00:00:00/Glossary
VMS (video management system)
A VMS (video management system) is the software that records camera feeds, stores the footage and plays it back. It's the part of a CCTV setup you actually look at: the wall of live views, the timeline, the export button.
What a VMS does well
It pulls in streams from every camera on site, usually over RTSP, manages storage and retention, shows the live wall and lets you export a clip when something happens. Whether it runs on a server or comes baked into a recorder, for recording and playback it's mature, reliable technology, and most sites already run one.
What a VMS doesn't do
A VMS indexes time and motion, not meaning. It can take you to camera 4 at 4pm, or to the moments where pixels changed; it can't answer “show me the man in the grey hoodie who left through the fire exit”. Finding that man is still a human scrubbing a timeline, however good the recorder is.
AI search sits on top, not instead
Natural-language search tools read the same streams the VMS records and add a layer of meaning over them; the recording setup stays put. Svid is that layer: point it at the existing feeds and the footage becomes searchable in plain English, “person in a red jacket near the till” typed instead of a timeline scrubbed, with results in seconds.
Related footage
Glossary
RTSP
RTSP (Real Time Streaming Protocol) is the standard way IP cameras expose a live video stream so other software, like AI video analysis, can read it.
Glossary
Natural language video search
Natural language video search finds moments in footage from a typed description, like “person in a red jacket near the till”, with no scrubbing or timestamps.