Audio Forensics let operators search recorded footage faster and more dynamically than just passively listening during playback. Identifying an incident that's happened outside the camera's field of view, such as a broken window or a shout, provides another way to find evidence. Incidents are located using an audio search filter and results displayed in a thumbnail timeline, allowing operators to search through hours of footage in seconds. Once an event is identified, simply 'double-clicking' the thumbnail will start video and audio playback from that point.
Chad Wright, General Manager of Naskam Security, an Australian-based national video and alarm monitoring centre, commented "The ability to rapidly search recordings for audio incidents makes the IndigoVision system significantly more responsive and adaptable to the Policing industry. These useful tools help law enforcement agencies to speed up their investigations and provide tamperproof audio and video evidence for use in court."
Quality audio is important for applications such as law enforcement interviews. IndigoVision's fully synchronised audio ensures perfect lip sync and its unique guarantee not to drop any audio or video frames means nothing is missed. This gives integrity to audio-video evidence since it is less susceptible to interpretation in court.
Other uses of audio include intercoms, public help points, covert surveillance and message broadcast. IndigoVision's Public Address (PA) capability lets you broadcast pre-recorded messages automatically on alarms. For example, "Step back from the edge" can keep passengers safer on rail platforms. "Leave this zone - you are not authorized to be here" can be broadcast automatically on video analytics or intruder alarms.
IndigoVision has video encoders and IP cameras with built-in audio, allowing a microphone and speaker to be connected. Audio is converted to mono or stereo using AAC-LC for excellent quality at minimal bandwidth. As with video, audio can be dual-streamed to further reduce network bandwidth: high-quality for a local Network Video Recorder (NVR); lower quality for remote monitoring. This opens up use of WANs including wireless.
IndigoVision's security management software, SMS4, provides sophisticated tools for evidence gathering. Evidence is exported using watermarking and encryption and is verified in court as ‘untampered' using IndigoVision's ‘Incident Player'. Several time-synchronised camera views can be exported together, allowing incidents to be followed across disparate areas or to have multiple views of the same incident.
Combined video and audio analytics are intrinsic to IndigoVision's tool chain for generating evidence: detect incidents, respond automatically, locate the evidence and export for court. IndigoVision has released a White Paper called ‘Understanding Audio Analytics', which can be accessed from the ‘Learn' section of the company's website.
