The modern world is accustomed to regular updates and upgrades. With the fluctuating lockdowns and the chip shortage, right now is an excellent time for everyone to review and optimize their routines. In terms of CCTV software, upgrade the legacy software and enjoy all the benefits of modernizing the business processes.

Time to evolve!, says the leading-edge Evo product family.

Whazzup Man?

As the demand for CCTV grows exponentially across the globe, the traditional VMS ways are becoming obsolete. They cannot deliver the need for efficient yet simple management of large amounts of data. What's worse, they cannot turn data into information by design. On top of that, old VMS can barely handle the top-notch image resolution and have no idea how to process metadata. Up to some point, of course, all kinds of add-ons and plug-ins do the job, but one day you realize that your single IP camera is smarter than the whole DVR...

Let's study the evidence of the VMS evolution!

Performance

The amount of data in the world has just exploded. We need more storage, bandwidth, processing capabilities, and new hardware and software to deliver the corresponding level of performance. 640K is no more enough for anybody.

All Evo family products have been optimized for 64-bit performance, modern hardware, and OS. Hence a single server can handle more storage and more channels. Each machine also offers greater processing power, suggesting that a swarm of servers can assume the analytics processing for any streaming source. Alternatively, you can keep the power-intensive operations on edge and dedicate the server resources to pure recording. The latter might be considered a more modern approach, yet we argue that a truly modern way is to combine & conquer.

Evo Monitor offers video walls, convenient to set up, and hardware-transparent for the user for client workstations. On top of that, the latest Evo versions support GPU decoding on Intel, NVIDIA, and AMD graphics. With substream usage for live view, this guarantees even more channels for live view on the same workstations — even with the integrated graphics. Forget about hardware dependencies!

Integrations

Evo serves as a central hub connecting multilayer technologies. It brings thousands of IP cameras, smart sensors, industry devices, and IoT together with radar, lidar, and drone controllers, physical security solutions, parking management, and even know-your-customer solutions.

And, while one Luxriot developer team was working on the integrations, another one cooked the SDK! Now the ball is on your side. Access control, special purpose video or audio analytics, anything you need — you control how it works with Evo.

Video Analytics

Just like every year counts when you're a school kid, every following year is a leap in content analysis. We've replaced the legacy Open VCA has with a modern, CNN-based video analytics engine. It is built into Evo core so that when the time comes to modernize it, it will only incur a few changes on our side. Thus, the process will be painless and transparent for the end-user.

External to Evo but still in the family, there are traditional facial and license plate recognition services. These got some enhancements, too, to keep up with the trends; here are just a few highlights:

• neural networks VS obsolete algorithms​
• higher resolution image processing
• recognition attributes (e.g., face masks, temperature readings)
• convenient mass enrolment
• more flexible licensing options

Evo is also edge-friendly. Offload something to the camera side? Welcome! (Surely, you know the legacy VMS does not know anything about Profile T?) So, no matter if your metadata source is on edge, in the cloud, or on the same recording server - Evo collects everything from everyone and lets you create all-encompassing event scenarios with the conveniently transparent hardware level.

Scalability

Modern CCTV systems just snowball. Moreover, there is a clear tendency to merge and federate systems that used to be independent before. Example: city councils have their CCTV unified to build a county- or even country-level CCTV network. Such an approach multiplies the government CCTV facilities' efficiency and puts forward demands for the software. We are happy to comply:

• Not only is Evo Global designed to work with hundreds of servers, but it also makes it easy to turn a decentralized system (full of isolated servers) into a federated one.
• Evo supports virtualization and is ready for cloud solutions.
• Unified interface with virtually unlimited client connections, numerous integrations, including both in-house and SDK/API based.
• Whatever is not covered by these can be controlled using our latest CrossLink technology!

When it comes to upgrading the software, it is more than just a fresh UX and a bunch of new features. For many companies, the legacy CCTV solutions are holding them back from innovating or providing essential services, which have become the new standard. Evo software is built with the user in mind, and it breaks down the barriers the legacy system had. Not only it allows for easy integration with different level systems, but it is also a truly scalable solution. The upgrade can be done step-by-step and is less hurtful in terms of costs and deployment.

Data Integrity

Be it a tiny home CCTV box or an enterprise ecosystem, the most important thing about it is consistency. Corrupt data is of little use; compromised data is a potential threat. In case of any software-unrelated causes, Evo is designed to take care of everything:

• redundancy on all levels grants you the ultimate fault tolerance: fallback, failover, replication, mirroring are fancy words with clever mechanisms behind them
• system-wide health monitoring allows timely detection and correction of misbehavior, as well as notifications of your choice upon critical faults
• swift and reliable Evo Watchdog takes care of the server and client stability, reducing the amount of attention required to keep the system running
• proprietary archive structure ensures data integrity and high availability
• built-in watermark verification during playback​ guarantees that the archive is not altered, "photoshopped," or interfered with in any other manner
• watermark verification tool helps to verify the exported footage at any time

The proactive warning system in Evo Console will notify you when system configuration may potentially cause issues. For instance, it won't let you miss streams with a too low keyframes parameter: operators won't complain about stuttering during high-speed playback.

Cyber Security

At the very beginning of the century, people didn't pay due attention to security. Nowadays, encryption on every level is a must, even for deliberately isolated systems. Bound tightly to European security guidelines, we secure both data in transit & data at rest. Evo also provides profoundly detailed user management and comprehensive audit tools for controlling and reviewing the access. You choose what to protect — we provide corresponding instruments starting from archive password protection to custom HTTPS certificate support.

The Ease of use

Both administrator and operator will find Evo interfaces friendly and pleasant to the eye. It has two main applications with modern UX for interacting with the server contents. While Console is optimized for handling thousands of items, Evo Monitor, the thick client, makes finding the target evidence really easy and fast.

• Operators will love the motion-based Smart search and archive Sequencing, which requires no metadata at all.
• The new interactive Alarm Panel makes it easy to handle cases using advanced bookmarking.
• Interactive Geo and custom Maps allow creating proper control panels involving User Buttons, and channel shortcuts help create 3D navigation using plain video.

And, anyone can now adjust Evo looks to their taste using the Theme customization and hotkey assignment. Or are you more of a default colors' devotee?

The Power of Automation

Of course, the famous Events and Actions Configurator has been there for many years. But its power of automation and system interoperation has grown dramatically. Now E&A is a central hub connecting all systems and levels, hiding the low-level realization from the end-user. So what's in it for you?

• E&A is now optimized for the multiserver and multiclient environment
• More tools for building complex rules, including scheduling and event combinations
• You can use more sources for event triggering, such as edge analytics, FR, LPR, or access control events

Constant Development

[Un?]fortunately, we are saying goodbye to the good old VMS. On the plus side, we concentrate all our forces on supporting and updating the Evo product family. We will add more stuff and improve the existing things. The mobile app, as well as Mac and Web clients, will get their updates. ​Cloud features, updates for integrations and API, bug fixes, requested functions, and device support - this is only a small part of what's coming!

Hurry up — the special "transition" offer is limited!