IndigoVision Audio Broadcast Facilities

IndigoVision, the leading manufacturer of complete IP security solutions, has added advanced audio broadcast facilities to its latest release of ‘Control Center’, the company’s Security Management Software (SMS). Speakers directly connected to IndigoVision transmitter/receiver modules and IP cameras can be allocated to ‘PA Groups’. Manual and pre-recorded voice messages can then be broadcast over the IP network to a specific group of speakers.

This new release allows full IP-based Public Address (PA) functionality to be integrated into the CCTV system, producing significant cost savings compared to using a separate PA system. As an example the cost savings and flexibility of this approach has been demonstrated in schools. Here a pre-recorded message of a class-change bell is broadcast to all speakers at regular intervals throughout the day. Staff can also manually transmit a live message to one or more specific speakers in response to an incident viewed on the CCTV, warning students of their actions.

Audio is streamed in high-fidelity using full-duplex MPEG-4 Advanced Audio Encoding (ACC). The audio is fully-synchronised with the video, which is an important factor in law enforcement applications. Recording and exporting evidential interview video where there is no lip-sync delay is a fundamental requirement. IndigoVision’s integrated audio facilities have also been widely used in IP Video Intercoms and Help Points located in city centre public areas, which allow two-way audio and video communication over an IP network. As with the video, the advanced compression used on the audio stream ensures minimum bandwidth and storage requirement and allows full framerate video and audio to easily be transmitted across wireless networks.

This latest release of ‘Control Center’ also includes a number of other enhancements, including Spot Monitor Incident Export. This allows the video displayed on a Spot Monitor to be recorded and then viewed or exported as a single clip. This can be used for evidential purposes as the Spot Monitor would typically be tracking an incident or as an audit trail to analyse an operator’s response to an incident.