Patent ID: 8576282

Claim:
A video surveillance system comprising: a surveillance camera in communication with said frame storage unit, said surveillance camera having: a coordinate engine for determining coordinates of a current field of view of said surveillance camera; and a frame encoder for embedding the determined coordinates into a respective video frame associated with said current field of view; a frame storage unit for receiving and storing unmasked video frames from the surveillance camera, each of the unmasked video frames having respective coordinates embedded therein; a privacy zone information database for storing coordinates of predefined privacy zones; and a video viewing unit for viewing stored video frames, said video viewing unit being in communication with said frame storage unit and said privacy zone information database, said video viewing unit including: a mask generator for receiving said stored coordinates of said predefined privacy zones and generating a mask for said predefined privacy zones located within a field of view of a currently requested video frame of said stored video frames; a render engine for extracting the respective coordinates from said currently requested video frame and for using the extracted coordinates to combine said generated masks with said currently requested video frame to obscure regions of said video frame corresponding to said predefined privacy zones; and a view port for displaying said masked video frames.