Uniview's License Plate Recognition camera is the best way to integrate license plate
capture into your video surveillance system. What is an LPR and why can't you just use
a standard security camera for license plate capture? Well, trying to use a standard camera
to read license plates is kind of like trying to install that camera with a multitool. Sure,
it might get the job done. Kinda. But there are much more efficient ways to accomplish the task.
For instance, what if something happens on your property and you need a way to look up license
plate numbers on a particular day? Well, if you've tried capturing license plates with
a standard security camera, you'll have a lot of footage to scrub through. And
there's no guarantee that you'll have clear images of the license plates to begin with.
An LPR, on the other hand, is a very specific tool designed for one purpose and one purpose alone:
to capture license plates. And it does this really, really well. It doesn't just take a
picture of passing plates, either. Using ANPR technology, the camera can recognize
the license plate number, display the number in a table, and compile all the license plates into
a searchable database. So the next time you need to pull plates from your video feeds, you'll be
able to do so in minutes, with high accuracy and clear visibility. Let me show you how this works.
First, install your camera focused on a specific choke point where you know it'll be able to pick
up license plates. Then set up a photo server to allow your LPR and NVR to communicate. Finally,
watch your LPR and NVR work together to build a searchable and filterable
library of license plates. Let's break that down a little bit more,
but before we move forward you should know that at this time only a handful of Uniview
NVRs are compatible with the LPR photo server. If you want to get the most out of your LPR,
make sure you have one of these NVR models updates to the latest firmware.
Setting yourself up for success when it comes to license plate capture starts right here at
the installation site. For standard security cameras, you're able to throw them up on the
wall pretty much anywhere, get as much of the area in focus as possible, and call it good.
But for an LPR like this, it's going to take a little bit more tender love and care. There are
height and distance recommendations for setting up your LPR, which you can learn more about on
our website. But for now, the most important thing to keep in mind is the choke point.
This LPR is great at capturing license plates, but in order to achieve optimal accuracy,
we have to make sure it's able to have a good view of the plates to begin with. For this,
you'll want to take advantage of this 10x zoom to get as much of that license plate in the picture
as possible. And that's really where the choke point comes into play. I can't really point this
camera just anywhere in this parking lot and hope that a car happens to drive by at just the right
angle. Instead I have to find a place where cars are forced to drive past the camera's field of
view in a predictable way. Some good examples of a choke point include parking lot entries and exits,
alleyways, driveways, or even a road. All of these choke points funnel car traffic in a predictable
manner, allowing us to zoom in on license plates with high levels of accuracy and reliability.
At this point, the LPR is capturing license plates right out of the box. We can modify this
further by drawing detection lines to tell the LPR where to look for plates. This can be helpful for
reducing false captures. Now you can see from the web interface that we're already getting a nice
little table of data. Great! This is exactly what we want. But at this point, all of this data is
just stored locally in our browser. What does that mean? Well, if I come up here and hit refresh,
it's gone. So in order to save this data for future retrieval, we're going to need to bring
our NVR's hard drive into play. To do this, all we need to do is set up a photo server.
A photo server is going to allow our LPR to send the ANPR data to our NVR for storage and
retrieval. Don't worry. This isn't nearly as hard as it sounds. All we have to do is tell the LPR
where to send the data, and tell our NVR how to receive the data. If this still sounds confusing,
don't worry. We have a full guide on our website that walks you through this step-by-step.
Now that our devices are communicating, let's hop onto our NVR. Like the web browser,
we have a nice table of data over here to the right so we can see in real time as we
capture license plates. But where this photos server really shines is in the VCA search. I'm
going to run a search for vehicles in the past week, and here we go. Look at this beautiful
list of license plates. Each entry includes a snapshot, a video clip, and the plate number.
If I want to do a search for a specific plate number, I can do that here as well.
I hope you're able to see the benefits of using a dedicated LPR for license plate capture. It
may take a little bit of work up front to get it set up for ideal results, but it's going to
save you so much time in the long run. To learn more about the Uniview LPR or to get yours today,
head over to nellyssecurity.com/lpr. And remember, we're not allowed to show any
Uniview price under the MSRP, so be sure to log into a free Nelly's account to watch
that display price drop. Happy installing, and we will catch you in the next video!