How Brown County Schools Cut Video Search Time From Hours to Minutes

Aging Servers, Proprietary Cameras, and an Upgrade That Didn’t Add Up

Brown County Schools is a K–12 district in Indiana. David Phelps, its Technology Director, oversees “anything that plugs in” — from classroom systems to access control and cameras — and aging video infrastructure was stretching his small IT team thin.

Cameras were nothing new for the district. “We’ve had cameras here as long as I can remember… Coram is our third system,” Phelps said. “Our old one relied heavily on our own servers, and when one went down, I had to replace it within a month.”

The district’s previous vendor tied its AI features to expensive proprietary cameras, which made upgrades cost-prohibitive. “I was looking at replacing cameras at $800 each,” he explained. “And the AI only worked on specific models. It just didn’t make sense.”

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Cameras Included, AI Search Built In

A timely outreach from Coram landed in Phelps’s inbox while he was evaluating replacements. The offer of integrated cameras, affordable licensing, and powerful built-in software sealed the deal. “Because of the inclusion of the cameras… Coram will pay for itself just within a couple of years,” he said. “Then I’m just paying the subscription fees and I get higher-quality cameras.”

Coram stood out for a few specific reasons:

• AI-powered search: Turns hours of footage review into minutes
• Affordable upgrade path: Cameras included, with flexible licensing instead of $800-per-camera replacements
• Fast deployment: Near plug-and-play setup, less than a day per site
• Cloud-managed simplicity: Built for a small IT team
• Responsive support: Engineers, not ticket queues

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From Half a Day to Five Minutes

The software immediately changed how the IT team handled footage. “We spend a lot of time searching for footage,” Phelps said. Last week he used Coram’s plain text search to find a girl’s red water bottle — he typed it in and had the footage within five minutes. Brown County Schools now runs Coram across its middle and high schools, with plans to expand to elementary sites by year’s end, and the rollout took less than a day per site. “Setup was almost instantaneous… we just plugged the cameras in and they appeared automatically,” said Phelps. “We replaced all our middle school hallway cameras in three and a half days.”

What Brown County Schools Is Doing with Coram

• Finding footage in minutes: With Discover and Journey Path, tracking an incident or verifying activity takes minutes instead of hours.
• Handling the small stuff: Quick responses to minor incidents — students’ misplaced items, after-hours access, or unexpected visitors.
• Searching from a phone: Phelps can search, review, and share clips in real time. “I pull up the app on my phone… I can just search from here. That’s nuts.”
• Expanding the rollout: Middle and high schools today, with elementary sites planned by year’s end.

“In the past, those little things—like finding a missing water bottle—weren’t worth the time,” Phelps said. “Now we can find it in five minutes, so why not just help them out?” Asked whether he would recommend Coram, his answer was immediate: “Oh yeah, this is a no-brainer for me… I’d recommend it to any technology director I come across.” As Brown County expands its rollout, Coram’s AI tools are helping a lean IT department do more — with greater accuracy, less effort, and faster results.

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