Most retailers have video surveillance installed in their stores. Frequently, however, these systems become passive tools for documenting theft after it occurs, because no loss prevention investigator can be aware of all suspicious activity at all times. Thus, they’re often capturing footage but not catching the thief. Video analytics has offered a solution to solve this problem—using a computer to help the investigator monitor the store.
Traditional video analytics—using simple motiondetection algorithms—hasn’t proven valuable in busy retail environments. A simple motion-based alert on an expensive handbag or other high-theft merchandise will generate too many false alarms as people walk between the bag and the camera. At the same time, traditional DVR technology requires hours, or even days, to pull all of the video together to accurately document a case.
More recently, new video intelligence solutions have been developed to deal with these problems. Leading video analytics solutions can distinguish between people and merchandise movement and focus on truly suspicious activity, like a shelf wipeout. In addition, video intelligence solutions combine these analytics with tools that make it quick and easy for an investigator to track a suspect across cameras in a store, build an end-to-end evidence movie and export that evidence, along with case notes and mug shots, for sharing internally or with law enforcement. These same solutions marry the video with feeds from point-of-sale registers and customer service call buttons to simplify internal investigations. In this way, the video intelligence solution does more than just generate a list of alarms; it actually helps make every step in the theft identification/investigation process more effective and efficient.
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