SAFR Milestone Integration Guide

Integrated SAFR Milestone is only available on Windows.

Integrating SAFR's facial recognition and analysis capabilities into Milestone enables you to use SAFR's video feed information overlays within Milestone camera video feeds, thus making it much easier to quickly and accurately separate unknown people from authorized people from known threats. You'll also have immediate access to additional infomation such as age, gender, sentiment, name, company, known associates, or any other configurable information you want to create.

Integrating the two systems also allows SAFR's information about individuals to trigger Milestone alerts and other actions within the Milestone system. Metadata within Milestone's bookmarks are enriched with SAFR's additional information, allowing you to more easily find relevant bookmarks.

This page discusses how to install and configure SAFR and Milestone so that the two systems are properly integrated. The SAFR Milestone Operation Guide discusses how to operate the integrated systems.

Integration Overview and Requirements

A typical deployment requires the following:

Cameras are connected to Milestone XProtect. SAFR can then connect to Milestone XProtect to perform analysis of the video and add overlays. Depending on the number of cameras you need, one or more machines can run the SAFR Desktop Client, with each client processing multiple video feeds. SAFR processes the video and returns information to Milestone to overlay the video feeds and generate events. The SAFR Desktop Client is also used to perform various management activities.

System Requirements

Milestone has the following requirements:

SAFR has the following requirements:

Install and Configure Milestone XProtect

Download and install the latest Milestone installer package from the Milestone Download Portal.

To create a SAFR user in Milestone and set its permissions, do the following:

  1. Add a SAFR user (e.g. safr-roles) in the Milestone XProtect Management Client by going to the Site Navigation pane and selecting Security > Roles.
  2. Highlight Administrator in the Roles pane.
  3. At the bottom of the GUI click Users and Gr and then Add. (Select Basic to add the safr-roles.)
  4. Open the Milestone XProtect Management Client, go to Security > Roles > SAFR > Camera, and check Allow for the following checkboxes:
    • Read
    • View Live
    • Create bookmarks (only available on XProtect Expert and Corporate)
    • Read bookmarks (only available on XProtect Expert and Corporate)
    • Edit bookmarks (only available on XProtect Expert and Corporate)
  5. Click Save to save the changes.

Update Milestone XProtect Operator Permissions

To enable the Milestone operators to view SAFR-created overlays, do the following:

  1. Open the Milestone XProtect Management Client, go to Security > Roles > Operators > Metadata, and check Allow for the following checkboxes:
    • Read
    • View Live
    • Playback
  2. Go to Security > Roles > Operators > Analytics Events and check Allow for the following checkbox:
    • Read
  3. Go to Security > Roles > Operators > Alarms and check Allow for the following checkboxes:
    • View
    • Receive notifications
  4. Click Save to save the changes.

Note: Overlays are not visible if the live permission is not added to the Operator role.

Install and Configure SAFR

  1. From the SAFR Download Portal, download and install either SAFR Platform or SAFR Desktop, depending on your deployment type. Make sure to select the Milestone VMS extension install option.
  2. Start the Desktop Client and go to Tools > Preferences.
  3. Click the Milestone tab.
    Note: If the Milestone Preferences tab is not displayed, it's possible that you didn't select the Milestone VMS Extension when you installed SAFR.
  4. To connect to the Milestone XProtect server and enable access to the cameras connected to Milestone server enter the following.
    • Username: SAFR user created when you installed and configured Milestone above. (e.g. safr-roles)
    • Password: Password created for the SAFR user.
    • If you created the user (in this example safr-roles) as a Windows user versus basic user, check the "Windows credentials" box.
    • Directory: IP address or domain address of server running Milestone XProtect. If all in one server for a small deployment or PoC, "localhost" should work.

See the Operation Guide for a complete description of the settings on the Milestone Preferences tab.

Customizing Ports for SAFR Server Services

For smaller deployments in which you want to run both SAFR and Milestone XProtect on the same machine, you must customize the port assignments in SAFR to ensure SAFR and Milestone XProtect do not conflict.

SAFR uses the following ports by default:

To customize ports, do the following:

  1. Stop or disable any conflicting software using the required ports.
  2. Install the SAFR Platform.
  3. Open Notepad as Administrator and open C:\Program Files\RealNetworks\SAFR\safrports.conf.
  4. Edit any conflicting ports to new values. (e.g. CoviHTTP=18080)
  5. Run C:\Program Files\RealNetworks\SAFR\bin\configure-ports.bat. Running this batch script stops, reconfigures, and re-starts SAFR services.
  6. Run C:\Program Files\RealNetworks\SAFR\bin\check.bat. check.bat displays the new port settings.

Verify your Connection

To verify successful connection to the Milestone system, open the Preferences > Camera tab. Cameras connected to the Milestone system should be visible. All cameras connected to the Milestone system have a Milestone prefix in their names.

See Also