Overview

What is Tracking?
Tracking is the ability of the camera to understand that the person or the vehicle across the multiple video frames is the same object. The camera assigns a virtual ID to the object and tracks its motion.

Fixed or PTZ Tracking?
In case of the fixed cameras, the tracking occurs within the fixed view of the camera. The camera is able to see and understand that the person standing there is the same one and it understands where the object is going and is able to generate the path of the motion when requested.

The PTZ cameras can also track the object within its current view, however, additionally they are able to turn their lens towards the object when the object is about the leave the view of the camera. This way the object can be tracked for a longer period of time.

Tracking Metadata or Tracking Alarm?
The tracking data can be used in two ways. It can be used as a metadata for path analysis of multiple people or can be used as a source of an alarm event. For example, when the same person is appearing in the view of the camera for a longer period of time, the camera would generate the warning alarm to indicate potential loitering.

Tracking as a Core Technology for Other Analytics
Several other analytics are based on tracking technology. For example, accumulated people counting, loitering detection, missing object detection, unattended object detection, wrong direction detection, and many other analytics are all based on tracking technology. The camera needs to be sure that the object accross multiple video frames is the same one; only then those value-added analytics will work correctly.

Applications

The tracking can be used to count the time duration of the target object and respond accordingly.

The tracking can also be used to analyze the direction of the path. A single path analysis can result in the instant alarm, for example a vehicle going in a wrong direction.

Multiple path analyses can be used to assess the dominant direction of the flow of the objects.

Features

• People Tracking in a Static View
• Vehicle Tracking in a Static View
• PTZ Auto Tracking
• Tracking Events and Metadata
• Tracking Assisted Value-Added AI Features

Solutions

In case of PTZ tracking, the camera works autonomously without the inputs from the NVR. NVR live view only sees the result. Therefore it can be used with any type of NVR, including ACTi's Linux-based and Windows-based NVR models.
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For the tracking path analysis there are two ways. One way is that the camera shows the bounding box around the object together with the assigned virtual ID or the camera also draws the tracking path as embedded video overlay and the NVR simply shows it as part of the incoming video stream. Alternatively, the camera can disable the indicators of the bounding box and the path on the top of its video stream and only sends the bounding box and the related ID metadata to the NVR, allowing NVR itself to draw the bounding box as well as the path if necessary.

Furthermore, when the tracking is associated with the event rule inside the camera, then the camera will send the event to ACTi's NVR and the NVR will handle the event with various response options.