Honestly, if your security system didn’t allow you to set motion alerts, that’s a bad system. Basically any modern system will allow you to set motion alerts. You can specify a section (or sections) of the screen that will create a flag in the footage when motion is detected.
My job’s parking garage had a car get broken into, and a musician’s (very expensive) instrument was stolen. We didn’t have a camera pointed directly at the car that was broken into, but we had cameras at every entrance and exit, and on the ramps leading between each floor. Management was expecting to scrub through literal hours of footage. Using some basic motion detection, I set it to flag any time someone came up or went down the specific ramps or stairs that led to the level the car was on. It ended up being like 45 cars.
Then I just did a quick timer, to see how long each person lingered on the floor. Like 40 of the cars came up the ramp from the lower level, then like 30 seconds later went up the next ramp to the next level. So it wasn’t them. Only like five of the cars actually didn’t go to the next level.
And out of those five cars, four had drivers/passengers seen on the stairwells leading back down to the ground floor; They had parked on the same level as the incident, and went downstairs.
Only one car lingered on the same level for about 2 minutes, then quickly left again. At the exit, there was a camera on the gate which pointed into the cars. We got crystal clear footage of the driver, (someone who the musician knew) and the instrument case was very obviously sitting in the passenger seat.
The entire search (it was like 3 days of footage) took like 10 minutes total, simply by being able to whittle down when people were coming and going.
Honestly, if your security system didn’t allow you to set motion alerts, that’s a bad system. Basically any modern system will allow you to set motion alerts. You can specify a section (or sections) of the screen that will create a flag in the footage when motion is detected.
My job’s parking garage had a car get broken into, and a musician’s (very expensive) instrument was stolen. We didn’t have a camera pointed directly at the car that was broken into, but we had cameras at every entrance and exit, and on the ramps leading between each floor. Management was expecting to scrub through literal hours of footage. Using some basic motion detection, I set it to flag any time someone came up or went down the specific ramps or stairs that led to the level the car was on. It ended up being like 45 cars.
Then I just did a quick timer, to see how long each person lingered on the floor. Like 40 of the cars came up the ramp from the lower level, then like 30 seconds later went up the next ramp to the next level. So it wasn’t them. Only like five of the cars actually didn’t go to the next level.
And out of those five cars, four had drivers/passengers seen on the stairwells leading back down to the ground floor; They had parked on the same level as the incident, and went downstairs.
Only one car lingered on the same level for about 2 minutes, then quickly left again. At the exit, there was a camera on the gate which pointed into the cars. We got crystal clear footage of the driver, (someone who the musician knew) and the instrument case was very obviously sitting in the passenger seat.
The entire search (it was like 3 days of footage) took like 10 minutes total, simply by being able to whittle down when people were coming and going.
It was a high-traffic area of a retail store. Motion alert is useless.