Is There A Simple Way To Privacy Mask A Full Screen Image But Still See Motion?

Ethan Ace

•Mar 28, 2018

I was just asked this question. Installer has a customer who wants to watch an area of an office for activity, just to know if employees are in there. The user isn't looking for details on who is present and what exactly they're doing. They're just trying to see if anyone is present.

What are the options? I know there are analytics like Kiwi's privacy protector specifically for this application, but I believe that will be outside their budget and more complex than necessary. Has anyone tried using a camera privacy mask which pixelates on a full screen image? What about defocusing the camera somewhat? Any other options I'm not thinking of?

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Michael Miller

•Mar 28, 2018

If video is not needed Avigilon's Presence Detector will work very well.

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Brian Rhodes

•Mar 28, 2018

IPVMU Certified

What about an I/O interface coupled with a PIR motion or thermal occupancy sensor?

The sensor would be cheap, not provide any image at all yet detect movement, and the I/O module could be integrated into a VMS or viewer for alert notifications.

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Brian Karas

•Mar 28, 2018

Pelican Zero

Do they ever plan to actually view images from the camera? If not, maybe a camera is not the best approach. What about occupancy sensors with their outputs tied to the input of a camera pointed at a corner, or otherwise fed into the VMS via an I/O module?

I'm not aware offhand which cameras apply a privacy mask BEFORE motion processing is done vs AFTER motion processing in the whole software pipeline. I could see many cases where the privacy mask prevents motion detection from working.

Defocusing might help with obscuring face details, but would probably still show activities/areas.

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Ethan Ace

•Mar 28, 2018

In reply to Brian Karas

I think sensors might be possible, but it seemed more complicated to them than "just" using a cheap camera. I don't think it's necessarily bad that they see a general activity level of detail, like "someone walked over to that desk" but they are trying to keep it general so employees don't feel under surveillance while going about normal business.

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Undisclosed #1

•Mar 28, 2018

What a considerate individual to think of employee privacy in the open workplace. If visual details are not desired, I think a motion sensor tied to a dry contact for alert notifications would work. However, it's the workplace. Put a camera up to capture who goes in and out and don't focus to clarity. If alerts are needed, set a delay window between alerts.

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Jared Tarter

•Mar 28, 2018

Milestone Systems

With the latest version of our XProtect software (Express+, Professional+, Expert, and Corporate), you can set the level of blurring instead of having a solid mask. However, areas that are masked will not have motion detection done on them so if they want both then that won't work.

Here is an example with the least amount of blurring:

Here is one with it blurred as much as possible without being solid:

There are 10 total steps of blurring to get the desired masking

All that being said, since they want the entire image masked, an out of focus camera (like Ethan mentioned) would likely do the trick. This would also allow motion detection to still happen.

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Ethan Ace

•Mar 28, 2018

In reply to Jared Tarter

Jared, thanks! If that masking is done server side, could they still run camera side motion detection just to run basic pixel motion and trigger events in XProtect? That would work, no?

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Jared Tarter

•Mar 28, 2018

Milestone Systems

In reply to Ethan Ace

Yeah, the masking is done server side so they could still do camera side motion detection on any camera we support it on, including the ONVIF driver.

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Undisclosed Integrator #2

•Mar 28, 2018

So, a blurry varifocal camera or a thermal?

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