Video surveillance glossary: 120+ terms

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LPR / ANPR

License-plate / automatic number-plate recognition — reading vehicle plates from a camera feed for parking, access, and traffic use cases.

Metadata stream

A parallel data channel from the camera carrying detections, bounding boxes, and events alongside video; what ONVIF Profile M standardizes.

Motion detection

Detecting pixel change in a scene to trigger recording or alerts; the cheapest analytic and a major storage saver, but noisy.

Motion recording

Recording only when motion is detected; can cut storage by an order of magnitude but risks missing slow or off-frame events.

Multicast

Sending one camera stream to many viewers as a single network flow; saves bandwidth on large viewing deployments but needs network support (IGMP).

NAS (Network Attached Storage)

File storage attached over the network; affordable surveillance storage for small-to-mid systems, limited by network and file-protocol overhead at scale.

Natural-language video search

Querying footage in plain words («person in a red jacket near gate 3 last night»); the vision-language-model feature that defines AI-native VMS.

NPU (Neural Processing Unit)

A chip on a camera or edge box specialized for running AI models efficiently; what makes on-device analytics practical.

NVR (Network Video Recorder)

An appliance or software that records IP cameras over a network; narrower than a VMS, which adds multi-site, roles, analytics, and scale.

Object classification

Assigning a detected object its type — person, car, truck, bicycle, animal; what turns raw detections into filterable, searchable events.

Object detection

Finding and labelling objects (people, vehicles) in a camera frame; the foundational analytic that feeds tracking and search.

Object left behind

Detecting an item that appears in a scene and stays after the person who brought it leaves — bags in transit hubs being the classic case.

Object storage

Cloud-style storage addressing video as objects (S3 and compatibles); cheap, durable, and effectively unlimited — the natural warm/cold tier for footage.

Object tracking

Following a detected object across frames within a camera's view; the basis of line-crossing, dwell, and path analytics.

ONVIF

The open standard that lets cameras and VMS software from different vendors interoperate; defines profiles for streaming, recording, and analytics.

ONVIF conformance

A device's tested, declared support of an ONVIF profile, listed in the official conformant-products database; verify it before buying — marketing "ONVIF-compatible" is a weaker claim.

ONVIF Profile A

The ONVIF profile for access-control configuration — managing credentials, schedules, and access rules across vendors; pairs with Profile C door control.

ONVIF Profile C

The ONVIF profile for door control and event monitoring in access-control systems; lets a VMS talk to door controllers the way Profile S talks to cameras.

ONVIF Profile G

The ONVIF profile for edge recording and storage — searching and retrieving video recorded on the device.

ONVIF Profile M

The metadata-and-analytics ONVIF profile — a standard way for a camera to publish detected objects and events to the VMS.

ONVIF Profile S

The ONVIF profile for basic video streaming and PTZ control; the baseline most IP cameras and VMS support.

ONVIF Profile T

The advanced-streaming ONVIF profile — adds H.265, imaging settings, and analytics-metadata streaming over Profile S.

Open-platform VMS

A VMS built to host third-party cameras, analytics, and integrations through a public SDK (Milestone being the archetype), competing on ecosystem rather than lock-in.

People counting

Counting entries and exits with overhead cameras or stereo sensors; retail's core metric feeding conversion rates and staffing decisions.

Perimeter protection

Layered detection along a site boundary — thermal and visible cameras, line-crossing and intrusion analytics, often radar or fence sensors fused by the VMS.

PoE (Power over Ethernet)

Delivering electrical power to a camera over the same Ethernet cable that carries its video; simplifies IP-camera cabling.

PPE detection

Checking that people in a zone wear required protective equipment — helmets, vests, harnesses; a safety analytic, so misses matter more than false alarms.

Precision

Of all alerts the system raised, the share that were real events; high precision means few false alarms. Always read together with recall.

Privacy by design

Building privacy into the system from the architecture stage — minimal capture, masking, retention, access — rather than patching it on after launch; GDPR Art. 25.