When high video quality is decisive
Law enforcement decision support and evidence
Imagine that a swat team is being guided by HQ based on their bodycam video feeds as they run into a room filled with armed criminals. Being able to pinpoint the identities and positions of everyone in the room as quickly as possible can be the difference between life and death. What happens if a hidden opponent goes undetected or a hostage is mistaken for one of the captors in the heat of the moment?
Security camera feeds can also be used for live surveillance and for analysis and evidence after the fact. What if you’re analyzing the surveillance footage and miss an important detail because of poor video quality? Or what if you’re trying to identify a criminal but the image is incredibly fuzzy just like on TV shows such as America’s Most Wanted?
However, you don’t necessarily want permanently enhanced video quality in law enforcement. Enhanced video feeds with special lighting, zoom, object tracking, image stabilization and similar finesses may be useful out in the field in the moment., But they could end up making a video seem less authentic in court after the fact. Remember that lawyers must establish the relevance and authenticity of video evidence or else it can’t be used.
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution for law enforcement video feeds – sharpened video in the heat of the moment can save lives while raw, authentic footage can be decisive evidence for trials later.
Wildfire big picture and small details
Imagine that you’re using drones to monitor rapidly spreading wildfires that pose a significant danger to life and property, like Australia 2020, California 2018 or Sweden 2014. There could be multiple fires and obtaining a complete picture of all affected areas and where the fires are spreading can be absolutely critical information. If you can’t coordinate and compile the video feeds from multiple drones, how will you see the big picture? This goes a long way toward supporting key decisions like evacuations and the deployment of firefighting resources.
Although multiple drones at high altitudes may be useful for completing the big picture, being able to pick up on small details in that big picture is also critical. What if you miss a person surrounded by the fires in need of rescuing? A human watching shaky video might miss important details like this without video stabilization, automatic identification of humans and object tracking. Additionally, we should not forget about the negative impact on employee health and engagement from watching too much shaky video.
Effectively monitoring wildfires with drones requires both a coordinated overall view of multiple video feeds and the ability to identify and track details that appear very small in the overall view, like people in danger.
Learn how to offer better video quality
Even if your specific business case is not as dramatic as putting bad guys behind bars or monitoring wildfires to save lives, better video quality can be a game changer. Perhaps your drones need to take the perfect pictures of a house for realtors. Or maybe your action camera needs to be better at capturing just the right parts of your customers’ adventures. High video quality means tailoring your video feed to your use case. As a result, it can be vastly different depending on what your footage is used for.