Twenty years of video engineering

Camera Video, Wherever It Has to Go

WINK takes the cameras you already own, normalizes whatever they produce, and delivers it to the people entitled to see it. Partner agencies, public portals, video walls, mobile apps, and the VMS you already run.

Built for networks that are rarely as good as the specification said they would be.

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Traffic management center with operators monitoring a wall of live camera feeds
WINK Forge and WINK Media Router are the core platform. Forge handles transcoding. Router handles distribution. Every solution we deliver sits on both.
Overview

What WINK Is

A video platform that transcodes, distributes, and shares camera video across the agencies, portals, and systems that need it.

Organizations rarely get to start clean. Cameras arrive across procurement cycles from different manufacturers, the video management system is already chosen, and the network is whatever the site has. WINK is built to work with that. It takes whatever your cameras produce and delivers it in the format each system, partner, and viewer requires, without replacing anything you already own.

Two products do the core work. WINK Forge transcodes and normalizes, accepting every common codec and protocol and emitting whatever the downstream system needs. WINK Media Router distributes, authenticating each viewer session and keeping the camera network behind a boundary that external consumers never cross.

The rest of the line extends those two. Crossroad adds cloud management and verified camera health, Archive handles recording and retention, Traffic and LPR adds vehicle detection and plate reading, LiveView puts the same cameras on a phone, and Video Wall drives the operations room.

Deploy in the cloud, on our appliances, as a virtual machine, or split with transcoding at the edge and distribution in the cloud. Twenty years in production with state DOTs, municipalities, law enforcement, and emergency management.

At a Glance

  • Every common codec in and out, video and audio
  • Hundreds of concurrent transcode processes per deployment
  • Per session tokens, so nothing permanent is handed out
  • Native Genetec SDK, not a plugin wrapper
  • Camera protocol emulation for VMS platforms that need it
  • Frame level health, verified at the encoder and the public path
  • Cloud, appliance, virtual, or hybrid deployment
  • PCI-DSS aligned practices throughout
Platform

How the Pieces Fit Together

Cameras feed Forge, Forge feeds Media Router, and Media Router feeds everyone else. Management and monitoring sit above the video path rather than inside it.

The WINK platform Cameras feed WINK Forge, which transcodes and normalizes the video. Forge feeds WINK Media Router, which authenticates and distributes streams to partners, public portals, video walls, and mobile apps. WINK Crossroad sits above in the cloud, monitoring appliances and camera health without carrying the video itself. WINK Crossroad cloud management, monitoring, camera health Cameras any make, any codec WINK Forge transcode, normalize WINK Media Router authenticate, distribute partner agencies public portals walls and mobile state, health, events Video stays on infrastructure you control. Only control and telemetry reach the cloud. Analytics, plate recognition, archiving, and mobile access attach to this same path.
Products

Nine Products, One Platform

WINK Forge

Enterprise transcoding. Every codec in and every codec out, hundreds of concurrent processes, automatic codec detection, and VMS bridging.

Explore WINK Forge

WINK Media Router

Distribution and access control. Isolated endpoints per partner, per session tokens, camera protocol emulation, and health monitoring.

Explore WINK Media Router

WINK Crossroad

Cloud VMS. Live viewing, Forge fleet monitoring, camera inventory, frame level health verification, and partner governance from a browser.

Explore WINK Crossroad

WINK Traffic and LPR

Vehicle detection, classification, wrong way alerts, and plate reading on the cameras you already operate rather than dedicated ALPR hardware.

Explore WINK Traffic and LPR

WINK Analytics

Motion detection, object tracking, and people counting as an add-on to Media Router, running on streams already flowing through the platform.

Explore WINK Analytics

WINK Archive

Recording and retention that steps quality down as footage ages instead of deleting it, with search by what is in the video.

Explore WINK Archive

WINK LiveView

The same cameras on iOS and Android, using the access rules already set centrally. White label branding available.

Explore WINK LiveView

WINK Video Wall

A mesh video wall with one small computer per display, a supplied image, and automatic configuration on first boot.

Explore WINK Video Wall

WINK Encoder

Hardware encoder for HDMI and SDI sources, now in its end of life period with a documented migration path to Forge.

Explore WINK Encoder

Compare the full product line

What Makes It Different

Six Things Most Platforms Do Not Do

Every Codec, Both Directions

H.264 through H.265, AV1, VP8 and VP9, MJPEG, MPEG-4 and MPEG-2, with AAC, Opus, MP3, AC-3 and G.711 on audio. Incoming formats are detected, not declared.

Built for Impaired Links

Packet loss reconstruction recovers usable video where other transcoders macroblock or drop the session, and jitter buffering is set per input so one bad link does not cost latency on the good ones.

Sharing Without Network Access

Each partner gets an isolated endpoint with its own port, credentials, IP whitelist, and camera set. Revoking one changes nothing for the others, which is what makes the policy enforceable.

Health Means a Decoded Frame

A camera counts as online when it produces a real image, checked at the encoder and again through the public path. That catches the black screens and placeholder cards a port check calls healthy.

Bridges VMS Platforms

Genetec to Milestone, a legacy DVR into a modern VMS, or a cloud system presented on premise. Where the receiving system will only accept a camera, WINK can appear as an Axis, Panasonic, Sony, Hikvision, Dahua, or Bosch device.

We Publish the Measurements

Including the negative ones. Our super resolution study found a neural pre-filter returned 0.0 percent exact match on plate reading, so we did not ship it.

Solutions

Where It Is Deployed

Government Video Portals

Browser based access for staff and partner agencies, with no VPN and no client software to install.

Secure Video Portals

DOT and 511 Systems

Traffic camera distribution into 511 services, public websites, and mobile apps, at statewide scale.

DOT and 511 Integrations

Smart City Cameras

Traffic and public safety camera sharing for cities and municipalities, from a few intersections upward.

Traffic Cameras

Public Camera Access

Citizen facing portals that publish selected cameras without exposing the camera network behind them.

Public Eye

Security Patrol

Live camera access for mobile officers and field teams, with the permissions set centrally.

Security Patrol

Genetec Video Sharing

Extend a Genetec Security Center deployment to partners and the public through the native SDK.

Genetec Video Sharing

SCADA Video

Visual verification alongside industrial telemetry, so an alarm arrives with a picture attached.

SCADA Video

Video CDN

Delivery capacity for public facing streams, so audience load never reaches the camera network.

Video CDN

Free Engineering Tools

The RTSP, HLS, and RTP analyzers our own team uses, plus ONVIF discovery and camera management, free to download.

WINK Media Tools

See all solutions

Questions

Frequently Asked Questions

What does WINK actually do?

WINK takes video from cameras you already own, normalizes it into whatever format each consumer needs, and delivers it to the people entitled to see it. WINK Forge does the transcoding and processing. WINK Media Router does the distribution and access control. Everything else in the line extends those two.

What is the difference between WINK Forge and WINK Media Router?

Forge is the transcoding engine. It accepts H.264, H.265, VP8, VP9, MJPEG, MPEG-4 and MPEG-2 over RTSP, RTMP, SRT, HLS, HTTP and multicast, detects the incoming codec automatically, and emits whatever the downstream system requires. Media Router is the distribution layer. It publishes those streams to partners, portals, VMS platforms and mobile apps, with per session authentication and isolated endpoints. They are always deployed together.

Can we share cameras with another agency without giving them network access?

Yes. That is the reason Media Router exists. External consumers never reach a camera. They reach an endpoint created for them, carrying only the cameras they are entitled to, on credentials that belong to them alone. Web viewers get a one time password token per session, so nothing long lived is issued and revoking access for one partner does not disturb any other. The mechanics are documented in the API Reference Manual.

Does WINK work with Genetec Security Center?

Integration is through the native Genetec SDK rather than a plugin, which is what keeps PTZ control, authentication, alarms and camera metadata behaving the way Security Center operators expect. Milestone XProtect, OnSSI Ocularis, Axis Camera Station, ONVIF and direct RTSP are also supported, and WINK can bridge between VMS platforms that do not talk to each other. See Genetec video sharing.

Can you read license plates from our existing traffic cameras?

Yes, and that is the point of the product. Most plate recognition requires dedicated ALPR cameras at chosen collection points. WINK Traffic and LPR runs on the pole mounted cameras an agency already operates, capturing 15 to 20 crops per vehicle and voting across them. Measured over a thousand vehicles, voting returned 92.0 percent exact match against 79.5 percent for the best single crop.

How long has WINK been doing this?

Twenty years. The platform is in production with state DOTs, municipalities, law enforcement and emergency management agencies, and the engineering is informed by running video over links that were never engineered for it, including cellular, wireless bridges and rural fiber.

Tell Us What Your Cameras Are Connected To

Send us the camera count, the codecs, and what the links look like. We will tell you what it takes to transcode, distribute, and share them reliably.

+1-312-281-5433   sales@wink.co

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