AWS recently announced the general availability of Streaming Video Events, a new feature of Amazon Rekognition to provide real-time alerts on live video streams.
The managed service for image and video analysis can help camera manufacturers and service providers to detect objects such as people, animals and packages in live video streams from connected cameras. Streaming Video Events triggers a notification to the device as soon as the expected object is detected. Prathyusha Cheruku, Principal Product Manager at AWS, explains how it works:
The service starts analyzing the video clip only when a motion event is triggered by the camera. When the desired object is detected, it sends a notification containing the detected objects, the bounding box coordinates, the magnified image of the detected objects, and the timestamp. Amazon Rekognition’s pre-trained APIs provide high accuracy even under different lighting conditions, camera angles, and resolutions.
Source: https://aws.amazon.com/rekognition/connected-home
Amazon Rekognition Video relies on Kinesis Video Streams to receive and process the video stream: the AWS::Rekognition::StreamProcessor Type creates a stream processor that is used to detect and recognize faces or find connected home labels.
To better manage machine learning costs, customers can specify the length of video clips to be processed (between 10 and 120 seconds) and select one or more objects such as people, pets, and packages to minimize false alarms caused by camera movement at events. Cheruku clarifies the advantage of streaming video events over conventional motion detectors:
Many camera manufacturers and security service providers offer home security solutions that include camera doorbells, indoor cameras, outdoor cameras, and value-added notification services to help their users understand what’s happening on their property. Cameras with built-in motion detectors are placed at entry or exit points of the home to notify users of real-time activity, such as: B. “Motion detected in the backyard”. However, motion detectors are noisy, can be triggered by harmless events like wind and rain, leading to notification fatigue and resulting in a clunky home automation setup.
According to AWS, service providers can use the feature to create better in-app experiences, such as Alexa prompts such as “A package was detected at the front door.” In a separate article, Mike Ames, Prathyusha Cheruku and David Robo explain how 3xLOGIC uses the new feature to provide surveillance agents with intelligent video analytics on live video streams.
Streaming video events isn’t the only new feature of Amazon Rekognition. Among the 2022 announcements, Rekognition Video has added new languages for text recognition, introduced new face APIs for improved accuracy, and enhanced content moderation.
Video Streaming Events is a feature available in a subset of AWS Regions including Northern Virginia, Ohio, Ireland and Mumbai. Label detection is calculated at $0.00817/min in minute increments. Processing of Kinesis video streams is billed separately.
