VIDEO INTELLIGENCE
Video management systems built for city-scale policing
A video management system, or VMS, is the software layer that lets an operator watch, record, search and act on many camera feeds at once. M3Stack builds custom VMS platforms for police forces and municipal control rooms where off-the-shelf products cannot cope with the camera count or the response-time requirement. Our platform Surakshit City is in live production with Delhi Police and Gurugram Police, streaming thousands of concurrent feeds. Operators can follow a vehicle of interest as it moves across the city, locate a person on live footage, and rewind any camera instantly without leaving the live view. We build the full stack: video ingestion and transcoding, storage tiering, real-time analytics such as facial recognition and number-plate reading, operator interfaces designed for control-room use, and the audit trails that public-sector deployments require.
01 / SCOPE
What a custom VMS actually involves
Ingestion and transcoding
Pulling video off ONVIF and RTSP cameras at scale, normalising formats, and keeping latency low enough that a control room is watching now rather than a minute ago.
Storage tiering and retention
Thousands of feeds recorded continuously is expensive. Recent footage stays instantly seekable while older footage moves to cheaper storage, under retention rules the deployment sets.
Real-time analytics
Facial recognition, number-plate reading and object detection running against live streams, with inference sized so alerts arrive while they are still actionable.
Cross-camera tracking
Following a vehicle or a person as they move between cameras, so an operator follows one subject across the city instead of manually opening feeds one by one.
Control-room interfaces
Interfaces built for operators who sit in front of them for a full shift — dense video walls, instant rewind without leaving the live view, and keyboard-first navigation.
Audit trails and access control
Who watched which feed, when, and what they exported. Role-based access and complete audit logs, because public-sector video deployments are accountable for every view.
02 / PROOF
Surakshit City
A city-scale video platform powering live policing operations
Surakshit City is a video management system running in live production for Delhi Police and Gurugram Police. Control rooms watch, rewind and act on thousands of camera feeds in real time — following a vehicle of interest across the city, or spotting a person on live footage — so response teams move on what is happening now, not on after-the-fact reports.
It is the reference for what we mean by city-scale: not a pilot, not a demo, but a platform two police forces depend on during live operations.
03 / HOW IT RUNS
Four stages, working software every week
Discover
Camera count, sites, network reality, what operators actually do today, and what the deployment is accountable for.
Architect
We design ingestion, storage and analytics for the camera count you will reach, not the one you start with.
Build
Short cycles with working software every week, so the control room sees the platform long before go-live.
Launch & support
We ship it, watch it in production, and stay around — because a policing platform going quiet is not an option.
04 / QUESTIONS
Common questions
What is a video management system?
A video management system, or VMS, is the software layer that lets an operator watch, record, search and act on many camera feeds at once. It handles video coming in from the cameras, decides what gets stored and for how long, runs analytics such as facial recognition or number-plate reading, and presents everything through an interface a control-room operator can work in continuously.
How many cameras can a custom VMS handle?
Camera count is an architecture decision rather than a fixed product limit. Our Surakshit City platform streams thousands of concurrent feeds in live production for Delhi Police and Gurugram Police. A custom build is scoped around the target camera count from the start, so ingestion, storage and analytics are each sized for the number of feeds the deployment will actually reach.
Why build a custom VMS instead of buying an off-the-shelf product?
Off-the-shelf VMS products work well up to a point. They tend to struggle when the camera count is very high, when the deployment needs analytics the vendor does not offer, when video has to be joined to other systems such as vehicle databases or dispatch, or when a public-sector deployment requires audit trails and data-residency controls the product cannot provide. A custom build makes sense when one or more of those constraints is real — and not before.
Can a VMS track a vehicle or person across multiple cameras?
Yes. Cross-camera tracking is one of the capabilities we build in. In Surakshit City, control-room operators can follow a vehicle of interest as it moves across the city and locate a person on live footage, so response teams act on what is happening now rather than on after-the-fact reports.
How long does a custom VMS build take?
Timeline depends on camera count, analytics scope, deployment model and how many external systems the platform integrates with. We run projects in four stages — Discover, Architect, Build, and Launch and support — delivering working software every week rather than a single handover at the end. Scoping starts with a conversation: email team@m3stack.com and we reply within 24 hours.
05 / ALSO FROM M3STACK
Related work
06 / OPEN CHANNEL
Planning a video platform
that has to hold up?
Tell us the camera count and what the control room needs to do. We'll reply within 24 hours.
team@m3stack.com