News

ViewCast Simplifies Security and Surveillance With Practical, Powerful New CCTV System (27/2/2004)

Osprey-based i Catcher CCTV system offers affordable, high-quality solution for home and business security and monitoring applications

ViewCast Corporation (VCST.OB), a leading global provider of high-quality video communications for businesses and media enterprises, is offering a powerful yet affordable CCTV solution that enables easy installation of security, surveillance, and monitoring systems in home and small-business environments. Bundling ViewCast's award-winning Osprey video capture card with i-Catcher software, ViewCast provides a cost-effective solution featuring versatile surveillance abilities and alerting functions that typically are found only in the most advanced security solutions.

"Implementation of security and surveillance systems has become a must in today's society, offering a great many benefits -- disaster prevention, theft deterrent, and piece of mind -- too significant to be overlooked," said George Platt, president and CEO of ViewCast. "i-Catcher provides a practical, cost-effective means of implementing a CCTV system based on common video, computer, and networking resources, and the system's activity alerts and remote access to video images are among a variety of powerful tools that can help to ensure the safety and security of home and business."

The new i-Catcher software solution operates in conjunction with a home or office PC, a suitable camera, and ViewCast's Osprey video capture cards to provide users with an easy-to-install surveillance system ideal for home security and surveillance, data center monitoring, business and retail security and surveillance, wildlife monitoring, and nursery monitoring.

ViewCast's line of Osprey capture cards is the de facto standard in the streaming media industry. Osprey video cards capture and digitize full-motion video, with flexible control functions managed by i-Catcher software's three key elements: i-Catcher Sentry, i-Catcher Video Server, and i-Catcher Console.

i-Catcher Sentry constantly compares images received from the connected camera, using advanced motion-detection techniques to sense activity. When activity is identified, the system begins to capture images to disk for later review. Sensitivity controls and user-defined masks help to eliminate spurious motion detection, sophisticated alerting functions can send captured images by email or upload them to a Web site for remote viewing, and flexible recording configurations allow the system to operate as a Web cam or in time-lapse mode, or to operate during specific times or dates.

i-Catcher Video Server works directly with multi-port Osprey video capture cards to allow a single computer to function as the source for up to 16 video feeds. The system also takes advantage of Osprey video card features, such as differing image sizes, video signal formats, interlaced/non-interlaced images, and brightness and contrast, and because it runs transparently and is not bound to any particular Internet address or host port, it will not conflict with users' existing software.

i-Catcher Console enables users to view feeds from multiple cameras simultaneously. Feeds from one or more i-Catcher clients are displayed together on the console PC, which typically runs one screen for feeds and a second for playback windows. The console allows data from many cameras to be collated, stored, and then retrieved for playback. Other features such as loop playback make the i-Catcher Console the perfect choice for a system monitored by a security guard or production manager.

www.viewcast.com