VVehDet by The Moving Dot
Video traffic surveys

Camera footage in. Classified traffic counts out.

VehDet turns days of roadside video into traffic counts by direction and vehicle type, every 15 minutes. You can check every number against the video, and the results are ready for your transport model.

Talk to us See how it works
VehDet output · Dundee waterfront
49,000+camera-hours counted on one survey programme
300+survey sites delivered
6vehicle classes, plus pedestrians
15 mincounts by direction; 5 and 60 min too
How it works

Four steps from footage to a finished count

Each step has its own page in the tool. A survey team sets things up once, the machines do the counting, and people review the results before they are delivered.

1

Set up the tasks

Point VehDet at the survey footage. It finds the sites, cameras and days, and makes one task per camera per day.

  • Draw counting lines on a picture from each camera, one line per direction
  • Reuse the lines on the other days, and adjust them if a camera has moved
  • Choose the hours to count, then create the tasks in one go
Task Generator: scan footage folders, review, configure, draw lines, create
2

Run and manage the work

The Task Manager runs tasks on one or many machines, as many at a time as each machine can handle.

  • Start, pause, stop and resume tasks. A stopped task carries on where it left off
  • Live progress, speed and machine load for every video
  • Every video is checked for full coverage, so a missing hour is flagged and never silently dropped
Task Manager: progress and the stages each task passes through
3

Detect, track and classify

Every vehicle is found in each frame and followed from one frame to the next. It is counted once when it crosses a line, and its type is recorded in the same pass.

  • Counts by direction and by road: main carriageway, service roads, slips and U-turns
  • Paired lines catch vehicles that one line misses
  • Each vehicle's path is saved, so the counts can be worked out again later
4

Review, analyse and deliver

Reviewers check the counts against the video before anything is delivered. If a line was drawn in the wrong place, it can be moved and the count worked out again from the saved paths in minutes, without processing the video again.

  • Flow profiles at 5, 15, 30 or 60 minutes, by line and by vehicle type
  • Side-by-side comparison with manual counts
  • One workbook per site: 15-minute counts for each day, daily totals and charts
Analyse page: work the counts out again from the saved vehicle paths
Detection

See it working on UK streets

We ran VehDet on publicly licensed video from around the UK. Nothing was retouched. The coloured lines are counting lines, each box is a tracked vehicle or person with its type, and the panels show running counts for each line.

Piccadilly Circus, LondonBuses, taxis and cars at a busy junction
Green Lanes, LondonA double-deck bus counted as it crosses the line
Addiscombe Road, CroydonA bus and a tram, each counted on its own line
Roundabout, LondonCars and a taxi counted as they go round
Royal Mile, EdinburghPedestrians counted across a busy pavement
Piccadilly Circus, LondonPeople crossing tracked one by one, next to passing buses
CarLight goods (LGV)Heavy goods (HGV)MinibusBusMotorcyclePedestrian
Results

What a finished site looks like

These are real numbers from one urban arterial site: the average of five complete weekdays, counted from video. The workbook has the same figures in 15-minute steps for every day.

Average weekday, 15-minute flows

Direction 1Direction 2

Vehicle mix

Average weekday, both directions

Site workbook15-minute counts by class and direction for each day, daily totals and charts
CSV filesThe same counts in a plain format, ready for models and databases
Video evidenceClips of the peak periods with the lines and counts drawn on, to check against
DashboardAn optional map of all sites with traffic levels, profiles and vehicle mix
Survey types

One tool for many kinds of count

Automatic traffic countsLink counts by direction and class over full days and weeks
Junctions and turnsTurning movements, slip roads and U-turns, each reported on its own
Trip generationVehicles and people going in and out of hotels, malls and other sites
Park and rideEntry and exit counts at car parks and bus interchanges
Pedestrians and crowdsPeople crossing a line, including busy pedestrian streets
Seasonal and event surveysHoliday periods, peak seasons and night-time hours
Interested?

Tell us about your survey

Send us the number of sites and cameras, how many days of footage you have, and what you need counted. We will reply with how VehDet can handle it, plus a sample count from your own footage.

Email us
Video credits

The street clips are short extracts from videos on Wikimedia Commons. We cut them and added VehDet's detection boxes, counting lines and counts. The clips under CC BY-SA are shared under the same licence.