WestPoint · Video software · Salient CompleteView
CompleteView is the video software from Salient Systems, and it does not do a single showy thing. It records, it is easy to manage, it works with any make of camera and the cost per channel comes out contained. In the table it appears with no surname and that is exact. For some installations it is just what was needed; it is worth knowing which ones.
The scenario: a town council, a network of schools, a medium-sized industrial group. Between a hundred and fifty and six hundred cameras spread over twenty or forty sites, one or two IT people, and no control room with shifts.
What that installation needs can be written in five lines: that everything records, that the retention is the one that was promised, that any of the forty sites opens from one client, that you know the same day when a camera stops recording, and that exporting for a police report is three clicks and a file that opens in court.
That is what CompleteView does, and not much more. And «not much more» is a feature when the alternative is a platform of which a fifth is going to be used: what is not there does not get configured wrong, does not get updated at the wrong moment and does not get paid for.
It does not make cameras, so it pushes none: a long device list, ONVIF for the rest, and the freedom to put at each point the camera that point asks for. In a public installation that buys by tender every two years, that is not ideology: it is being able to buy.
Simple on purpose, with two pieces that decide whether a forty-site installation ages well or badly.
With a platform like this, the honest page is the list of what is missing. And after that, why it is still on the table.
It does not have federation of hundreds of sites with hierarchical administration and certified procedures. It does not have a control-room procedure layer —that is a PSIM and it is another thing—. It does not have a business data layer for crossing the video with a transaction. And its catalogue of third-party integrations is short: if your project rests on connecting five systems from five manufacturers, this is not the conversation.
Nor does it have analytics of its own that justify the purchase. The analytics you are going to have are decided in good measure by the cameras you put in, and that does not change the licence budget: it changes the camera one. It is worth doing that sum before and not after.
And it has the same question as any manufacturer without much local presence, which is a contract question and not a product one: who picks up the phone, in what language and at what hours; how many integrators in your country can take charge of this system if yours disappears; and how you find out that there is a security fix to apply. You ask for it in writing, with names, before signing. And if the answer to the second one is «few», the way to take the weight out of it is documentation that works without us and the administrator passwords in your name from day one.
Why it is still on the table, then. Because a platform that does exactly what that installation needs, at a price per channel that leaves money for cameras and for drives —which is where the image comes from—, is a perfectly defensible decision. The platform that does everything is one too. The one that fails is the one chosen for the data sheet and not for the installation, and that happens in both directions.
Per channel, with tiers above where the high functions live: recording backup, fault tolerance, some client functions. Choosing a tier is choosing a ceiling, and it is the most expensive decision to undo. And the manufacturer's own boxes come with the software and the licences inside, which changes the sum for a medium-sized installation enough to be worth looking at.
On top goes the annual support and updates plan, which is what gives the right to new versions. Letting it lapse switches nothing off and leaves the system still, with the usual effect: the cameras you buy in three years' time need a driver that comes in new versions. And in a public installation that buys cameras by tender every two years, that is more serious than elsewhere: standing still means not being able to buy whatever comes out of the next tender.
Outside the licence sits what grows on its own: storage, Windows and hardware. And here is the honest warning about this platform: the price per channel makes the comparison look won in the first year. The comparison that matters is at five, with the support plan and the hardware refresh inside, and we do that sum even when it comes out against.
And a line of its own for forty-site installations: keeping forty servers on the same version. It is not licence money, it is hours, and if they are not budgeted they do not get done — and after three years there are four different versions scattered around the province.
The border is clear, and it lies in whether the installation is going to use what a big platform brings on top.
You have a lot of medium-sized sites and one or two IT people. If what weighs is that everything records and that it shows the same day when something stops recording. If you buy cameras by tender and do not want to tie yourself to one make. And if you would rather put the money into cameras and drives than into platform functions nobody is going to touch.
There is a control room with shifts, procedures that have to be followed the same way at four in the morning, or many subsystems from different manufacturers that have to be brought together. If the specification asks for federation with an audit trail. If strong analytics are expected out of the box. Or if your purchasing needs a manufacturer with a lot of demonstrable local presence.
The five-year one with everything inside: licences, the support plan, the hardware refresh and the hours of keeping forty servers on the same version. It is the only way to compare this with a platform that costs more per channel, and sometimes the result surprises you in the opposite direction to the one expected.
In a spread-out installation, the value is not in building one site: it is in the forty ending up the same and in somebody finding out when one breaks.
Of these six it is the easiest to leave entirely in the customer's hands, and in an installation with a single administrator that is worth money.
It is the point where this platform is most modest, and this page says it better than a demonstration.
As standard, motion detection by zones —geometry over pixels that change, and the reason a shift fills up with alerts when the light changes—, plus the collection of the events the cameras generate on their own, search over what is recorded and bookmarks. It solves more than it looks: finding the moment when something changed.
And the consequence that has to be said to your face: the analytics you are going to have are decided by the cameras you buy, not by this software. In an installation that buys by tender, that means the camera specification is where it gets decided whether in two years' time there is counting or there is no counting. That sum is done when the specification is written and not when it is installed.
What you add: number plates and third-party analytics by integration, with a bigger warning than with the big open platforms — the one you want may exist or may not, and that gets checked before putting it in a quotation.
The ceiling, with no going round it: if what you need is to understand what is happening in the scene, this platform on its own is not where you are going to find it. It is a video management system and at that it is solid and sober. The understanding has to be brought in from outside.
And here comes the disclosure, because what follows is a recommendation with an interested party in it: in the same house there is IRIS Neural, the NVMS from Infinity Neural, the other company in the group. It is our own product, we make it, and saying so is the only way for everything above to still be worth something.
They live together, and the split is one of the most natural: CompleteView governs cameras, recording, retention, permissions and the health of the forty sites, which is what the customer needs and has already paid for; IRIS brings the understanding of the scene where it is needed, which is almost never the forty sites but three or four specific points. That is also cheaper than changing platform.
And the closing line, which holds for all twenty: if what is needed is what this software already does —record well, find fast and export with no argument—, this software is enough and there is nothing else to buy. We say it anyway.
If what you have is a lot of medium-sized sites, in the index there are several answers and they look little like each other: the difference is not in the list of functions, it is in how much of that list you are ever going to touch.
Get started
Tell us how many sites there are and what sizes, how many cameras and what makes, how many days have to be kept and how many IT people you have. With that we tell you whether this platform is the one you need, which tier, and the five-year sum with the support plan and the hardware refresh inside. If what you need is a bigger platform, we will tell you so with the number in front of you.
