TRACS

TRACS front

Fully automated

Designed to meet the most important requirements for 24/7 mandatory logging of audio and video, TRACS is an attractive alternative for traditional VHS logging.

The regulations are often complex and in case of noncompliance you can get big fines from governmental authorities and advertisement companies. Taking this into account, it is clear that a good compliance recording solution should score high on the following criteria:

Reliability : 24/7 recording without loss of data and quick notice when problems occur
Protection : no one should be able to accidentally delete or damage data
Cost Efficiency : low labor costs and low maintenance costs
Usability : everyone should be able to use it and data must be quickly retrievable
Compact : the system must not consume to much space

TRACS servers

TRACS is a much better solution than VHS recording systems

Old VHS Recording

VHS recording is asking for trouble

VHS recorder systems score very low on these criteria. Reliability is very low because they break down a lot. It's even happens a lot that you don't notice a defect recorder until you review a tape. VHS recording is not very protective. You can easily lose tapes or accidentally erase the wrong tapes. It's also not very cost efficient because they are very labor intensive and the annual replacement costs of tapes and recorders are very high. Usability is very poor because VHS systems require manual operation, manual archiving and labeling and retrieving data can be very time consuming. Specially because you can only have one user per tape. VHS recording isn't very compact either. Recorders are about 2RU high each and are not rack mountable, let alone the space it takes to store all the tapes.

TRACS gui

TRACS solves all the problems that come with VHS recording

TRACS is built specifically around these 5 important compliance recording requirements. It's very reliable because you don't use tapes anymore, everything is hard disk based. This means manual intervention is not needed anymore, everything is fully automatic. It's also very protective due to the first in first out automated archiving system. You can not accidentally damage or delete the wrong data like you can with tapes. Thanks to the low labor intensiveness, TRACS is also very cost efficient . No one has to change tapes, rewind them, label them and store them manually anymore. Also, you don't have the annual tape and recorder replacement costs anymore. Usability is also much better than with VHS recording. Everyone can now simultaneously retrieve recorded data from any PC connected to the company's LAN. The GUI is very easy to operate so your personnel don't need any training to operate it. Compared to VHS, TRACS is very compact. Not only because the units are only 1 RU per channel high and rack mountable, but you also save a lot of space because you don't need large tape cabinets anymore.

TRACS is the best compliance recorder currently available

TRACS is built to meet the 5 most important compliance recording requirements: reliability, protection, cost efficiency, usability and compactness. With those 5 requirements in mind, all TRACS systems are built with the following unique features:

Reliability

TRACS recorders and request servers are all running on a Linux operating system, which improves the stability (think of the regular crashes of consumer PCs that run on other operating systems). Also, Linux is less sensitive to viruses than other operating systems. This operating system is running from a flash card (solid state memory), so that the hard disks are only used for content. Besides the OS, TRACS are built out of dedicated professional hardware. Axon developed it's own hardware encoding card which encodes the input to MPEG 2 or 4 real time, without loading the system processor. There also the request server that relieves the recorders from processing request, monitoring or settings data. The cases are built for 24/7 operation, containing an innovative cooling design and RAID5 redundant, hot swappable hard disks.

Protection

With TRACS, users don't have direct access to the recorders. No one can accidentally delete or damage the recorded content or install his 'private' software (like MP3 players or games). Every communication with the systems goes via the request server. The user simply fills in the IP-address of the request server and he can view all the content or monitor all recorders, without being able to change settings (only the systems engineer can access these settings). The following picture explains how the request server functions:

Request Server

Usability

Of course the huge benefit of TRACS is that you don't have to change, rewind, log, review and archive tapes anymore. Besides this, TRACS has other unique features that improve the usability even more. First there is the easy to use, intuitive GUI that doesn't require training to be able to operate it. Besides that, the request server allows remote access to all the content by all the client PC's on your company's LAN. Even simultaneous access to the same content is no problem. For your engineers, TRACS is also easy to use. The request server can be operated locally using a normal keyboard, mouse and VGA screen. Updates on the system are free and engineers can install them by themselves.

Intuitive gui

Cost efficiency

The cost efficiency of TRACS not only counts in comparison to the annual costs of VHS . TRACS is also cost efficient compared to other hard disk recording systems. Our software is totally free of charge. Even better: you don't need additional dedicated Axon software installed on the clients to be able to view the TRACS GUI. Our software is completely internet browser based. Simply fill in the request server IP address in any browser window and there you go. Only thing you need to view recorded content is the free downloadable VLC player from VideoLAN.

VLC

Compact

The recorder and request server units are only 1 RU high and rack mountable. Thanks to the innovative cooling design, containing 3 thermal controlled cooling fans with overheat indication, the units can be rack mounted directly on top of each other in air conditioned environments. Compared to the space which a VHS recording system consumes, this is much more compact. Of course the biggest space saver is the fact that you don't need tape storage room anymore.

An Example: below you see a picture of the space needed for a VHS system of 20 channels, compared to what is needed for a TRACS system of the same size. In case of a 90 days compliance you need 90 x3 x20 = 5400 tapes in storage. This requires about 21 tape cabinets which takes up about 9 m². Besides that you need rack space for the VHS recorders of 20 x2 = 40 RU. With TRACS you don't need the tape storage. You on require 20 RU rack space for the recorders and 1 RU for the request server. This makes a total of only 21 RU rack space needed in case of a TRACS system.

Compact example

TRACS Application Diagram

TRACS setup

This diagram shows how TRACS is used in a typical broadcasting environment. One point that makes TRACS unique is it's request server. Every TRACS system has 1 request server which functions as the communicator between the user and all the recorders. This has the following benefits:

Users have no direct access to the recorders, preventing accidental content damage or installation of 'private' software on the system
Relieving the recorders from processing request and monitoring data
Allows hardware play out on digital and analog BNC outputs
Makes simultaneous access to the same content possible for all client PC's on your network

TRACS features

TRACS is an easy buy. Since it's only one product with one functionality, there's only 3 flavors: 30 days capacity, 90 days capacity and 150 days capacity recorders. The request server you only need one of per system. All systems, no matter what recorders are in it, have the same standard features. They are the following:

Designed for reliability and performance
Linux OS for improved stability
OS running from flash card (solid state memory)
MPEG 2 and MPEG 4 compression at 512 Kb/s to 10 MB/s
Axon designed PCI card which encodes and decodes the MPEG, ensuring minimum CPU usage
Record and play out Closed Captioning and Teletext
Easy operation locally or through client PCs
4 RAID 5 configured Serial ATA disk drives
RAID status monitoring and error logs
1 video channel on 1RU frame
Composite video input for PAL, NTSC and SECAM
SD-SDI input, 270Mb + embedded audio
2 audio channels (quasi 4 channels if you record mono and play out one of the channels)
Audio gain option
Gigabit Ethernet connection
Free Axon supplied gigabit switch
DHCP and manual IP network settings
MPEG client clip format
LTC and external NTP time synch
Free client software licenses
Hardware play out on request server via analog or digital outputs
30, 90 or 150 days of recording on 512 Kb/s (depending on which model you have)
OSD Time, date and channel name encoded in MPEG
Innovative cooling design, featuring high performance thermal controlled fans, with overheat indication