Glossary

A security system that controls the entering of persons, vehicles, or others into a building or area.

Log entries added by the VMS that describe users' activities in the VMS.

A feature that improves the video decoding capability and thereby the general performance of the computer running XProtect Smart Client or another video viewing client.

Incident defined on surveillance system to trigger an alarm in XProtect Smart Client. If your organization uses the feature, triggered alarms are displayed in views that contain alarm lists or maps.

The automatic transfer of recordings from a camera’s default database to another location. This way, the amount of recordings you are able to store will not be limited by the size of the camera’s default database. Archiving also makes it possible to back up your recordings on backup media of your choice.

Height/width relationship of an image.

A popular file format for video. Files in this format carry the .avi file extension.

An important point in a video recording, marked and optionally annotated so that you and your colleagues will easily be able to find it later.

A person that possesses a card that is recognizable to an access control system and gives access to one or more areas, buildings or similar. See also access control.

A particular position for viewing video from several cameras, one after the other, in a view in XProtect Smart Client.

a grouping of devices or plug-in elements – or a combination - on the smart map displayed visually as a circular icon with a number. Clusters appear on certain zoom levels indicating the number of devices or plug-in elements within a particular geographical area.

A technology for compressing and decompressing audio and video data, for example in an exported AVI file.

Short for "central processing unit", the component in a computer that runs the operating system and applications.

A user-defined, graphic element that users can add to a smart map, for example to illustrate a floor plan in a building, or to mark borders between regions. A custom overlay can be an image, a CAD drawing, or a shapefile.

A deadzone determines how much a joystick handle should be allowed to move before information is sent to the system. Ideally, a joystick handle should be completely vertical when not used, but many joystick handles lean at a slight angle. When joysticks are used for controlling PTZ cameras, even a slightly slanting joystick handle could cause PTZ cameras to move when it is not required. Being able to configure deadzones is therefore often desirable.

A Windows extension providing advanced multimedia capabilities.

A temporary list of uninterrupted periods of recordings with video and possibly audio. The user adds the different sequences to the draft sequence list as the first step of 1) creating a new incident project and adding the sequences to the new project or 2) adding the sequences to an existing incident project.

A predefined incident occurring on the surveillance system; used by the surveillance system for triggering actions. Depending on surveillance system configuration, events may be caused by input from external sensors, by detected motion, by data received from other applications, or manually through user input. The occurrence of an event could, for example, be used for making a camera record with a particular frame rate, for activating outputs, for sending e-mails, or for a combination thereof.

A video sequence that is protected, so it cannot be deleted.

An external entity that can be associated with the XProtect VMS to manage user identity information and provide user authentication services to the VMS.

Short for "Federal Information Processing Standards".

A U.S. government standard that defines the critical security parameters that vendors must use for encryption before selling the software or hardware to U.S. government agencies.

A lens that allows the creation and viewing of 360° panoramic images.

Frames Per Second, a measure indicating the amount of information contained in video. Each frame represents a still image, but when frames are displayed in succession the illusion of motion is created. The higher the FPS, the smoother the motion will appear. Note, however, that a high FPS may also lead to a large file size when video is saved.

A measure indicating the amount of information contained in motion video. Typically measured in FPS (Frames Per second).

Group Of Pictures; individual frames grouped together, forming a video motion sequence.

Short for "graphics processing unit", which is a processor designed to handle graphics operations.

A compression standard for digital video. Like MPEG, the standard uses lossy compression.

A particular view item for viewing magnified and/or high quality camera images in XProtect Smart Client views.

Short name for intraframe. Used in the MPEG standard for digital video compression, an I-frame is a single frame stored at specified intervals. The I-frame records the entire view of the camera, whereas the following frames (P-frames) record only the pixels that change. This helps greatly reduce the size of MPEG files. An I-frame is similar to a keyframe.

A negative or dangerous act or situation that could lead to damage to, loss of, or disruption to an organization's staff, properties, operations, services, or functions.

Optional details about an incident. With categories, you can add more granular information about an incident. Examples of incident categories are: the location of the incident, the number of accomplices, and if the authorities were called.

Activities of an organization to identify, document, handle, and analyze incidents in order to rectify situations with negative implications quickly and to prevent future re-occurrences. See also incident.

A project in which the data about an incident is stored. The data can be video, audio, comments, incident categories, and other data. The operator adds the comments and selects relevant incident characteristics to an incident project in XProtect Smart Client. In Management Client, the system administrator defines which incident characteristics are available for the operators when creating incident projects.

A wide range of data you can define for an incident project: categories, status, type, and others

A detail about an incident. With incident statuses, you can track the investigation progress of incidents. Examples of incident statuses are: New, In progress, On hold, Closed

A detail about an incident. With a type, you categorize what kind of incident it is. Examples of incident types are: Theft, Car accident, Trespassing.

An image compression method, also known as JPG or Joint Photographic Experts Group. The method is a so-called lossy compression, meaning that some image detail will be lost during compression. Images compressed this way have become generically known as JPGs or JPEGs.

Used in the standard for digital video compression, such as MPEG, a keyframe is a single frame stored at specified intervals. The keyframe records the entire view of the camera, whereas the following frames record only the pixels that change. This helps greatly reduce the size of MPEG files. A keyframe is similar to an i-frame.

The geographic background on a smart map, a custom overlay, or a system element, for example a camera. Layers are all the graphic elements that exist on the smart map.

Short for "license plate recognition".

Media Access Control address, a 12-character hexadecimal number uniquely identifying each device on a network.

1) XProtect Smart Client feature for using maps, floor plans, photos, etc. for navigation and status visualization. 2) The actual map, floor plan, photo, etc. used in a view.

A product integrated into some surveillance systems, which enables the control of live camera views on remote computers for distributed viewing. Computers on which you can view Matrix-triggered video are known as Matrix-recipients.

Computer on which you can view Matrix-triggered video.

Short for "Milestone Integration Platform".

A plug-in element added through the MIP SDK.

Short for "Milestone Integration Platform software development kit".

Short for "Matroska Video". An MKV file is a video file saved in the Matroska multimedia container format. It supports several types of audio and video codecs.

A group of compression standards and file formats for digital video, developed by the Moving Pictures Experts Group (MPEG). MPEG standards use so-called lossy compression as they store only the changes between keyframes, removing often considerable amounts of redundant information: Keyframes stored at specified intervals record the entire view of the camera, whereas the following frames record only pixels that change. This helps greatly reduce the size of MPEG files.

A professional user of an XProtect client application.

Data going out of a computer. On IP surveillance systems, output is frequently used for activating devices such as gates, sirens, strobe lights, and more.

A button appearing as a layer on top of the video when you move your mouse cursor over individual view items with cameras when in live mode. Use overlay buttons to activate speakers, events, output, move PTZ cameras, start recording, clear signals from cameras.

Short name for predictive frame. The MPEG standard for digital video compression uses P-frames together with I-frames. An I-frame, also known as a keyframe, is a single frame stored at specified intervals. The I-frame records the entire view of the camera, whereas the following frames (the P-frames) record only the pixels that change. This helps greatly reduce the size of MPEG files.

Small groups of buttons, fields and more located in the left side of the XProtect Smart Client window. Panes give you access to the majority of the XProtect Smart Client features. Exactly which panes you see depends on your configuration and on your task, for example on whether you are viewing live video when in live mode or recorded video when in playback mode.

The exact definition of how patrolling with a PTZ camera is carried out, including the sequence for moving between preset positions, timing settings, etc. Also known as a "patrol scheme".

A logical endpoint for data traffic. Networks use different ports for different types of data traffic. Therefore, it is sometimes, but not always, necessary to specify which port to use for particular data communication. Most ports are used automatically based on the types of data included in the communication. On TCP/IP networks, port numbers range from 0 to 65536, but only ports 0 to 1024 are reserved for particular purposes. For example, port 80 is used for HTTP traffic which is used when viewing web pages.

Short for "Point of Sale" and typically refers to a cash register or cashier counter in a retail shop or store.

Can be used for making the PTZ camera automatically move in different defined directions when particular events occur, and for specifying PTZ patrolling profiles.

A blurred or solid color that covers an area of the video in the camera view. The defined areas are blurred or covered in live, playback, hotspot, carousel, smart map, smart search, and export modes in the clients.

Pan-tilt-zoom; a highly movable and flexible type of camera.

The automatic turning of a PTZ camera between a number of preset positions.

A video resolution of 320×240 pixels. QVGA stands for "Quarter Video Graphics Array" and is named as such because the resolution 320×240 pixels is a quarter of the size of the standard VGA resolution which is 640×480 pixels.

In IP video surveillance systems, the term recording means saving video and, if applicable, audio from a camera in a database on the surveillance system. In many IP surveillance systems, all of the video/audio received from cameras is not necessarily saved. Saving of video and audio in is in many cases started only when there is a reason to do so, for example when motion is detected, when a particular event occurs, or when a specific period of time begins. Recording is then stopped after a specified amount of time, when motion is no longer detected, when another event occurs or similar. The term recording originates from the analog world, where video/audio was not taped until the record button was pressed.

File extension (.scs) for a script type targeted at controlling XProtect Smart Client.

The Sequence Explorer lists thumbnail images representing recorded sequences from an individual camera or all cameras in a view. The fact that you can compare the thumbnail images side-by-side, while navigating in time simply by dragging the thumbnail view, enables you to very quickly assess large numbers of sequences and identify the most relevant sequence, which you can then immediately play back.

A list of uninterrupted periods of recordings with video and possibly audio originating from the XProtect VMS.

A map functionality that uses a geographic information system to visualize devices (for example, cameras and microphones), structures, and topographical elements of a surveillance system in geographically accurate, real-world imagery. Maps that use elements of this functionality are called smart maps.

A search feature that lets you find video with motion in one or more selected areas of recordings from one or more cameras.

A graphical representation of a video wall that allows you to control what is displayed on the different monitors.

A predefined layout for one or more Smart Wall monitors in XProtect Smart Client. Presets determine which cameras are displayed, and how content is structured on each monitor on the video wall.

An instant capture of a frame of video at a given time.

A single still image.

Transmission Control Protocol; a protocol (i.e. standard) used for sending data packets across networks. TCP is often combined with another protocol, IP (Internet Protocol). The combination, known as TCP/IP, allows data packets to be sent back and forth between two points on a network for longer periods of time, and is used when connecting computers and other devices on the Internet.

Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol; a combination of protocols (i.e. standards) used when connecting computers and other devices on networks, including the Internet.

A collection of video from one or more cameras, presented together in XProtect Smart Client. A view may include other content than video from cameras, such as HTML pages and still images. A view can be private (only visible by the user who created it) or shared with other users.

Video Motion Detection. In IP video surveillance systems, recording of video is often started by detected motion. This can be a great way of avoiding unnecessary recordings. Recording of video can of course also be started by other events, and/or by time schedules.

Short for "Video Management Software".

Product available as an add-on to XProtect surveillance systems. With XProtect Incident Manager, you can document and manage incidents within XProtect Smart Client.

Product available as an add-on to surveillance systems. With XProtect Transact, you can combine video with time-linked Point of Sale (PoS) or ATM transaction data.