Rimage System Delivers a Long-term Solution for Surveillance Data Archiving
“The Rimage Solution has allowed us to quickly and easily produce a professional looking product that we know is defect free for outside agencies to use.”
Customer
London United Busways
Challenge
- A solution to produce evidence in a stable format that met the needed standards for investigations of the Crown Prosecution Service
- A unit that would fully integrate into a complete archival process
Solution
- Rimage Professional Series System
- Perennity Archive Software
- MSN Disc Jukebox
A detective within a large Metro Police Department performs a valuable and unique service: the processing and storing of video and other forms of surveillance. “My role is to provide technical surveillance, whether it is video surveillance, photography, or other forms of information,” he said. “We usually have 15 to 35 active investigations that are using surveillance gear to obtain intelligence or obtain evidence to assist a prosecution.”
The detective faces many of the same challenges as other law enforcement agencies: switching from antiquated VHS tapes and paper records to digital storage like DVDs and Blu-ray DiscsTM. The increased workload led him to seek out a more efficient solution for the department.
“The Rimage Solution has allowed us to quickly and easily produce a professional looking product that we know is defect free for outside agencies to use.”
Martin Davis, CCTV manager of the London United Busways.
The Challenge
Martin Davis is the CCTV manager of London United Busways. It is his job to manage all aspects of the CCTV systems fitted to the buses. “I am responsible for the maintenance and the production of footage used for evidence in the court system and also the cataloging of footage archiving,” said Martin. “The department normally processes 400 to 500 requests monthly of footage from these buses, for accident analysis, police investigations, staff assaults, and other investigations.” In addition, he must catalog and archive all the information for future distribution and reference. The maintenance of the footage and requests for specific footage as well as the archival process was taking him a great deal of time.
With the increasing number of requests for footage, the department needed a solution to produce evidence in a stable format and to meet the standards needed for investigations for the Crown Prosecution Service. The department also needed a long-term solution to archive and distribute the large amount of optical media used for investigations. They needed a process that allowed them to burn media, assign a unique reference number, label the disc and catalog the contents. As the request for recorded footage grew to 500 requests per month, the department found that manually producing media footage discs and entering the data into spreadsheets became impractical and time consuming.
The Solution
The department installed an integrated package of the Rimage Professional System, Perrenity Archiving Software, and NSM Disc Juke Box. The systems were connected to their LAN system, automating both their production of discs for evidence and the archiving and retrieval of footage. The Rimage system replaced the department’s outdated storage system. The department started recording evidence to DVDs, and then it progressed to Blu-ray Discs™.
The Results
The integrated solution resulted in a streamlined workflow and a professional-looking finished product. By integrating the Rimage system into the LAN, the department could remotely access data and quickly produce archived discs with printed permanent labels, produced in a manner suitable for exhibition in court. The Rimage system was the only unit the department found to fully integrate into a complete archival process. After installing the Rimage system, Martin can now concentrate on his core job of analyzing CCTV footage, rather than spending time manually burning and labeling discs. The Rimage integrated system has saved time and allows the department to implement a streamlined process for their surveillance data archiving. “The Rimage solution has allowed us to quickly and easily produce a professional looking product that we know is defect-free for outside agencies to use,” said Martin, “and it also has saved us valuable time and resources to focus on other tasks at hand.”