How Snap Works

Using patented tracking algorithms based on information theory, Snap Network Intelligence engine automatically finds the relationships between cameras’ fields of view, without requiring time consuming and often unreliable manual configuration.

Operating continuously at the sub-camera level, Snap finds which parts of those fields of view relate to every other camera. In practice this means two vital types of relationships are continually discovered:

1. Pairs of regions within cameras that have a high probability of overlapping; and

2. Pairs of regions within cameras that have a high probability of NOT overlapping.

This powerful analysis operates at large scale. For example, with a network of 1,000 cameras, each divided into 100 regions, there are 10 billion possible relationships; Snap finds the “relationship” needles in the haystack.

Armed with the information it has learned about the camera relationships, Snap is able to support key applications delivering real customer value, such as the ability for operators to track activity as it moves from camera to camera across the network, using Snap’s video pursuit feature.

What the Operator sees …

With Snap’s user interface, the operator is able to focus completely on tracking a target, without needing to scan across multiple monitors or rely on detailed local knowledge of camera names, groups and locations.

Centre of screen is the current camera view with person of interest. The highlighted pink box shows the relationship with another camera. A view of that camera appears on the left hand side. You can also see a green box, and that relates to the green camera view on the top left. As the target moves, the operator is prompted via this system of colour boxes to know what camera view is best to look at next while tracking a target.

Education Campus

Our software is used to enhance the capabilities of the installed VMS, with first hand feedback from operators on the benefits for making the system easier to use – including improved video tracking and incident response, and in enabling shorter site familiarization time for new security operators. This has noted value for campuses with contract security personnel being frequently moved around, or having to monitor video as one of many parallel tasks.

Many security managers will have watched with frustration as their teams struggle to find the right video feed during an incident – especially a critical live event. We often see security staff searching through camera trees for the right name or the most appropriate set of camera views, even with a well set up and grouped VMS. Snap avoids this issue, showing the operator the video feeds most relevant to their current focus, and removing background noise and unnecessary or unrelated views.

“When responding to an incident, we switch from our video wall and use the Snap software to track the incident”