentiate employees and uniforms, customers and staff, and more. In these cases, generic classifications like “vehicle” or “person” are not enough to solve their business needs.

While our team had the option of training networks for each customer request, we realized our customers needed a scalable solution that would empower them to meet demands without reliance on BriefCam. Furthermore, if each customer needed to send hundreds of thousands of samples of video to manage each individual classification request, we would face privacy challenges, as well as time and resource limitations. These formidable roadblocks helped us realize the need for innovation.

Question 2: How did you overcome the challenge of time-intensive, custom classification training?

Igal: Instead of starting from scratch, we began exploring whether customers could leverage the power and intelligence of our existing platform. Because BriefCam already has robust classification offerings, Custom ClassifID builds upon those classes by creating derivatives or subgroups.

For example, BriefCam easily identifies people in video footage. If a hospital wants to distinguish between patients, nurses, doctors, and even visitors, the system can be trained to distinguish between individuals who are wearing or not wearing uniforms. To get even more granular, the system can be trained to identify each specific uniform class. In this case, training simply requires tagging a few dozen examples of people in uniform, because the BriefCam Platform is already trained to identify the People classification.

Question 3: What makes Custom ClassifID unique?

Yogev: Like other industry players, we used to offer custom classification as a service. But this service strained customer budgets and posed privacy and resource concerns for our end users. Not only was the customer required to send extensive amounts of positive and negative video examples, but the time and resource demands for all parties were problematic.

For BriefCam, finding a way to solve the customer problem, improve the experience, and increase the value of the investment in our technology were the guiding drivers for this innovation. Patent pending and unique to BriefCam, Custom ClassifID places the power and discretion of on-site customization directly in the hands of the user.

Haggai: Custom ClassifID leverages our platform to create subclasses which enhances BriefCam’s flexibility and agility with less time, effort, and investment. Though it currently poses some limitations – namely, any limitations of our original technology — our team is driven to deliver empowering, industry-leading innovations and solutions to meet the unique needs of our customers.

Yogev: Any organization with custom video analytics use cases will benefit from Custom ClassifID. Looking ahead, custom classification will definitely become a standard in the video analytics industry. Differentiating between employees and visitors has many positive opportunities for retail and hospitality companies. I also think universities will surprise us with their applications of Custom ClassifID. We look forward to continuing to work with our customers to support opportunities for translating video into impact.

Igal: Obviously, Custom ClassifID is a new innovation that will continue to evolve. We are eager to learn with our customers, see their applications of the innovation, and further iterate on its use and functionality.

Did our BriefCam experts leave you wanting more details about Custom ClassifID and our 2023 M1 release? Request a personalized 23 M1 and Custom ClassifID demo.