Photos: Picking a face in the crowd
![bill-detwiler.png](https://www.zdnet.com/a/img/resize/af8b24752cf6b167db8b41c347e1940798e87431/2013/04/04/651150fe-1175-11e4-9732-00505685119a/bill-detwiler.png?auto=webp&fit=crop&frame=1&height=192&width=192)
![20451.jpg](https://www.zdnet.com/a/img/resize/1e20122c57e24ecedba00c545bf7ce5c446ef71e/2014/08/29/3cf93e4a-2f51-11e4-9e6a-00505685119a/20451.jpg?auto=webp&width=1280)
Watching the crowd
San Francisco start-up 3VR Security's technology breaks up the footage into key scenes and creates an index of searchable thumbnails. Once it has labeled a person, the software's facial-recognition engine will pull up other scenes featuring that individual or similar-looking people.
This screen capture shows the results of a search on 3VR employee Michael Pittman's face. It picked out the six times he passed cameras that day.
3VR's surveillance gear
In traditional systems, security officers monitor ongoing activity through a bank of monitors. Under 3VR's system, only key scenes--when someone opens the front door, when people leave a conference room--are shown to the guard.
Each scene is delivered as a static image; when clicked, it delivers a few seconds of motion. These thumbnails are also presented on a single screen.