U.S. Navy turns to D3Data for custom security video management of Offshore Range.

When the U.S. Navy needed to update the technology used to track high-speed moving objects at its NAS North Island-based Southern California Offshore Range (SCORE), it called on a Seattle-area enterprise security video software company to come up with a solution. The company: Three-year-old D3Data, LLC (www.d3data.com). The solution: Innovative, even by U.S. military standards.

SCORE, a state-of-the-art facility providing tactical range training and testing services to U.S. Pacific Fleet forces, monitors distant high-speed objects in real time as part of its training activities--but the system used by SCORE staff was outdated, relying heavily on manual operation of joysticks to try to keep up with flying or moving objects and switching between multiple cameras to record the objects' travel.

"When we started this project, the Navy had multiple people with joysticks trying to follow moving objects. There were people watching four to eight video screens simultaneously attempting to track the movement," explained David Boyce, D3Data technology partner. "Automation was essential."

To that end, D3Data implemented a browser-based system using its NETVM (Network Video Management) digital video real-time/recording solution, SCORE's existing Cohu CCTV fast pan/tilt/zoom cameras and AXIS 250S MPEG-2 video servers (www.axis.com/products/cam-250s/index.htm). The new system enables the Navy to tap into satellite feeds to triangulate the position of a moving object and automatically send those coordinates to NETVM, which trains the pan/tilt/zoom cameras on the object. The resulting video is captured in DVD-quality on the AXIS MPEG-2 servers, which feed the video to the NETVM server, where it is compressed to ten percent of its original size and converted to Windows Media 9 format. The result: Hands-off, single-screen monitoring and recording of distant high-speed moving objects, such as jets or tomahawk missiles, day or night, viewable from any Web browser on any authorized PC, PDA or cell phone anywhere in the world.

"D3Data is the only company we work with that can do network tracking from anywhere around the world," said Richard Smith, Cohu, Inc. senior applications engineer. "This project is very exciting in terms of new technology and new opportunities for both Cohu, Inc. and D3Data."

"The implementation of the AXIS 250S MPEG-2 Video Server in this project shows the great flexibility and performance of the Axis network video products," said Fredrik Nilsson, General Manager of Axis Communication, the market leader in Network Video. "D3Data is a partner in Axis' Application Development Partner (ADP) program and has developed a unique MPEG-2 based solution."