Criminal justice continues to evolve further with the unstoppable advent of universal digitization. Law enforcement and government agencies cannot be left behind in the incorporation of newer tech and software such as Axon, as going digital is the need of the hour for law enforcement.
With greater investments in R&D, companies have brought forth technology such as body-worn cameras, dashcams, tasers, and AI-based solutions that have made policing easier. All these tech advancements have gradually grown to become a necessity in the lives of police officers.
Read more on our blog on Police Technology.
But, with all things considered, all these hardware elements bring back information as digital evidence – one of the major contributors to law enforcement agencies amongst the 15 different types of evidence police officers work with. Now comes the question of handling all this data, ingesting the evidence from the hardware, storing it securely, sharing it with complete asset control and managing it thoroughly.
The solution is simple! Law enforcement agencies need a software solution that does all these tasks for them and makes things easier – a digital evidence management system!
Read more on our blog Why Do Law Enforcement Need A Digital Evidence Tracking Software
Today, we will be comparing two of the top players in the market that carry their unique set of features to fit the needs of law enforcement organizations – Axon Evidence and VIDIZMO Digital Evidence Management System. Both are of the few digital evidence management systems that managed to take their name onto the “IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Digital Evidence Management Solutions for Law Enforcement 2020 Vendor Assessment" report.
What Is A Law Enforcement Agency Looking For?
There are several factors that set the criteria leading to a law enforcement agency adopting a digital evidence management system. Notably, the elements they consider are entailed below:
- A system that reduces the manual workload on law enforcement officers.
- A system that digitizes the process of storing, managing, and sharing digital evidence, while also keeping security a priority.
- A system that saves the valuable time of law enforcement officers and makes policing faster and more efficient.
- A system that makes processing and analyzing terabytes and petabytes of ingested data much easier.
- A system that makes use of AI-based algorithms and methodologies to further enhance and automate law enforcement processes.
- A system that is software agnostic and flexibly integrable with existing RMS, CMS, and other systems.
- A system that is hardware agnostic and can ingest from all possible sources of digital evidence.
- A system that can be deployed over the cloud, or in an on-premises option such as local data center.
- A system that allows you to meet the necessary data rights and compliance requirements necessary for law enforcement that handles digital evidence data.
A Head-To-Head Comparison – VIDIZMO Vs Axon
It’s The Details That Truly Matter
Going exactly as what it says above, we will be diving into a feature-by-feature comparison of the two and explore what areas one holds the edge over the other.
Device Agnostic
VIDIZMO
VIDIZMO DEMS has the capability to ingest from nearly all hardware elements and save the input data into its digital evidence management system. It is not limited to ingestion with only proprietary technology.
Axon
Axon Evidence is compatible to ingest only from hardware elements such as TASERs and bodycams that are developed by Axon themselves. Anything that is not a proprietary technology of Axon, the software will not be able to ingest data from it.
Software Agnostic
VIDIZMO
VIDIZMO has the flexibility to integrate with your existing CMS, RMS and other systems through widgets and API integration.
Axon
Axon Evidence is integrable with its own RMS and not with any other systems.
Deployment Models
VIDIZMO
VIDIZMO offers flexibility to deploy as a SaaS model over government or commercial cloud, over private cloud or as an on-premises solution in the datacenter of your choice.
Axon
Axon may be flexible in terms of deployment. However, unlike VIDIZMO, Axon pushes the client to pursue storage and deployment over their proprietary Axon cloud.
Transcription and Translation
VIDIZMO
VIDIZMO provides automatic transcription of videos into around 40 languages using AI, with the capability to transcribe a video simultaneously into a selection of 4 languages amongst these, and automatic translation of the transcription and closed captions from a selection of around 50 languages.
Axon
Axon Evidence will transcribe your videos into English using an on-demand Transcription Assistant. The transcripts are provided by the tool within 24 hours.
Search Inside Video
VIDIZMO
VIDIZMO marks elements in video and images using transcripts, annotations and metadata tagging. This is done through AI that is powered by Azure or AWS services, or through VIDIZMO’s own indexer.
This data is searchable and VIDIZMO’s advanced search allows you to not only find videos with the search keyword included in the data, but also pinpoint where exactly in the video that keyword is appearing.
Axon
Smart search capabilities, such as what we have discussed earlier, are available for PDF and other document uploads only in Axon Evidence. The search engine skims through the document for the presence of the keyword and displays it in the results.
However, through HyperMedia, AI-generated text is generated and linked to every instance it occurs in audio or video, making it compatible to be detected by search and displayed in respect results.
Redaction
VIDIZMO
VIDIZMO offers a complete redaction tool that allows for automatic and manual redaction of videos, images, and audio. Automatic redaction works through on-demand facial recognition, face and object detection, which afterwards can be redacted at one click. The tool allows for redaction of PII information like faces, bodies as well as license plates, and guns including pistols and rifles that are present in videos and images.
Axon
Axon bring their own redaction tool, titled Axon Redaction Assistant, which provides with automatic redaction. The tool can perform redaction for people, screens and license plates.
Supported File Types
VIDIZMO
VIDIZMO offers the flexibility to support all known file types as well as transcoding and conversion of file types that may be proprietary to a certain technology. This provides ease of accessibility from the VIDIZMO player and allows playback of evidence files.
Axon
Axon has a defined list of supported file types that may be played directly into their Evidence player. Unsupported file types will not be available for playback. However, these files may be converted into a supported format and then be ready for playback and viewing.
Area Of Expertise
VIDIZMO
VIDIZMO is solely a provider of software solutions, as experts of video content management. VIDIZMO brings forth two solutions for the purpose dedicated to enterprises and law enforcement respectively; a YouTube like platform named EnterpriseTube (EVCM) and a Digital Evidence Management System (DEMS).
VIDIZMO also offers standalone tools and integrations into existing systems through APIs and widgets, such as the Redaction Tool.
Narrowing down to compare in terms of digital evidence, VIDIZMO being an expert of video offers a great deal of features to manage, store, secure and share digital evidence files.
Digital evidence of today being majorly comprised of video data ingested from sources such as CCTVs, body cams, and dash cams, also stands in favor of a need for a digital evidence management tool from a provider holding expertise in video content.
Axon
Axon, formerly known as TASER, started off as a company developing tasers, then later other smart weapons and policing tools for public safety. Axon then later stepped into the world of law enforcement software solutions, launching products such as Axon Evidence, Axon Redaction Assistant, Axon Respond and Axon Records.
Simplicity Of The System’s User Interface
VIDIZMO
VIDIZMO DEMS is a consolidated system that has a user-friendly interface. Its extensive training videos, helpdesk articles, resources such as blogs and whitepapers make it simple to understand and operate the system.
Axon
Axon Evidence is too fragmented. It has made many of its different features into a separate product. For instance: Axon Capture is the name given to the mobile application that allows gathering of photo, audio and video evidence from phone and allows uploading on Evidence.com using the mobile phone of an authorized person such as an officer. Similarly, for connecting to Axon body cameras to review, tag and instant video playback there is a mobile application that is termed Axon View.
Conclusion
Bringing our analysis to a conclusion, as defined by Digital Marketplace, Axon Evidence is a digital evidence management system that streamlines data management and electronic sharing within one secure platform.
However, diving into the details, we have observed that while Axon lead in the department of hardware for policing, with proprietary technologies and smart weapons such as tasers and bodycams, as well as implementation of AI in their software solutions, they still fall back when it comes down to being agnostic in terms of both hardware and software integration.
VIDIZMO, on the other hand, is a complete software solution dedicated to dealing with video content management, providing support for the vast majority of hardware for data ingestion, as well as software for integration. The solution provides a greater diversity in terms of automated, AI-powered features when compared to what Axon offers. VIDIZMO is also more open to a multitude of deployment options, suited to meet the needs of the organization.
