I spent that past couple of weeks at the leading VMS players’ annual events for partners, integrators and end users. Much was said and discussed on the increasing need for reliable video analytics solutions, and finally, thanks to today’s video quality and management capabilities video content can be leveraged for the benefit of all types of verticals and use cases.
From security and safety, to retail, operations, business insights and even quality-of-life, everyone agreed that great value can be derived from video. It is, after all, considered to be the richest sensor. Still, what I really took away from these events was the inspiring notion that the promise of video analytics is so big; and we have so much more to discover and benefit from.
Essentially for most people, video is video, is video. However, when we take a deeper look inside the video, we see that we’re only scratching the surface by looking at what video presents to us overtly. To gain more from video, in ways we could only have imagined in the past, video should be used for its metadata (information about video data).
Metadata provides a whole new meaning to searching, tracking and understanding object behavior within a video. In fact, you can even learn and monitor human behavior by using metadata. Metadata also enables video analytical capabilities in complex and high-activity scenes. Finally, with metadata, all types of details can be organized, whether counting cars crossing a junction or seeing where shoppers dwell in a store. With the right tools, valuable insights can be gained through metadata. Yes, metadata is king.
As a result of the significant advancements in video analytics, metadata today presents information with very rich and detailed content – something organizations of all types want to hold on to. Furthermore, metadata is easier to store and save than actual video files. Metadata takes up less bandwidth, thus, extracting information from the video in the form of metadata becomes quick and simple. The metadata can then be cost-effectively uploaded to the cloud and aggregated for generating reports and identifying trends over time. Essentially, metadata is the key for further unlocking the potential of video analytics.
Cutting-edge technologies such as deep learning, coupled with the power of metadata, ensure that video analytics continues to intrigue the industry and present new and exciting capacities, enabling more and more verticals to benefit from the promise of video analytics. All we need to remember is to take a better look into the video and not be fooled by what we simply see. Sometimes it’s what we don’t see at first that really matters.