A giant quickly & competitively enters a new market

In the Spring of 2005, through a partner, an industry giant contracted JDL to develop a video surveillance solution on its widely adopted industrial-grade platform.

JDL’s solution leveraged the platform's high performance and density, small footprint, low power consumption, and centralized management and enabled the company to competitively enter the security and surveillance video integration market without a long development cycle with a competitive solution.

JDL was able to overcome hardware challenges and management challenges stemming from small server dimensions and density within a chassis. JDL engineered a customized solution within two months, optimizing the software and SDK to support an onboard 8M video card, providing a seamless custom video management suite, and redesigning an 8-channel video encoder to support 16 channels without exceeding the physical dimension of the server side card. The result was an industrial powerhouse that set a new standard for video surveillance recording.

The solution can simultaneously record 224 cameras of high-quality video at 30 frames per second— a staggering 6720 fps on the server. Due to efficient hardware compression and the most advanced H.264 video algorithm, a small file size reduces storage cost and enables the system to record more and longer. The system moves the video compression from the host CPU to specialized hardware and runs cooler and more efficiently than competing systems. With average 5% CPU usage in the system, users can perform many additional tasks such as video analysis.

Since 2006, the solution powered by JDL has been deployed in many corporate centers, government facilities, museums and casinos  around the country.

Enabling better forensic analysis

Hie Electronics contracted with JDL to build advanced video capture, search and forensic capabilities for Hie’s next-generation video surveillance solution, which went on to win of Frost & Sullivan’s 2007 Product Innovation of the Year Award (North American Video Surveillance).

“Hie Electronics' TeraStack solution offers users an efficient way of storing video evidence on to multiple DVDs, rather than having a hard drive which overwrites data when it is at capacity,” explains John Zhu, JDL’s President. “And with JDL-engineered custom video management software for the solution, through small video index files on the fly and find specific security events by calling for high resolution video stored on-line, near-line, or off-line.”

"JDL is great to work with," said Pat Humm, CEO of Hie Electronics. "Our HieDVR branded product combined with the Hie Electronics' TeraStack Solution is going to start a revolution by being the solution for long-term, low-cost video surveillance storage. Video archiving is no longer a bottleneck for the video surveillance industry. Using the HieDVR forensic analysis over long periods is now a reality."

As the physical security and IT markets converge with the adoption of IP technologies, Hie Electronics continues to partner with JDL to provide solutions that address evolving user needs for lower storage costs, smaller storage footprint, more powerful search features, and IP integration with analog systems.

A state-of-the art video system to go
with a state-of-the-art surveillance room

A casino in Washington needed to replace its video surveillance system, which consisted of banks of industrial VCRs, matrix switches and underperforming digital recording equipment.

The system JDL is building for this casino will use 24-channel, 4CIF hybrid DVRs with H.264 compression, managed by an Enterprise Management Server and DVR Manager software. The technology by JDL integrates directly with the casino's American Dynamics matrix. A virtual matrix will be custom-integrated for the video wall in the Surveillance Suite. Point-of-sale data will be integrated using the JDL POS client. Video to be retained for long-term storage will be managed by the Automatic Archive Video Manager which integrates closely with the Incident Reporting system.

Multi-view workstations provide operators with an adaptable, high-resolution viewing experience featuring real–time, multi-image video display of both live and recorded images.

The casino had looked at a great many competing systems over three years, trying to find a replacement for their VCR recording system. JDL’s products met their criteria for performance, features and adaptability. Decision-makers at the casino determined that JDL's was the most competitve solution available to them based on the following differentiations:

1. JDL is using the most up-to-date codec available for compressing analog video
   
   
2. JDL systems integrate with today’s IP cameras, and additional integrations are continually being added to the system. The casino was impressed that additional modules they wanted to integrate were already part of the system, integrated into the same workstations the operators used for all other functions. The fact that JDL had the stability and experience necessary to partner on all future projects was also important.
   
   
3. JDL’s ability to provide custom integration was very appealing. JDL was willing to offer its POS system (which integrates real-time video to all register transactions) integrated to the register system of the casino’s choice. JDL is able to integrate analog, serial, or digital data systems that are known today and others that are yet to come. Because JDL designs and compiles the code for their systems in-house, it is a partner able to to provide rapid fixes and feature enhancements. JDL customers don’t have to delay critical component changes, waiting for new software releases from third-party developers.
   
   
4. The casino also expected to need other custom integrations to fit the way their internal systems work. The casino and didn’t want to have to purchase ill-fitting software to meet those needs. This was another differentiating factor for JDL’s system.
   
   
5. The casino felt confident they would be able to receive a high level of support and training from JDL now and into the future. They liked that JDL's systems are backed by a 3-year warranty through one of the largest computer builders in the industry; JDL offers much better and quicker warranty support than many competitors.
   
   
6. JDL addressed the casino staff’s concern that any video system they would purchase today would soon become yesterday’s technology. They feel assured that the up-to-date system JDL provides today will allow them to integrate the technologies of tomorrow as they become available and the casino decides to adopt them. The assurance that JDL is a company heavy on developers actively developing new technologies according to a strategic product development road map — not resting or bringing old and dated technology to the market — helped to allay fears of spending millions of dollars today just to have to make a similar expenditure in a few years.
   

The casino chose JDL’s video surveillance products because they offer unprecedented performance and value: Superior video with comprehensive enterprise management capabilities on a future-proof open platform at a competitive price.

Reinvention over replacement

An Arizona casino with DVRs in place was facing exploding storage room costs. JDL was able to retrofit their existing servers with higher storage capacity and hardware encoding to achieve a much higher density recording — they were able to retain their existing boxes and save money while avoiding having to expand their server room space.

Cameras in command

A prominent metropolitan museum with assets valued into the billions was experiencing poor PTZ camera performance — in an all-PTZ security environment. JDL replaced their limited-integration Honeywell systems with a system that gave them world-class protection through full control over their PTZs.

A boost into the future

A shopping mall in Portland with over 250 cameras needed to upgrade from a legacy system due to problems arising from poor Client integration and a need for IP camera integration. JDL provided a solution that gave them everything they wanted on its robust, extensible, future-proof platform.