Powerful artificial intelligence video analytics are changing demands around surveillance installations, including higher camera resolutions, automatic detection and identification of objects, insights that determine intent and more.
AI-enabled cameras are more sophisticated today than ever before. They one-up older generation cameras through their ability to transmit multiple streams of video and metadata which are necessary to enable AI functionality of the system. These new, super-smart video capabilities are changing the game.
Choosing the right cameras is one thing, but the right storage is necessary to get the most out of the cameras’ features. The conversation is shifting from “what should we install?” to “how do we build the right infrastructure to unlock all this intelligence?”
System integrators need to be aware of these evolving IT infrastructure requirements if they want to make the right recommendations to their customers, grow their business and meet rising customer demands.
Growing Storage Requirements of AI-Powered Smart Surveillance Video
Smart video surveillance systems have evolved significantly over the past several years in numerous innovative ways. Transportation agencies can read license plate numbers on vehicles traveling at 60 miles per hour. Retail stores can identify specific items a shoplifter places under their coat and security guards can detect suspicious behavior in real-time.
Surveillance system users can zoom in to see incredible details, pan across the field of vision and piece together feeds from multiple cameras to gain an accurate understanding of where people were when an incident took place. It can even help anticipate what’s to come.
These impressive capabilities usually require more sophisticated cameras that transmit multiple video and metadata streams. Video surveillance systems need to be able to handle multiple streams from multiple cameras to capture video that doesn’t stutter or suffer from frame drops.
On top of that, this data often needs to be stored for longer periods—whether it’s to meet new compliance rules or to keep training AI models. To make all of this work smoothly and really get the most out of modern surveillance systems, choosing the right data storage setup is key.
Today’s data storage needs have gotten way too complex for basic desktop drives or older generation surveillance drives to keep up. No longer is it feasible to hook up a camera and recorder to a laptop or other consumer device and expect your data to be preserved to the level your customers require.
Without having the right purpose-built, reliable storage to support multiple streams, there can often be dropped frames, stuttering or jittery footage or even lost footage resulting in lower accuracy in AI models. Higher storage capacity is often a must to support retention policies and the ability to retrieve footage when needed for post-event analysis.
Integrators need to take these new requirements into account when building new surveillance systems for clients.
Align Storage with Customers’ Surveillance Objectives
Integrators need storage solutions designed specifically to meet the needs of their customers’ AI-enabled smart video surveillance installations.
Western Digital’s WD Purple® Pro Smart Video Surveillance HDDs fit that bill. WD Purple Pro HDDs are offered in 8TB to 26TB[1] capacities, delivering exceptional reliability, high capacity, and performance for the most demanding video recording and analytics environments.
Here are three ways in which WD Purple Pro HDDs are ideal for your customers’ smart video surveillance use cases:
- Optimize reliability, capacity, and performance
Western Digital’s AllFrame™ AI technology optimizes reliability, capacity, and performance of WD Purple Pro HDDs. It does this by recognizing incoming video stream characteristics and data types and coalescing data together in the cache.
Then, when the timing is right, whether it’s seconds, minutes, or hours after capture, AllFrame™ AI automatically moves the data to specific track locations on disk. It also tunes and optimizes recorders with the appropriate write and cache policies.
The result? Smoother playback with less stuttering, better reliability with fewer frame drops, and smarter use of storage space. It’s all about making sure your system performs at its best, from the moment video is captured to long-term data retention.
- Keep up with rising capacity demands
Higher video resolutions are driving greater storage capacity requirements for customers. Each time you increase resolution steps (i.e. from HD 720p to FHD 1080p, or from QHD 1440p to 4K UHD 2160p) storage demands typically double or triple, resulting in exponentially higher storage costs.
WD Purple Pro HDDs help customers meet these capacity needs and reliably manage large video file sizes. Higher capacity drives built for long-term, dependable storage also help to extend the number of days of video retention that are often required for regulations and best practices.
- Protect the value of your customers’ AI investments
AI in surveillance video works better and provides more value when it’s supported by a data rich, multi-camera environment. data. WD Purple Pro drives are engineered to handle up to 64 HD video streams and 32 AI streams simultaneously.
That’s what makes them perfect for large-scale deployments—think dozens or even hundreds of cameras streaming nonstop video and metadata. They’re built to handle it all, plus they support real-time AI processing right at the edge.
So, whether it’s facial recognition, object detection or license plate reading, the system can analyze video on the spot without needing to send everything to the cloud. Enhanced write capabilities and high workload ratings (up to 550TB/year) ensure smooth operation under AI-intensive conditions.
Western Digital Purple Pro Smart Video HDDs
Desktop storage solutions are no longer adequate for supporting the growing storage needs of your customers’ high-resolution and AI-powered surveillance systems. Systems integrators need to recommend an enterprise-level storage drive that can meet their reliability, performance and capacity needs.
Not sure how much storage your smart video setup really needs? The Western Digital Surveillance Storage Calculator makes it easy. Just plug in a few details—like number of cameras, resolution, recording hours, and video format—and it’ll estimate the ideal storage capacity for your deployment. Whether you’re planning a small setup or a massive rollout with hundreds of cameras, this tool helps you get it right from the start.
Madelaine Bethel is a product marketing manager for Western Digital.
[1] One terabyte (TB) is equal to one trillion bytes. Actual user capacity may be less due to operating environment.
