Comments on IP Security Solutions: The Hidden Value of H.264

Thanks, I updated the post to reflect this.

2010-12-18T17:33:26.062-05:00

Thanks, I updated the post to reflect this.

i think you need to check your sources, that video...

2010-12-18T01:06:41.698-05:00

i think you need to check your sources, that video wasn't posted by mobotix, this was posted by mxinstaller...they're not the same company.

This is ok for constant recording....but, how is t...

2010-09-07T18:07:22.501-04:00

This is ok for constant recording....but, how is the video motion processed? Bosch cameras cannot handle the VMD decoding internally in the camera

Hi, This is not how it works, the timestamps are m...

2010-09-06T21:27:29.761-04:00

Hi,
This is not how it works, the timestamps are managed internally by the IP camera.

When Omnicast is used with Bosch edge recording or Bosch VRM, ip cameras/encoders send the video directly to disk, it doesn't transit by Omnicast. The video is recorded even when the NVR isn't running.

When a user requests accces to recorded video, omnicast queries the ip camera to find out if there is recorded video or not and initiate a playback session with the encoder.

In regards to your comment "Omnicast supports...

2010-09-05T20:34:35.162-04:00

In regards to your comment "Omnicast supports decentralized storage with most Bosch IP products" According to Bosch, the video has to be processed by a VMS (NVR) first, to allow remote time/date/event searching from a VMS client - recording directly to storage will not allow this. So it's not really decentralized, in that it is still NVR reliant.

Nice article I enjoyed reading it - thanks. Can ...

2010-08-27T18:42:10.858-04:00

Nice article I enjoyed reading it - thanks. Can I just add, that in regards to the cost comparison I think you've left out some very important factors:

1. no storage cost comparison between H264 and MxPEG.
2. you've not factored in the H.264 cost of the VMS/NVR software and ongoing licensing costs. MxPEG coding process does not require any of this
3. When H264 is implemented to offer 5-6 times the storage savings over MJPEG, the image quality suffers enormously - esp. where there is a lot of movement. H264 is also very poor at handling low light scenes. It’s breakdown is almost 50% worse than MJPEG...regardless of the bit-rate settings.
4. H264 is limited to streaming. You cannot use H264 for specialized analytics such as LPR - however you can use MJPEG. (see article http://ipvideomarket.info/report/realities_of_license_plate_recognition_lpr)

>This is the only and actually the proper way. ...

2009-05-30T07:10:14.009-04:00

>This is the only and actually the proper way. Camera has to do all motion detection before compression and pass motion detection status along with encoded video data.

This method works well for real-time motion detection when the camera manifacturer supports it, unfortunately some cameras have very poor motion detection capabilities.

Example: It doesn't inclusive or exclusive Motion Mask or you can only have 1 rectangle shaped mask.

I also seen cameras where the motion alerts are embedded in the video stream, so it's impossible to implement a system over the inernet that starts streaming when motion is detected.

Motion alerts and video streaming should always be on 2 independant channels.

Video management software also sometimes implement a Motion Search capabilities for recorded video and it cannot rely on cameras motion detection since the motion search criterias might be different than what was initially configured.

Jo

> If you do not decode the video, how is motion...

2009-05-26T02:44:58.772-04:00

> If you do not decode the video, how is motion detection performed to determine motion based recording?
> Do you depend on the cameras/encoders to provide motion detection?

This is the only and actually the proper way. Camera has to do all motion detection before compression and pass motion detection status along with encoded video data.

Hi John, I agree with you, MxPEG is more efficien...

2009-05-25T22:53:11.648-04:00

Hi John,

I agree with you, MxPEG is more efficient than JPEG but I didn’t have any bandwidth comparison with JPEG or MPEG-4, that’s why my post only
focused on JPEG. I just saw today your post where you mentioned that MxPEG is 50% better than JPEG. Even 50%, the savings on harddrive with H.264 is still a lot of money depending how many days you want to store.

Omnicast supports motion detection without decoding entirely the video stream for all compression except JPEG. Since JPEG is design for images not video, Omnicast has to decode entirely the stream and compare it with the previous frame. In fact, our Archiver service is requiring less CPU to analyse motion in MPEG-4 than JPEG.

For the eternal debate about de-centralized versus centralized solutions, I believe it’s possible to have best of both world, distributed storage and centralized configuration and management. Did you know that Omnicast supports decentralized storage with most Bosch IP products some of the GE DVRs? The video recording can be 100% offloaded to Bosh encoders/IP cameras and the playback/export functions are still available in Omnicast like if it was native Omnicast recording.

Since Bosch only support iSCI, it's more expensive than cheap NAS. But as soon as Bosch implement support for NAS, Omnicast will support it since we are already supporting Edge recording with Bosch.

Jo

Hi Jonathan, Very interesting and timely topic. ...

2009-05-22T12:52:14.745-04:00

Hi Jonathan,

Very interesting and timely topic.

Question: You mention, "With Omnicast it's not requiring more servers, because well architect products do not require decoding the video stream in order to record it"

If you do not decode the video, how is motion detection performed to determine motion based recording? Do you depend on the cameras/encoders to provide motion detection?

I agree with you about the hidden cost of storage and how Mobotix de-emphasizes that. In fairness to them, your calculation assumes the use of MJPEG, whereas MxPEG is certainly more efficient than that. Also, Mobotix would argue that with their solution you can record directly to low cost NAS devices rather than to servers/iSCI arrays.

Thoughts on this?

Best,

John

2009-05-21T17:58:53.964-04:00

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