Flexible management of video data archives

Axxon Next video management software provides new opportunities for managing the video recording archive. The user can create the needed number of video archival files (archives) of different sizes on the disks. For each camera, one or more archives can specified for recording of the video stream. Recording caused by different events (triggering of the video detector, security sensors, etc.) can be written to an archive with different settings. For example, one archive can perform continuous video recording at a low frame rate, and another, specially dedicated “alarm” archive, can record alarm events with a high frame rate. Recording in each archive is done on looping basis: the newest data is written in place of the oldest. The capabilities of archive management allow, for example, creating a separate archive of alarm events with extended retention time, in which the alarm events will be overwritten only by alarm events of similar importance, rather than by daily continuous recording, which may or may not contain useful information.

The user specifies the size archive of files at their creation. This allows the user to optimally allocate disk space and to create the necessary number of files with appropriate retention time for different types of records.

SolidStore – a new file system for reliable video storage

Fragmented files accumulate over time in the Windows file system. This is due to the fact that the operating system sequentially fills the free disk space when writing files. Free disk space, which appears when old files are deleted, can be located in different parts of the disk; therefore, each file can be split into many fragments. When reading or writing such a file, the hard drive head must constantly move, which reduces the read/write speed and causes mechanical wear of the disc.

AxxonSoft has developed its own file system SolidStore especially for storing video archives. The system is installed on a blank physical or logical drive, which is fully allocated to Axxon Next video archive. In developing SolidStore, it was taken into account that recording will only be sequenced in one direction (looping mode), and the newest data is written in place of the oldest. By optimizing the reading/writing process we managed to minimize the travel of the hard disk head along its surface and to achieve three important advantages:

  • Enable high read/write speeds, approaching the physical access speed limit of the hard disk.
  • Increase the service life of the hard disk.
  • Solve the problem of data fragmentation: as data is written only in looping mode, fragmentation is minimal and does not accumulate with time. This way, the read/write speed remains high throughout the operation of the video surveillance system.

SolidStore relieves the user from the need to periodically stop the video surveillance system and run the Disk Defragmenter tool. This significantly increases video surveillance uptime and the protected facilities remain under the watchful eyes of the security personnel.

If it is not possible to allocate a separate disk for Axxon Next video archive, it can be written as a regular file in the existing Windows file system.

VMDA – a database for storing scene descriptions

The Axxon Next video management software (VMS) utilizes VMDA – a database developed by AxxonSoft for indexing and storing descriptions of observed scenes. Along with video recording, this database allows archiving characteristics of all moving objects in the scene, and then uses these characteristics to perform quick searches of the video recordings (MomentQuest2 technology).

Export of video and snapshots

Axxon Next offers several features that make it easy to export and digitally watermark surveillance video.

Automatic export of snapshots allows saving snapshots of video in .jpeg format to a selected folder when the snapshot feature is used during Live Video mode.

Digital hash watermarks are automatically embedded in exported video fragments and snapshots. Axxon Next includes a built-in utility for verifying digital hashes in video and snapshots. This pair of features allows verifying the authenticity of video exported from Axxon Next.

User can add text comments to exported videos. When the video is viewed, the comments are shown as captions.