I prefer Avigilon's analytics due to ease of setup, cost (included on all H3A/H4A cameras as well as some others), and decent results. However, if you are not an Avigilon dealer it is not available to third parties and only works within their VMS.

• I've heard positive things about Bosch's analytics within my company but have not personally utilized this product.
• We also make use of the Panasonic suite of video analytics including facial recognition. Decent results but it is a cost premium. Difficult/time intensive to setup.
• AgentVI - I have only tested this with Milestone in-house. Seems to be fairly well developed.
• Axis analytics applications - In my opinion, too much noise at this point in time to be reliably useful, but very cost effective.
• UDP / VCA - Very intriguing product but from what I've seen it appears to be time consuming to setup. Have not tested, only researched.

The companies on this list (link) show all of the manufacturers that are paying some form of royalty to Avigilon after their purchase of VideoIQ and ObjectVideo. Because of this there is undoubtedly some additional cost but it is unknown how much additional cost or if it is any more than a trifling amount. It is a good list to scroll through looking for analytics vendors.

Also, if you have already decided on a VMS, the VMS developers typically list all of the vendors making third party compatible products on their site.

I second Avigilon, at the moment. The downside is you are locked into and end to end solution that isn't the cheapest. As long as your clients have roomy budgets, it should work fine.

I am really looking forward to seeing how well iVMS-5200 works with the Hikvision analytics.

Favorite Video Analytics 2016

Mobotix cameras work great for perimeter protection.

I have tested a number of "on-camera" analytics; Bosch, Hikvision, DVTEL, UDP/VCA, Avigilon, Axis...

Avigilon is still by far the easiest to setup/manage and work well when used in the right application. In my experience the integration between analytics, camera and VMS is best with Avigilon. Keep in mind with other systems the amount of time you have to spend "calibrating" and configuring events and rules. For larger camera counts this can be a large labor expense.