In-car cameras are great for documenting what's in
front of a police car, or in the back seat-but the new
Panasonic Toughbook Arbitrator 360° in-car digital
video system captures much, much more.
by Sanjay Talwani
It can pack up to six cameras in one law enforcement
vehicle, while displaying and recording up to
five feeds, including views behind and to the side of
the patrol car.
It can stream live video so that personnel back at
the station can take a look at what's happening,
and even zoom in or change the frame rate for better
quality.
"It's worked very well, beyond our expectations,"
said Sgt. Todd Beam of the Lincoln (Neb.)
Police Department, which installed a preview version
of the system in one of its patrol cars. "In fact,
it worked so well in fact that we took a test system
and put it into daily use."
So the department is replacing its VHS-based
recording system with Arbitrator, ultimately for all
its patrol vehicles. Beam is enthusiastic about its
flexibility, ease of use and high audio and video
quality.
Perhaps more important, the system enables
easy, high-volume storage—so easy that Beam said
the department will probably end up keeping
footage longer than originally planned.
And best of all, the system adds just about no
work for officers. They don't even have to bring a
P2 card back to the station; instead, when they
bring in their vehicles for fueling, the data is sucked
up by Wi-Fi and onto the police servers.
YOU'RE JOKING, RIGHT?
Five years ago, Greg Peratt, director of digital video
products at Panasonic Computer Solutions Co.,
worked his way across the country, visiting more
than 200 police departments big and small, to hear
what officers wanted in an camera system.
Peratt took that information to Japan, told his
engineers what he wanted and at what price, and
"got a resounding laugh," he said.
But that was five years ago, and Peratt's vision is now realized.
In addition to the multiple cameras, the live streaming
and the Wi-Fi upload, the 360° uses H.264 compression
and up to four SDHC memory cards for 128 GB of
storage-four times the capacity of previous models.
"Customers were telling us, 'Storage is killing us,'"
Peratt said.
It also comes with a wireless mic system with a 1,000-foot range.
It continuously saves 90 seconds of video in a bufferan
awful lot of time in the context of traffic accidents
and violations. Like previous models, there are a host of
"triggers" to get the cams to start full recording-activating
lights or sirens, striking an object, or opening a car
door for example.
Some improvements are in the software. For example,
now the system can adjust vehicle settings or provide
upgrades remotely, from an administrator's desk,
instead of doing it manually in each vehicle. When better
compression schemes become available, for example,
that software upgrade can happen remotely.
Also, the front-facing cam—formerly with a shotgun
50° view, which might miss the entire passenger side of
a pulled-over vehicle—has been widened to 68°, thanks
to user feedback.
VIDEO PEOPLE
And then there's the image quality.
|
|
The 32 GB SDHC cards stay under lock and key.
|
|
Sgt. Beam said the pictures look great, even in low
light. And the audio is sounding great as well, even in
the tricky conditions of the street.
Peratt said the good video quality comes from the
fact that Panasonic has been in the video business for
about half a century and, unlike some dash-cam manufacturers,
builds just about all its own components-lenses,
software, chipsets and memory cards.
And high-quality components make for a high-quality
camera.
"Our lens costs more than our competitors' entire
cameras," said Peratt.
So do the patrol officers like it?
"From their perspective, it's easy to use and doesn't
add to their workload," said Beam. And with wide coverage
from the multiple cameras, the officers know they
have good evidence of hat transpired, as well as protection
against false complaints.
On the cars in Lincoln, the cameras are not hidden,
but not exactly overt either, sitting among the usual
squad car cluster of lights, antennas and other devices.
The rear-facing cam is less prominent than the front
cam, but the idea is not to covertly film people.
And while law-abiding people might assume that the
presence of cameras promotes better behavior among
the citizenry—especially the nearly ubiquitous front
cameras for traffic stops—Beam said that the criminal
element doesn't seem to care.
"We've seen some really interesting behavior that
normally you wouldn't see," he said.
|