Official WLANmall Blog

Milestone has released their new version of their flagship XProtect Corprate NVR software. XProtect™ Corporate is an IP video management system designed for large enterprises and alarm centers. Featuring a distributed server architecture, innovative centralized management and support for a wide range of IP cameras, it scales to fit any type of video surveillance installation.

New Features for 2.0

• New lower cost and simpler licenseing. You no longer need to buy additional recording server licenses!
• New server failover capabilities
• Support for multicast
• Support for multi-stream cameras. View in one CODEC and record in another!
• Support for H.264 CODEC
• Greater device support

Milestone has made licensing so easy it makes me smile. Here is how it works:

1. Purchase a Xprotect Corporate 2.0 Base Server license. This includes one management server, an unlimited number of recording servers and 4 device licenses.
2. Buy the appropriate number of device licenses. (don’t forget you get 4 when you buy the base version!)
3. Buy a PMA contract on the software. This give you features releases and support for at least a year.

That’s it! it is as easy as 1-2-3 but if you have any questions or want to understand if Corporate is the right platform for you give us a call or email us.

COPENHAGEN – 17 June 2008. Milestone Systems, a leading developer of open platform IP video management software, announces the availability of XProtect Corporate version 2.0. Designed for large-scale applications, it supports unlimited numbers of cameras, servers and users, with central control and intuitive access clients that make big installations very easy to manage.

A decade of technological refinement in developing true open platform IP video management software is culminated in Milestone XProtect Corporate, architected to meet the tough demands of the largest implementations. Distributed server architecture allows flexible management of unlimited sites, servers, devices, cameras and users – no matter how large or geographically spread the installations may be.

Surveillance system administrators get wizards, flexible rules system, automatic network scanning and camera model detection, with tight integration to IT environments for maintaining a very high level of system integrity. Integration with Microsoft Active Directory® provides strict user authorization and management; all configurations, activity logs and alerts are conveniently stored in a Microsoft SQL database. Managing cameras in groups and assigning users to role-based security groups saves valuable time.

The Milestone XProtect Smart Client is the elegant Graphical User Interface, or GUI, for security staff to access live and recorded video data at all times. Vital evidence material – encrypted and password-protected – is easily created in a single operation for fast sharing. Multi-casting and multi-streaming allow multiple operators to easily view live and recorded video without straining network resources unnecessarily.

The unique, cost-effective archiving model reduces the high cost of storage by using fast, local disks for short-term recordings and affordable network storage for long-term archiving. Failover for system integrity & data security ensures the high level of security and reliability required by true enterprise-class IT environments for maximum uptime.

“XProtect Corporate is a stellar model for high-end scalability. As customers expand their installations, they only have to pay licenses for the cameras added – there’s no extra cost for adding recording servers, storage, clients or users, and no license cost for failover servers,” says Eric Fullerton, Chief Sales & Marketing Officer at Milestone Systems. “Feedback from our customers supports that they appreciate the simplicity in our licensing structure and that Product Maintenance Agreements give a cost-effective way to keep up to date with future developments, adding industry innovations as they become available.”

The Milestone XProtect IP video open platform is a hallmark of optimal integration capabilities. The rich Application Programming Interface (API) offers seamless interoperability with other systems and devices to video-enable business most comprehensively. Return on investment is thereby further enhanced.

Milestone XProtect Corporate version 2.0 is available through Certified Milestone Partners internationally, among whom over 450 have already completed professional training in this solution. Learn more about XProtect Corporate.

Milestone Systems is a global developer of open platform IP video management software. XProtect™ gives users a powerful surveillance solution that is easy to manage, reliable and proven in more than 35,000 customer installations. With support for the industry’s widest choice in network hardware and integration with other systems, XProtect provides best-of-breed solutions to “video enable” organizations – reducing costs, optimizing processes, and protecting assets. Milestone software is sold through authorized partners in 90 countries.

Found on Milestone News Here

Axis Communications, Bosch Security Systems and Sony Corporation announce that they will be cooperating to create an open forum aimed at developing a standard for the interface of network video products. Currently, there is no global standard defining how network video products such as cameras, video encoders and video management systems should communicate with each other. The new standard is expected to comprise interfaces for specifications such as video streaming, device discovery, intelligence metadata, etc. The framework of the standard, incorporating the key elements of network video product interoperability, will be released in October 2008 at the Security show in Essen, Germany.

The main goal of this new standard is to facilitate the integration of various brands of network video equipment and to help manufacturers, software developers and independent software vendors ensure product interoperability. A unified open standard will also offer end-users greater flexibility of choice, enabling them to select products from different vendors in order to develop systems that fully meet their needs. This standardization initiative demonstrates the strong commitment of Axis, Bosch and Sony to supporting the ongoing shift from analog to digital surveillance in the security market.

A forum set up by the said three companies will be open for all companies and interest groups who would like to participate in the standardization work. The forum will be established in the fourth quarter of 2008, and will work on further development of the standard and on reaching agreement on how the new technology should be implemented.

“We are very pleased to announce this cooperation between our companies,” says Ray Mauritsson, President of Axis Communications. “An open standard will make it even easier for integrators and end-users to benefit from the many possibilities offered by IP-based video surveillance technology.”

“This cooperation represents a great leap forward in establishing an international open forum focusing on network video surveillance,” says Gert van Iperen, Executive Vice President at Bosch. “For manufacturers of network video hardware and software, the forum and its standard will be an efficient way to ensure product interoperability.”

“We entered this discussion based on our common belief that an open standard will provide great benefits for users and everyone involved in the security industry,” says Yoshinori Onoue, SVP, Corporate Executive, Sony Corporation. “Representatives from Axis, Bosch and Sony are now working intensively to develop a framework for the standard and to establish the guidelines for the standardization forum.”

See the entire press release here.

Commentary:
This is a good step for the IP industry as a whole. Standardization makes for a more complete set of tools to further mature the IP Video Surveillance marketplace. However there is no mention on how long it might take to develop this standard and currently most IP Video software or NVR software from major manufacturers only operate with the firmware on loaded their specific cameras. The solution is and will continue to be NVR Software by Milestone Systems. Milestonealready inter operates with over 40+ different brands of cameras and over 400+ different physical cameras from Axis, Bosch, Sony, Toshiba, IQeye, Panasonic, and many many more. So while the standardization legitimizes the marketplace it really does not affect the current product landscape for NVR software.

I have been speaking to many many clients lately about IP video surveillance and each time we go through the pros and cons of using traditional Pan Tilt Zoom (PTZ) cameras vs. the latest multi-megapixel IP cameras and in most cases we end up deciding that the multi-megapixel cameras are the way to go. So I have decided to share these ideas to hopefully help others in accessing their own IP security needs, and the solutions to these needs.

So PTZ. What is it? PTZ or pan tilt zoom cameras have been around for years in the analog world of CCTV and have made the obvious transition to IP Video security as well. These cameras are normally enclosed in a dome and have a VGA quality sensor that sits on a multi-axis thimble so that the user/operator can move the camera up, down, side to side and zoom in on a subject to get a closer look at what is happening in a specific location. That should be pretty self explanatory but if you would like to see a PTZ camera I have included a pic for you.

As in other parts of life, there are always advancements that are not necessarily meant to contend with previous methods of doing something but after they are developed they do, and in my opinion multi-megapixel IP cameras are one of these advancements. Multi-megapixel IP video cameras allow you to see double, triple, even quadruple the amount of pixels as a standard “high-resolution” VGA camera. What this means in plain English is that you can see more of a particular view and in greater detail. If that still doesn’t make sense, read on as there is a good picture below.

OK, “so what,” right? That is great you say, but what does that have to do with contending with traditional PTZ cameras? Well here is how I see it. PTZ cameras are used because an operator wants to see activity in different locations around his or her property. Well, a standard high-resolution VGA camera has a limited 640×480 field of view so it needs to be moved around to see the “BIGGER PICTURE”. Ok, well what happens when you move the camera from area A to see what is happening in area B? Area A is now vulnerable. So why not use 2 fixed cameras one focused on Area A and one on Area B? Well this is a great idea but quickly becomes expensive since you then need to monitor two cameras, you have to buy an extra camera license and of course you need to buy another camera!

So a good solution is to get one camera that has enough resolution or sees a big enough picture to monitor both area A, area B and everything in between all at the same time. This is precisely what multi-megapixel cameras allow you to do. IQeye has a series of cameras that reach up to 5 megapixels, which translates into 2560 x 1920 pixels. That is 16 times the resolution of a high-resolution VGA camera which means the field of view is 16 times as large and therefore the operator can view the “BIGGER PICTURE” without leaving certain parts of the property vulnerable to attack, theft, etc… The nice thing about having all those pixels is that you can then digitally zoom in after the fact and get a closer look without the image becoming overly “blocky” or pixilated. Milestone Systems Xprotect and other NVR packages have this feature already built in.

As promised, here is a picture to try and explain all this. I’m a visual person too so here is an image I’ve made to try and explain this a little more clearly…

I took a picture of a standard University courtyard, that I found on Google Images, with the proper aspect ratio and scaled it down properly so that I could easily demonstrate my point. The green border represents a 5 Megapixel image (2560×1920) and the red rectangles represent standard high-resolution VGA cameras. You can see that exactly 16 red boxes fit inside the one green one, which means that the single 5MP IP surveillance camera can take the place of 16 standard cameras or a PTZ that is constantly patrolling but without missing a thing! In this day of University tragedies can you imagine if a crucial piece of evidence is missed because the crime happened in area A on the left but the camera operator was focused on area B to the right? I say why not see it all?

WLANmall is now a certified Milestone Open IP Video Surveillance partner. That means that we have the ability to listen to your needs, design and solution and build it for you from A to Z. All you will have to do is have a certified electrician run the cable and install your cameras. We will build the server platform, install the software and bench test the system before it leaves our warehouse.

Milestone and WLANmall offers solutions for both small to medium businesses as well as large unlimited camera installations. Here are the different flavors:

XProtect Basis+: perfect for getting started
The Basis+ license is for smaller or trial deployments that will be limited to a single server up to 25 cameras. Features include:

• Support for up to 25 cameras or video servers
• Live view speed at 30+ FPS per device
• Support for MegaPixel IP Video Cameras
• Built In Video Motion Detection
• Daily Archiving to Local Storage
• Recordings up to 40GB per device per day
• Intelligent PTZ control
• Support for 1 Remote Client accessing recordings
• Smart Client and Web Client
• Motion/sequence search and Export to AVI/JPEG/WAV

XProtect Professional: perfect for single location deployments
Professional is still a single server license but builds on the Basis+ package and adds features that you would need/want in a production environment. Features such as:

• Archiving to a network drive, SAN or NAS
• Simultaneous live view and playback
• PTZ Patrolling and Scanning
• Virtual Matrix
• Support for 5 simultaneous remote clients
• PDA or Mobile client for Windows enabled devices
• Region Search during playback (find what happened in a certain portion of the screen)
• Ability to export, password protect and encrypt multiple camera recordings at once.
• Ability to include a standalone player in the export so that the authorities can have full video control when viewing your recordings back at the station

XProtect Enterprise: unlimited Cameras, unlimited Locations
The Enterprise license is a unique because the the base server recording license can actually be deployed on an UNLIMITED number of servers without having to relicense! All you pay after deploying the server is for the camera licenses. This allows you to record and monitor an unlimited number of cameras in an unlimited number of locations all from one or more locations. New features in Enterprise include:

• All the features included in Professional
• Multi-Server, Multi-location License
• Unlimited camera/device support
• Hourly Archiving for a total of 960 GB of recordings per device per day
• Support for an Unlimited number of Remote Clients

XProtect Corporate: the ultimate in surveillance management
Corporate has all the same features as Enterprise but with a greater focus on central management. It was created for extremely large deployments where control of the network starts to become difficult. Corporate enables a single user from a single location manage an unlimited number of recording servers, cameras and devices all from one location. Built on Microsoft’s robust SQL Server it is developed from the ground up for performance and reliability.

A surveillance system can pay for itself in ONE incident.

• 4 Camera Milestone Xprotect Basis+ Bundle
• 4 Camera Wireless Megapixel Xprotect Basis+
• Bundle!6 Camera Milestone Xprotect Basis+
• Bundle9 Camera Milestone Xprotect Basis+ Bundle w/ PTZ!