Challenge

With bowling alleys, arcade games, billiards, karaoke, ping pong, darts, Kids Zones, food, drink, and so much more, Round1 Entertainment aims to create a space where families, friends and coworkers can relax and unwind. Until recently, security at Round1 centers in the US focused mainly on internal and external theft. As the company began building more Sports Challenge zones, however, it started seeing an increase in litigation from visitors making claims about injuries.

“Wisenet WAVE offers Round1 everything we need to meet our retention goals. And, from an operations perspective, the day-to-day usage of the cameras is just so far superior to anything else on the market.” — Matthew Strawn, Director of loss Prevention at Round1

Solution

To protect the company against false claims, Round1 decided to increase data retention requirements at their facilities to store footage for two years to allow staff to go back and review incidents to determine the validity of any claim made against the company.

To help design a physical security system that would meet the new retention requirements, Round1 implemented a remote storage solution featuring a 124 TB NVR from Hanwha Techwin that performs continuous back-ups to ensure that the data is secure. This NVR is then supported by an outside server. The total storage for the facility is 528TB, which enables them to comply with the two-year retention requirement.

Protecting against liability requires capturing and storing wide-angle, high-resolution video. To achieve this, a total of 77 cameras were deployed from Hanwha Techwin, including the XNV-6011 with fisheye lens and the PNM-7000VD. With these cameras placed throughout the center, the security system is able to capture 360° views of key areas.

One of the challenges in using fisheye lenses and dual headed cameras is the size of the video files. These cameras are capturing high-resolution 360° images that are data heavy and require a lot of bandwidth. Finding the right VMS to compress video and manage bandwidth is crucial. This is particularly true if you are interested in implementing long-term storage.

Hanwha’s Wisenet WAVE VMS is helping Round1 at Cumberland Mall in Atlanta, GA manage bandwidth. In addition to using H-265 and WiseStream II compression technology to reduce file size, they’re also using motion detection to help reduce the amount of video they capture.

“Wisenet WAVE offers Round1 everything we need to meet our retention goals. And, from an operations perspective, the day-to-day usage of the cameras is just so far superior to anything else on the market,” said Matthew Strawn, Director of loss Prevention at Round1.

They have also set the sensitivity of their video cameras to optimize motion capture so that flashing lights and other background elements don’t trigger the sensors.

Result

The facility at Cumberland was completed in 2020, and their security system is already yielding results. The center had an alleged injury on the skating rink that was reported long after the date it was said to have occurred. Using WAVE, Strawn was able to retrieve the pertinent video footage from the remote storage and then isolate the relevant images.

To date, Round1 has migrated seven locations to WAVE. Strawn is pleased with the outcome, saying “We have had zero issues and the coverage has been great. We haven’t had to make any adjustments and the system completely satisfies our retention needs.” And he’s not alone in his appreciation of the new system. The project at the Cumberland Mall and the migration of seven other centers to WAVE have been so successful that Round1 hopes to upgrade more in the future.