Making the most of visual tracking in Security Center - Security Center 5.8

About visual tracking

With visual tracking, you can follow an individual in live or playback mode from camera to camera through your facility.

Benefits

Visual tracking saves you time and simplifies monitoring and investigation tasks. You can follow someone quickly without losing time looking for the right camera to switch to. You do not have to remember all the camera names in your system because the cameras are linked together.

Some other advantages of linking cameras are:

Training new operators quickly.
Reducing operator stress during high-alert situations.

Common use cases

Some common use cases for visual tracking are:

Following suspects: Following a suspect in real time or in playback mode after an incident has occurred.
Guard tours: Conducting manual guard tours at your own pace.
Exit routes: Monitoring individuals as they exit a building.
Visitor escorts: Tracking visitors and their escorts through your facility.
Business processes: Monitoring individuals during a money collection and distribution route in a casino.
Loading docks: Following goods as they are received and unloaded.

How it works

When you turn on visual tracking using the feet icon () in Security Desk, colored shapes are displayed on the video image, according to how they are configured. Each shape corresponds to another camera field of view that you can switch to by clicking it. If more than one camera is associated with a shape, a list of camera names is shown when you click the shape.

When you hover your mouse pointer over a shape, you can see a preview of the next camera image.

Tip: You can press Ctrl+Shift+F to turn on visual tracking for all cameras that are displayed in the canvas.

Watch this video to learn more.

Visual tracking example for large areas

This is a sample configuration that uses the same visual tracking layout for multiple cameras on your system. This unique way of using visual tracking can be helpful for scenarios at larger facilities, such as a distribution route for a casino, a guard tour, or monitoring at a mall.

Here is the visual tracking configuration from Config Tool:

Select the Ellipse () drawing tool and add a circle on the video image.
Apply 45% opacity and add a white border with a thickness of 20 points.
Create eight identical circles by copying and pasting the first circle. Place the eight circles in the corners, top, bottom, and sides of the image.
Align the center-top and center-bottom circles using X coordinate 430.
Align the center-left and center-right circles using Y coordinate 234.
Set the color for each circle (for example, PTZ cameras in the top corners in yellow, exit cameras on the sides in red, and so on).

Tip: You can apply this configuration to one camera and show it to your end users as an example while discussing their visual tracking requirements.

A photo of monitoring a mall using visual tracking in Config Tool.

Benefit of the sample configuration

When you copy the visual tracking configuration to other cameras in your facility, you can keep the same layout on each video image. Keeping the same layout helps you know exactly where to click to switch to the nearest PTZ camera, the next camera in the distribution route, and so on.