Video Analytics 2009 Mid-Year Market Review

The last six months were rough for video analytics. Little good news and lots of public recognition of video analytic troubles. In our own recent analysis and survey on video surveillance technology trends, video analytics finished a distant third to megapixel cameras and hybrid NVRs, barely beating "Other."

There were very few new product announcements, especially compared to the landslide of new products in megapixel and hybrid NVRs. The biggest two 'new' video analytic products are probably BRS Labs and Cernium's Archerfish. As we looked recently, lots of questions surround BRS Labs claims. Archerfish poses less technology questions but as a $1,000+ USD residential/SMB product, it will be interesting to see how well it can do for consumers spending less and staying home more. 

On the other hand, the products certainly are not getting worse. Indeed, there is good reason to believe that the products are slowly getting better with more time to optimize software and faster DSPs/CPUs available.

Nonetheless, the sins of video analytics certainly have caught up to them. The trade magazines and the analysts have now both acknowledged and recognized the dissapointments of video analytics.

The bright spot looks to be remote monitoring - using video analytics to reduce guard forces. It is clearly not mainstream yet but the last 6 months demonstrated a number of announcements and deployments for remote monitoring.