Playing Incident Video

Defining Incident Video Areas of Interest

Select the Incidents Video view from the Views menu. Select the incident from which you want to play video on the Incidents tab and click the Video button.

The incident video that you selected begins to play in the Video Window. Use the Video Control options to control the playback.

To switch to video from a different incident, return to the Incidents tab, select the new incident, and click the Video button.

Select Sync Play on the Incident Clips tab to determine whether clips from the same timeframe are played in parallel or simultaneously. If selected, and you have a combination of clips from that time period, they will automatically play in parallel in an appropriate video layout.

For example, if you have four clips playing, they will play in a quad layout. If there are between 5 and 9, a 3x3 layout will be selected.

If you have several clips from the same camera with overlapping times, these will be shown in parallel.

Defining Incident Video Areas of Interest

You can define an area of interest in the Video Window that others should pay particular attention to by drawing a box around that area. This feature is useful in drawing attention to incident action that might be fast, subtle or otherwise hard to spot.

To define an incident video area of interest:

Right-click anywhere in the Video Window to open the Video Context menu and click Incident Area ->Define Incident Area. You can remove it again by selecting Incident Area -> Clear Incident Area.

In the required area of the Video Window, click and drag the left mouse button until the resulting box highlights the whole of that area in red. Once the region design is complete, the box will display with a solid red border to make it easier to see the contents of the area.

To add a comment to the defined incident video area, click the box and type into the resulting dialog box.

When the incident clip is played, the area of interest and comment is highlighted.

Click Select Times to see the times currently set for the incident area. You have the option to amend these, if required.

Click Show Incident Area to show the area during playback. Otherwise it will not be shown.

Displaying Image(s) Alongside Incident Video

This feature is particularly useful when searching incident video for specific elements; for example, missing persons.

If any image(s) to be displayed are of an external source - for example, a smartphone - ensure that these have already been placed in a suitable location that is accessible by your Synergy system.

Go to Video->Manage Snapshots.

Click Select Incident. Navigate to the incident with which to associate the image(s).

Under Saved Snapshots, select the image(s) to associate with the incident.

Click Add All To Incident.

Click Close.

Go to Views->Incident Video.

Under Incidents, select the incident.

At the bottom of the screen, click Video to begin playback of the incident video.

Note: In the Video Window, ensure that the layout consists of more than one panel.

Under Incidents, double-click the incident. In the displayed dialog box, click Images.

Under File Name, select the image(s).

Drag and drop the selected image(s) onto an empty panel in the Video Window.

Note: Contacts and Persons of Interest can also be dragged and dropped onto empty panels to be displayed alongside incident video.

Privacy Zones

In some instances there may be a requirement to mask certain areas of the screen from certain users' views. If Privacy Zone mode is enabled, two separate streams will be generated; one showing the full screen and another with user-defined areas obscured. For example, management or the police will see the full, unobscured image but users with lower levels of clearance will see the same image but from a different stream, with up to eight areas of screen obscured.

Right-click the video window and select Privacy Zones from the context menu.

Two options, Define Privacy Zone and Clear Privacy Zones, are available to those who have these permissions set. All defined privacy zones are stored within the camera, not within Synergy.

Define Privacy Zone

In Define Privacy Zone mode, click and drag the cursor anywhere in the video window to draw an oblong box over the area to be obscured.

The box will initially be red. Click it to display the Colour swatches sub-menu.

Select the required color. The following example has the color purple selected.

Click OK and, if required, repeat the Define Privacy Zone process up to a total of eight times.

Once you have saved this and any other privacy zones, they will appear as boxes, shaded in the color of your choice. These will appear on screen to everyone with the appropriate permissions at their next log on.

Clear Privacy Zones

The Clear Privacy Zones mode allows you to delete all privacy zones that you have set up. This will make the entire image available to all users.

Set Temporary Removal of Privacy Zones

It is also possible to temporarily remove the privacy zone for a specific user. To do this, you will need the client configuration setting: <allowTemporaryDisableOfPrivacyZones>true</allowTemporaryDisableOfPrivacyZones>. Once configured, you can add permissions to disable privacy under Setup -> System Setup -> Advanced Configuration -> Users -> Setup User Group Permissions.

You will then see the following option:

This option allows you to temporarily switch off the privacy zone for the currently viewed camera. When you switch to a different camera and then back to the same one, the privacy zone will be re-enabled and working again.

Advanced Privacy Zones

There are four levels of video sensitivity, level 1 being the level of highest sensitivity.

Video Sensitivity Level	Description
1	Secret
2	Confidential
3	Restricted
4	Normal

All users may be granted, by someone of an equal or higher level of video sensitivity, the ability to completely obscure a portion of video by marking it as an advanced privacy zone. This can be done either on creation of the clip or edited afterwards, as long as the user has an adequate sensitivity level.

Users with a level of video sensitivity higher than that of the clip within the privacy zone will still be able to see the sensitive clip as normal. Users of an equal or lower level of video sensitivity will see the video window totally obscured by a black screen.

Note: You cannot export a video that contains blacked out sections.

Blacked-out clips will not appear in any list that a user with a level of video sensitivity lower than that of the video clip is authorised to see. This includes the incident locker.

Even though they cannot see the content, delete it or use any other function, users with a Normal level of video sensitivity can still see the start and end times of obscured footage, as well as the cameras involved, and are able to conduct a normal review if the coverage is still in retention.

Users with a level of video sensitivity lower than that of the video clip are also prevented from making any media copy of the clip.

To add a new blackout area, click Blackout Video in the Incidents group on the Video tab.

Click New. You will not see this button if you do not have the required level of video sensitivity for your user group.

To check this, go to the user group permissions in advanced configuration and make sure that the video sensitivity is not Normal.

Populate the Blackout Video box. The Sensitivity pull-down offers a selection of Secret, Confidential or Restricted, in descending order of security.

Select Live to indicate that this is a live blackout. When the camera is selected, it will be blacked out subject to the same sensitivity rules that are used for recorded video blackout.

Click Save.

Note: To make this system behave optimally and not impair video playback, all the blackouts are stored in memory. It is imperative that you keep the number of blackouts as low as possible, preferably under a hundred.

Adding Ad-Hoc Comments

If configured, you also have the option to add comments to incident playback video.

Go to the Video view, right-click to open up the context menu and select Incident Video Comment. The option will be grayed out unless you are playing video back from an incident locker.

This will automatically pause the video and allow you to add a comment.

You can then choose to display the comments or hide them during playback. Choose Show Transactions or Hide Transactions to determine whether or not the comments are visible.

You can also choose the way in which they are shown on screen using the Transaction Display Mode option. They can be displayed either directly in the OSD as running comments during playback or as dialog boxes that will be displayed on the right-hand side of the screen.

If you subsequently want to delete a comment, go to the incident form and click on the row displayed in the Video Comments tab. They can then be deleted from the incident itself.

Access to Incident Clips according to Video Sensitivity

It possible for operators to be able to play back a specific incident even if they do not possess permission to access its associated camera(s) or PSNs.

Note: Client configuration is required to be able to grant access to incidents via their video sensitivity level. For information, consult your Synergy system administrator.

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