The growth of megapixel cameras emphasizes the need for higher quality images but it can overwhelm typical storage designs.
A west coast transportation and storage company uses megapixel cameras and the latest NVR technology to catch and prevent thousands of dollars in theft while achieving total system payback in less than 180 days.
     
Certified Towing has successfully implemented a high resolution surveillance system using TimeSight Systems’ Video Lifecycle Management (VLM) appliance with the latest megapixel cameras from IQinVision to protect millions of dollars in vehicle storage value. The solution enabled the deployment of high-resolution video surveillance at a fraction of the storage costs of traditional DVR and NVR systems.  With a single appliance, Certified Towing protects a large amount of cars with a small amount of storage.

Over the course of the past year, Certified Towing had two security incidents that required review of the video captured by the solution. In both incidents, the design played a significant role in helping solve the crime.
     
“By using an intelligent video solution with quality megapixel images, it was easy to research specific times and camera angles,” said Darrell Wells, owner of Certified Towing. “In one instance, we had to review three months of stored video. We were able to retain a large quantity of 3 megapixel digital video files. The video evidence ultimately led to confessions and the police, who were impressed with the ease of operation and usability of the images, arrested the perpetrators of the crimes. The amount of property recovered along with future deterrence has enabled us to pay for the system in less than six months.”
     
Featuring H.264 compression, the solution automatically reduces the size of Certified Towing’s video surveillance files over time as risk is reduced. This allows the company to make use of today’s cost-effective, high quality megapixel security images that provide an extraordinary level of details for better protection of people and property, while maintaining video surveillance data for many months in the event that it’s needed later.  It is not uncommon for Certified Towing to keep vehicles and property on site well over 30 days, making retention of quality video a must.

Certified Towing is in the business of safely and securely transporting and storing vehicles.  The cars and trucks can range from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars in value.  The company makes money by safely storing lots of automobiles, not lots of video security data.
     
“Certified Towing can now use new high resolution cameras to eliminate all grainy video, better identify events such as accidents or vandalism through improved quality and retention times, all with reduced storage costs,” added Wells. “We’ve looked carefully at the alternatives, and they all require 6-8 times more video disk space to achieve the quality and retention we need.”
     
The company reduced risk through higher video quality and increased retention times, while needing only a very small storage footprint. Wells commented on the company’s ability to reduce risk and storage costs over time, “I was pleasantly surprised to see quickly we were leveraging cost-effective, high quality images.”