Software Designed to Save Police Departments Hours of Time Redacting Body Camera Video
September 21, 2015
Silicon Valley-based company, MotionDSP, today announced the release of its advanced video redaction software, Ikena Spotlight. This software uses proprietary object-tracking algorithms to help automate the process of blurring faces, license plates or any other personally identifiable information found in video that needs to be protected before public release.
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for body camera footage continue to climb as the public seeks more transparency from law enforcement. Until now, there has been a lack of automated tools to assist police departments with redaction, an expensive and time-consuming task. With redaction taking upwards of 17 hours for a 4-minute video, it’s easy to see how quickly the costs of labor can add up considering the amount of footage being collected every day by officers from body-worn cameras, dash cams and other devices.
“Our forensic video enhancement software has been used by law enforcement for the past decade, but lately, we’ve seen a drastic increase in requests for redaction software as departments implement body cams and civilians request access to footage,” said Sean Varah, CEO of MotionDSP. “With so many FOIA requests coming in, many police departments are feeling overwhelmed by the expensive and time-consuming challenge of preparing evidence for public release. Ikena Spotlight can help ease that burden.”
An important feature that sets Ikena Spotlight apart from other software is its proprietary object-tracking capability. Rather than manually blurring faces frame-by-frame, a user selects a face or object, inserts a beginning and ending key frame, and the software handles the majority of the workload from there by tracking movements and applying a blur.
Ikena Spotlight can be used for more than just blurring faces and objects. You can also use it to highlight important objects, people or movements. For example, someone may be acting suspicious far off in the background of a video. It can be difficult to draw the viewer’s, possibly a juror or someone watching the news, attention to the activity. Ikena Spotlight’s overlay tools allow you to add arrows, text or other shapes to your video to point out important information.
Ikena Spotlight can also obscure all irrelevant information in a video while keeping the main subject of the video in view. If a fight broke out in a crowd and it was captured on video, you’d be able to blur out everything in the scene except for the people involved in the fight, all while following them around and automatically keeping irrelevant information hidden from view.
“Our goal is to make the process of redaction easier for police departments so they can focus on the things that matter most, like investigating crimes and protecting the streets,” said Austin Dillman, VP of Marketing at MotionDSP. “At the same time, we want to make it easier and more efficient for citizens and the press to get access to video footage under the Freedom of Information Act.”
Ikena Spotlight is extremely easy to use and requires very little training for even the most non-technical person. For more information on Ikena Spotlight, please visit https://www.motiondsp.com/ikena-spotlight.
About MotionDSP
MotionDSP is a leading provider of advanced image processing and computer vision software that helps police departments and organizations extract critical information from video. MotionDSP’s software is currently used by the U.S. Secret Service, Scotland Yard, Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), London Metropolitan Police, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and many other law enforcement agencies in the US and around the world.
PR Contact | Austin Dillman | press@motiondsp.com | 650.288.1164 | www.motiondsp.com
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