Genetec Develops Video Trickling Feature for Omnicast
Genetec announced the availability of the Omnicast video trickling feature. The new video trickling feature makes video archiving more flexible and optimizes bandwidth usage during peak and off-peak hours.
Genetec leveraged the edge-recording capabilities of IP cameras and encoders of selected vendors to develop a feature that not only records and stores video on the edge, but also allows segments of video to be hand-selected for long-term storage on Omnicast’s Archiver. The video trickling feature is available in Omnicast version 4.7.
“Reliability is one of the most important aspects of video surveillance for many customers,” says Francis Lachance, product manager at Genetec. “Our aim was to further enhance the reliability of video surveillance and video archiving. We worked closely with our partners’ engineers to leverage each other’s expertise and innovative technologies and are very happy with the result.”
Video trickling is an evolution of the edge-recording functionality already available in Omnicast that offers the possibility to directly playback video recorded on edge devices. Video trickling allows for recorded video on edge devices to be moved and stored by the Omnicast Archiver server for long-term archiving.
With the video trickling feature, the operator retains complete control over which video will be transferred and when by creating rules within Omnicast. Transferring video from the edge-device can be based on three different modes, including on schedule, on event or manually. The amount of video being transferred can also be controlled based on filters such as time ranges, playback requests, events, alarms, video bookmarks and an interval when a unit is offline.
The video trickling feature provides increases reliability and bandwidth optimization. Instead of continuously streaming video from the camera to the archiver, only select video will be transmitted, thus increasing efficiency of the network usage. Also, in the event that there is high traffic on the network connection or that the connection between the camera and the Omnicast archiver is intermittent, the video transfer can then be scheduled to occur while the network demand is low or just after the connection is re-established.
Video trickling can also be used as a serverless option for remote sites where constant video streams cannot be transferred over the WAN. Using the storage from the cameras instead of a full server means less IT resources will be needed and having no server will contribute to additional cost-savings.