How Does Your VMS Handle Camera Replacements?

This is a good question, specifically how old video data is associated with new cameras.

If we remove the dead camera from the layout, the client no longer has access to that data. Now, this is confusing to the client.

Did DW confirm this?

Wow, that's nuts. Never seen that on any of the systems I've worked with - Vigil, Video Insight, iDVR, all the offshore brands. In Vigil, I could even swap an IP camera in for an analog camera, then back to analog, then to a different IP, and the video on that channel will all still play back on that channel.

Related: Selecting A VMS For Short Term Events?

It could be worse I worked on a Prism system the other week and when you remove a camera from the system it deletes the old video :(

Milestone has the ability to do replacements no worries, the only issue I have is I tend to be forced to put the new cam on a different IP (does not happen every time), even so you just tell it what data base to inherit and off you go.

Geutebruck has you create a hardware channel associated with a camera, and then you assign that to a media channel which is what shows up in the viewer. Database Video stays with the media channel, so you can always assign it a new hardware channel. As long as you don't delete the media channel, you're fine.

With exacqVision, if you replace the old camera with the same model, you are fine. If you replace it with a different brand of camera that uses a different handler (plugin), then basically you are adding a new camera and removing the old one.

Removing the camera removes easy access to the video from the client, but doesn't remove the video from disk, so you can pretty easily review it if needed.

I just wanted to update this post with news that Network Optix support has given us directions how we can manually assign the old data to the new (replacement) cams. It's not a quick fix, but it looks to be a solution to the issue.

http://support.networkoptix.com/hc/en-us/articles/217862448

Milestone on its different tiers of software uses a wizard for camera replacement.

1. Use the wizard for camera replacement

2. Change of drivers and also user id and password to the cameras

3. Camera replacement will retain the camera original GUID (ties all previously integrated solution back to the new camera) , the user will have seamless access to the old video data (they will not even know you have change a camera)

Full Disclosure - I work for Eagle Eye Networks

With Eagle Eye, when a camera fails, we have a 'replace camera' feature. Essentially instead of adding a new camera to the system, you simply indicate that this 'new' camera is replacing one that is offline. All of the old video is associated with the new camera. Also, any settings (resolution, bitrate, camera name, etc) are automatically assigned to the new camera.

FLIR United VMS (Latitude, Horizon and Meridian) supports camera replacement, while maintaining recordings of the old camera. Upon search, the system seamlessly searches also the pre-existing recording.