Metadata is information that describes object-related content in the camera FOV.

In Axxon Next metadata can be obtained in two ways:

  1. By analyzing video stream on Server by detection tools.
  2. By receiving metadata from camera built-in analytics (see Embedded Detection Tools). 

To extract metadata from video, you have to de-compress and analyze the video stream, which increases the Server's workload, thus limiting the number of available camera channels.

The following tools are used for Server-side analysis and metadata generation:  

  1. Object Tracker.

  2. Neural Tracker.

    Object tracker and Neural Tracker generate metadata containing the following information about moving objects in FOV: object type, position, size and color, motion speed and direction, etc.


  3. VMD.

    VMD generates less accurate data. It does not detect object type and color.


  4. Face detection tools.

    Face detection metadata contains face bounding boxes and their positions, as well as face vectors.


  5. Automatic Number Plate Recognition (LPR/ANPR) tools.

    ANPR metadata contains license plate bounding boxes and their positions, as well as vehicle registration numbers.


  6. Pose detection.

    Metadata from pose detection tools contains information on positions and pose (skeleton) of all people in FOV.


  7. Personal protective equipment detection tools.

    Equipment detection metadata contains information about the position of all the people in FOV.


The metadata is used for the following system options:

Option

Required source of metadata

Scene Analytics

Object Tracker, Neural Tracker, Embedded Detection Tools, or VMD

Forensic search MomentQuest

Object Tracker, Neural Tracker, Embedded Detection Tools, VMD, Face detection tools, Automatic Number Plate Recognition (LPR/ANPR) tools, Pose detection tools, Personal protective equipment detection tools

Face search

Face detection tools

LPR search

Automatic Number Plate Recognition (LPR/ANPR) tools

TimeCompressor

Object Tracker, Neural Tracker, Embedded Detection Tools, or VMD

Tag&Track Pro

Object Tracker, Neural Tracker, Embedded Detection Tools, or VMD

Object tracking

Any

Autozoom

Any


If a camera uses several sources of metadata, the required source is selected automatically, except for MomentQuest.

To perform face/license number searches, only metadata from corresponding detection tools is used.

For Axxon Next 4.5.10 and later: metadata is stored as files in the object trajectory database in the local Server directory that was selected when installing Axxon Next (see Installation) in the vmda_db\VMDA_DB.0\vmda_schema subfolder.

For Axxon Next 4.5.8 and earlier: by default metadata is stored as files in the object trajectory database in the local Server directory C:\Program Files\AxxonSoft\AxxonNext\Metadata\vmda_db\VMDA_DB.0\vmda_schema. 

If necessary, you can place metadata on any available network storage (see Configuring storage of the system log and metadata).