IndigoVision's complete IP Video solution has provided an invaluable CCTV surveillance upgrade for Toronto-based Covenant House, the country's largest shelter for homeless youth. More than just a place to stay, Covenant House provides 24/7 crisis care and has the widest range of services under one roof, including education, counselling, health care and employment assistance.

The CCTV upgrade was designed and installed by IndigoVision's local partner Intercon Security and involved the replacement of an ageing DVR-based analogue system, which delivered poor video quality, limited storage and had no ability for remote monitoring. The capability to deliver very high quality video images and to view recorded incidents remotely, were just two of the reasons for choosing IndigoVision's IP Video system against upgrading to a newer DVR model. The flexibility and scalability of IP Video means Covenant House can also easily and inexpensively add new cameras to the system in the future.

Commenting on the project, Maydene Herman, Facilities Coordinator for Covenant House said: "The new IndigoVision system is a significant improvement over the old system, providing us with excellent video quality and much improved recording facilities. The ability to remotely review sensitive incidents in a secure environment has been a great benefit for our organization."

All of the original 32 analogue CCTV cameras were re-used and live and recorded images from all the cameras are viewed on ‘Control Center', IndigoVision's IP Video and alarm management software. Another key benefit for Covenant House was that ‘Control Center' software is license-free, which meant that they deployed 5 workstations in different parts of the building for no more than the cost of an entry-level PC at each location - something that would have been very costly with a DVR-based solution. Each of the analogue cameras is connected to an IndigoVision 8000 transmitter/receiver module which converts the camera feed to digital video for transmission over the network. The 8000 modules can also transmit high-quality synchronized audio which can be recorded with the video.

The flexibility and scalability of IP Video means Covenant House can also easily and inexpensively add new cameras to the system in the future

The DVR was replaced with an IndigoVision Network Video Recorder (NVR) with 5TB of storage. Unlike DVRs, IndigoVision NVRs are location independent and can be installed at any point on the network and deliver high-quality recorded video for viewing on any ‘Control Center' workstation. IndigoVision's class-leading MPEG-4 compression technology ensures that both live and recorded DVD-quality video can be streamed around the network with minimum bandwidth requirement. This allowed Intercon Security to install the entire IP Video system on the client's existing network, further reducing the upgrade costs.

IndigoVision is field proven in enterprise-class projects around the world, including two Olympic Games and numerous airports, rail networks and ports. However, this project demonstrates that IP Video is also an ideal solution for smaller CCTV applications.