What is intelligent video analytics software?

It’s hardly news that artificial intelligence (AI) and other analytics are transforming many aspects of our work lives. But you may be surprised by the dramatic ways intelligent video analytics can enhance surveillance and operational systems.

Intelligent video analytics software uses AI, including machine learning and computer vision, to analyze video footage. It extracts metadata about objects, activities, and events, making video searchable, actionable, and quantifiable. 

This kind of analytics transforms passive surveillance into real-time intelligence. Security teams can prevent threats and predict patterns, not just react to events. And that goes far beyond security.

Essentially, intelligent video analytics let operators:

• Shift from reactive to proactive   
  Intelligent video analytics transforms surveillance systems into proactive tools that detect threats, anomalies, and patterns. Security teams can move from just reacting to threats to mitigating or even avoiding them. 

• Accelerate investigations   
  Reviewing footage has always been a laborious, time-consuming process. Video analytics accelerates investigations by instantly pinpointing people, vehicles, behaviors, and events of interest.

• Turn insights into business impact  
  Video analytics software has applications far beyond security. It can track customer and visitor patterns and behaviors to inform decisions that improve daily operations. 

Together with Omdia, our team at BriefCam surveyed 140 video analytics software users across North America and Europe. It revealed that over 85% reported that they achieved an ROI within one year of investing in their video analytics solutions.

Far from replacing people, video analytics is augmenting security and operational teams. Industries as diverse as public safety, retail, critical infrastructure and schools are using AI-powered video analytics to solve long-running challenges. 
 
Significant gains in resource, time, and cost management can be achieved with:

Enhanced awareness and response 

• Automated real-time alerts enable the instant detection of unusual activity such as unauthorized entry or loitering. Custom rules can be set for specific zones, timeframes, or behaviors so the alerts are always relevant and timely.
  
  
• Object and behavior recognition identify people, vehicles, or objects that match suspicious criteria (e.g., a person leaving a bag unattended). It also tracks movement and behavior patterns to flag anomalies such as someone walking against traffic flow or entering restricted areas.
  
  
• Integrated response workflows combine analytics with alarm systems, access control, or public address systems to trigger automatic lockdowns or alerts. Operators can accelerate decision-making by viewing live feeds with contextual metadata such as heatmaps, object classifications, or movement trails. 

Accelerated investigations

• Object and person detection use AI to instantly identify and label people, vehicles, license plates, colors, clothing, or bags, making it easy to locate and track specific people and objects.
  
  
• Event detection pinpoints specific actions such as movement in restricted areas, loitering, or object removal. This eliminates hours of manual reviewing.
  
  
• Face recognition finds individuals and tracks them across multiple cameras or time periods.
  
  
• Enhanced accuracy thanks to AI reducing errors or oversights by consistently analyzing every frame — and cross-referencing metadata such as time stamps, GPS, and access control logs) to confirm the sequence of events. 

Improved operational efficiency & planning

• Customer behavior analysis can track foot traffic to see when and how customers move through a space. Heatmaps reveal high-traffic zones, which helps to optimize store layouts and product placements; while dwell-time tracking identifies bottlenecks, overly long queues, or popular areas.
  
  
• Optimized staffing and facility management is achieved using analytics to reveal peak hours or understaffed zones. This helps managers plan staff and cleaning schedules more effectively.
  
  
• Safety and compliance monitoring detects safety violations, e.g., lack of personal protective equipment (PPE), blocked exits, or people in restricted areas. Companies can also ensure compliance with occupancy limits, hygiene practices, or operational protocols — which is especially vital in regulated industries.
  
  
• Long-term strategic decisions — ultimately, intelligent video analytics data helps inform decisions about the bigger picture, whether that is office, store, facility design, or the need for expansion or relocation. 

Discover how AI-powered Milestone video solutions are transforming security and beyond around the world including in Law Enforcement, and Critical Infrastructure.

Before choosing an intelligent video analytics surveillance solution, it’s important to evaluate your business goals and technical capabilities. Clarifying your goals will help guide your technology choices, deployment strategies, and success metrics. 
 
Here's a checklist of some of the key considerations:

1. Define the problem you are solving
   Start by identifying the core challenges your organization faces.
   Once you’ve identified the problems, map them to broader business objectives such as:
   Improving security
   

• • Goal: Reduce investigative time and improve incident resolution. 
  • Use case: Use AI-powered search and metadata tagging to quickly locate relevant footage. 
  • Success metric: Reduction in time spent reviewing footage or resolving incidents. 

Increasing workplace safety 

• • Goal: Reduce injuries and improve compliance with safety protocols. 
  • Use case: Monitor high-risk areas like warehouses or loading docks, detect PPE compliance, and analyze near-miss events. 
  • Success metric: Fewer inury reports or safety violations. 

Boosting operational efficiency 

• • Goal: Improve productivity and optimize space usage 
  • Use case: Analyze how people move through and use physical spaces, identify bottlenecks, and verify process adherence 
  • Success metric: Increased throughput, reduced downtime, or better space utilization. 

By tying video analytics to measurable outcomes, you can demonstrate ROI and make informed decisions about scaling or refining your deployment.