New video technology developed at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and presented at the Israeli Presidential Conference allows for hours of footage to be viewed within minutes.

The technology is called “video synopsis” and it makes viewing hours of footage in minutes by simultaneously presenting multiple objects and activities that have occurred at different times.

“It’s a great success story for the university,” said Rachel Neiman, Director of Marketing & Communications for BriefCam, the company to which the video synopsis technology has been licensed.

“The technology is already being commercialized and is now a product,” she explained. “It’s useful particularly in security situations where, at present, there are more and more cameras being installed every day, there are thousands and millions of hours being recorded, and no one is watching the video.”

Video synopsis identifies moving objects and is able to separate what is static from what moves. Anything that moves will be presented on the screen, allowing the viewer to see many objects at once. If the viewer identifies anything that looks suspicious he can click on the object and then see the original video.

BriefCam has developed two products using video synopsis.

“One [product] is an offline product for investigator and one is an online product which is live,” said Neiman. “We’ve been accepted by a good number of digital video recorder manufacturers and we’ve also won awards, such as the Wall Street Journal Innovation Award for 2010, and the IFSEC 2010 Award for Best CCTV Product.”