Best / Worst VMS Manufacturer Video Exporting Shootout: Which Criteria To Test On?

Would be nice to see which VMS solutions predict the size of the export BEFORE you start the export process. 

Would you consider the idea of exporting video related to an alarm a feature to test?

This would be a one click type export of alarm video, versus needing to add in the camera, start time, duration, etc.

Geovision as antiquated as it is, seems to have the best and quickest export time and size.

Export standardization - ability to have custom export options (e.g., export location, format, encryption) pre-defined / default. Worst - no custom defaults, Better - one level custom defaults, Best - custom defaults per user / active directory group

Privacy masking - export-specific privacy masks. Worst - no masks, Better - "black box" masking, Best - export blurring 

Differientiated export time periods - not just exporting multiple cameras, but export different time periods on the same or different cameras as part of one package. 

disregard last post

Audio export - exporting audio with video. Worst - no audio. Better - One-way (microphone). Best - Two-way audio (mic and speaker).

Get a feel for how much hardware resource is needed to perform these exports and if any can be boosted by the use of GPU hardware.

CPU, Memory and GPU come to mind. 

Perhaps even a horse race where the same cam video taken into the different VMS is exported the same way to see which one needed the most resource and how long it took.

1. Password protect the export?

2. Is the player program for proprietary export files a standalone EXE or does it need to go through an installation process? (Lawyers and law enforcement do not like having to run an installer for players on their computers.)

3. Sometimes when exporting as AVI or MP4, the video file still won't playback in the native Windows or Mac video player, you have to download VLC Player or something similar. Better is playing back in the Windows (Windows Media Player) and Mac native players.

4. Event information and bounding boxes meta data exported with the video?

5. Can the export process be minimized and the client interface still be run, or does it lockout the client program while it is exporting.

6. If the export is interrupted, will the file that was written still be playable, or is the file corrupted and non-playable unless the export finishes successfully. (It sucks exporting a hundred gigs of data and it messes up near the end, and you can't pick up where the last export left off but instead have to start over.)

Once exported, a capability to verify if the export data is corrupted has been tampered with 

Are you going to include Smart PSS and Hik's software in this test? I know they are not a true VMS, but a lot of people use them as such. I suspect they will not do well against a true VMS but it would be nice to see where the exact weaknesses are.

Quality/Accuracy.  It would probably go along with export formats.  Worst: any kind of compression from the original.  Best:uncompressed replica of what was recorded.

I wouldn't rank them on file size.  I'll take the 15gb uncompressed file over the 500mb lossy format any day.

If the video ever goes to court, I want exactly what the VMS recorded. 

Our entire team is versed on FLIR’s Latitude VMS platform capabilities it has for exporting.

FLIR provides an export that operates in the background for mass exports.  These exports can be done using their proprietary format, AVI, and MP4.  There are several great options to choose from when it comes to configuring these exports as well.

We do think very highly of FLIR's VMS, using it for most every install we take on.  We very much recommend that you include that as a test criteria along with some of these other features:

Support MP4 export with and without subtitles or embedded OSD

Support quick and efficient export to MP4 without need to transcode H264 video

Support bulk export – large amount of time and large number of cameras in one operation. Can it be done as a scheduled background operation with automation options?

I found out on one particular system that had a crappy export process (sorry, I won't say which), was say for example if it were 5 FPS video, when it exported the video as MP4, it created "filler" frames so the resulting MP4 was 30 FPS, making the video export 6 times the size it needed to be. Seems they couldn't export the video in a way that wrote framerate playback information in the file so it would playback normal speed at 5 FPS, so they needed to create all those extra frames so they'd have normal playback speed.

Not a lot do it but there are some that will actually upload the clip to the cloud so you can send a link to law enforcement or someone at corporate that doesn't know how to operate the system.