One of the most important abilities of a video surveillance system is exporting videos. Undoubtedly if you have a surveillance system, you had exported video before or at least tried. Every system is different, and some systems are better than others. When reviewing features of competing video surveillance systems, the importance of the exporting process is often overlooked. Some things to consider when comparing export features between systems are digital signature & encryption, proprietary video player availability, password protected export, and the ability to prevent re-export. I will explain the differences between these and how you may use them.

Proprietary Video Player

I am typically not a fan of proprietary software, but there is a good reason to export video that will only play with a special player. By exporting video as an AVI or MPEG, it is essentially viewable from any computer with no special software. When a video clip has to be exported, and it does not require any privacy or protection against video tampering, then an AVI would be an acceptable method. If there is an incident where the video has privacy concerns or may be used as evidence, then using the proprietary video player becomes mandatory. A standard video file format such as AVI was never designed to include any special features such as password protection, digital signature nor encryption. Because of this, a special player has to be exported with the video to enable these important features.

Digital Signature & Encryption

Enabling digital signature and encryption forces the VMS (video management system) to do an additional task when exporting video. It will create a digital signature of the video using a hash algorithm and store the digital signature with the video. When the exported video is being used as evidence by a police officer or judge a manual verification of the video can be done to check for video tampering. To use this function, a password must also be set to the video.

Password Protected Export

Password protecting a video export is another feature that can protect the exported data. It will ensure that export video is viewed by who it is intended for. You can password protect video while not having to have digital signature & encryption enabled.

Prevent Re-export

Preventing re-export will stop someone from re-exporting the video from within your original exported video file. This may be necessary to further protect the video evidence.

The features outlined above are very powerful and can be used to allow video to hold up in court. Depending on what you may be using video surveillance for, it may be worth making sure the surveillance system you currently own or looking to purchase will support these features. It may be the difference between winning and losing a lawsuit.