New Axis HDTV network camera !!!

[thewireguys 3]

This is a game changer!!!

 

http://www.axis.com/products/cam_q1755/index.htm

 

I have a demo video. It is the best video I have ever seen from a cctv camera ever!!

[VST_Man 1]

how muchie?

[Erron S. 0]

This is a game changer!!!

 

http://www.axis.com/products/cam_q1755/index.htm

 

I have a demo video. It is the best video I have ever seen from a cctv camera ever!!

 

Really? You should see the Avgilon 16 megapixel. Axis is nice though.

 

I actually just came out of a demo with the guys from Camtron. They have a 1.3MP camera with direct HDMI out. That's pretty sweet right there.

[thewireguys 3]

The Avigilon is over $10,000 with lens right? and you can only use it with Avigilon!!!

 

The Axis camera is less then $1500!!! and you can use it with any NVR software.

Edited December 7, 2008 by Guest

[Erron S. 0]

There are a TON of cameras in under that price range. From the Vivotek to IQ Eye, actually EVERY other camera is under that price range. (for similiar product)

 

Keep in mind 1080I is only 2 megapixel fellas. You were saying it was the best image you've ever seen. The Avigilon is the best i've seen.

[thewireguys 3]

Well the Avigilon 16 megapixel camera was the best I have seen also but I the Axis q1755 is as good and it is around 10,000$ less.

[frank3 0]

How can a 1080i look any good with all the interlacing tearing involved? For surveillance applications it matters to get sequences of good still shots, not videos with motion artifacts. You would be better off using that camera in 720p progressive mode, but then that's only 1 megapixel. Why do you say it's a game changer?

 

I'd like to see your demo video though. Is it available online?

[Soundy 1]

The Avgilon is over $10,000 with lens right? and you can only use it with Avgilon!!!

 

The Axis camera is less then $1500!!! and you can use it with any NVR software.

 

Correction to both: you can use EITHER with any NVR *that supports its stream format*. I know of at least one DVR/NVR manufacturer (I can't disclose who, yet) that's working on adding Avgilon support. I've heard Pelco will have support in their systems soon as well.

 

Same with the Axis: the NVR itself has to support the camera to at least some degree.

[thewireguys 3]

Well the problem with Avigilon is the price.

 

Here is the video

 

http://www.mediafire.com/?dmnhwwz0zz2

Edited December 7, 2008 by Guest

[Soundy 1]

Well the problem with Avgilon is the price.

 

Not if you want the quality.

 

By that argument, the problem with Axis is the price... compared to a $60 offshore-built 1/4"board camera.

[thewireguys 3]

Watch the video and tell me what you think.

[Soundy 1]

I think it's not bad for just barely 1MP. Maybe marginally better than the 1.3MP (1280x1024) IQEye 511s I normally work with. Standard 1/2" CCTV lens I assume?

 

Do you have the same angle with a 16MP camera looking through Canon L-series glass? It's kind of pointless to attempt a "comparison" without both side-by-side.

[thewireguys 3]

I have the demo Avigilon video in the airport so you can compare it to this one.

 

http://www.mediafire.com/?qjm2gt2um2k

[Soundy 1]

So which is that? Cuz that ain't no 16MP.

[thewireguys 3]

So which is that? Cuz that ain't no 16MP.

 

Your right it's HD!!!! I think that is very impressive for $1500

[Soundy 1]

"HD"? HD is a buzzword. HD is a marketing term. Any camera a megapixel or higher is going to qualify as "HD". IQEye cameras are "HD". Avigilon cameras are HD (actually, far beyond HD).

 

It's not bad for $1500... but it's not great by today's standards either. At least, the picture isn't - the other goodies/features/flashy-lights on the camera might be, but the picture quality alone isn't a $1500 IP camera. 5MP IP cameras can be had for $1500.

[frank3 0]

Watch the video and tell me what you think.

 

Thanks for the videos. I was curious after reading your claim, but that was enlightening.

 

I agree the first video looks decent. However, it's all about tricking your eye with the motion, like when you watch HDTV. You're not supposed to extract sharp shots out of it. As soon as you hit pause to try and recognize something or somebody, you'll notice a huge problem. Five cars drive by right in front of the camera, and even with proper auto-focus, their plates are unreadable. There's only one out of five that I can guess at, but I'm even not sure about the first letters (small red car). If you look at the flow, it's a good video, but it's not optimal for a security application. You can find a lady with a red bag, but you won't be able to give the black car's plate number to the authorities if you had to. HDTV needs not be the baseline for CCTV, fellas. I'm personally tired of reports saying CCTV is useless when incidents occur because details are needed yet are missing. CCTV can be so much better than that when you avoid expensive marketing fallacies.

 

The second airport video makes the camera look absolutely useless. One megapixel in such a large area is unsuitable except to know whether it's day or night. Even then, I would like to see that footage without the bright sunlight because the camera is having a really hard time with contrast. When the camera is zoomed out, you can't read or recognize anything. Everyone appears to be wearing black clothes due to the poor colour resolution. See how the bright colors spread over a few pixels, preventing light signs to be read. When it zooms in, you lose the whole airport perspective, and while you can differentiate hair colour, all faces look the same. When it zooms to a usable level, the picture is shaky and blurry, and you view such a small area that most people's faces are outside the field of view.

 

After seeing those videos, I can say your comparison with Avigilon was probably misguided. A 16 megapixel camera lets you see so much more without ever compromising field of view. The lack of motion blur is also immensely useful in security applications, because every image exceeds that of a high-end professional digital camera, so all elements are sharp and recognizable.

 

It is true however that the 16 megapixel is a kind of no-compromise product that's in a different pricing league, so it would be fair to compare the Axis to their competing product line instead. The same Axis price would easily get you a 5 megapixel day&night Avigilon camera, which would be far more impressive in an airport with a zoom lens. For the first scene with pedestrians, one megapixel is fine but you should get a camera with a quality sensor so that individual pictures aren't as blurry. Cameras with higher sensitivity and lower exposure times would generate pictures with readable car plates and recognizable faces. I don't want to promote any online reseller, so you will have to look it up, but I've seen one carrying the Avigilon 1MP for less than a third of the price of that Axis camera, or cheaper than any other Axis camera for that matter. Even their 2MP is very inexpensive, and that would give you real 1080p rather than 1080i.

[thewireguys 3]

Wow you guys are hard to impress

 

I willing to bet that if I could digitally zoom in the image (I use VLC to play the video so I can't) we could make out the plates in the video.

 

That camera has a 10x optical zoom, auto focus, day/night, WDR, h.264 with multi-streams, SD card and component video output.

[Soundy 1]

Cameras with higher sensitivity and lower exposure times would generate pictures with readable car plates and recognizable faces.

 

This is a key point: both of the examples given so far are under "good" to "excellent" lighting conditions. Get into low-light situations, and you really start to see the differences. The one Avigilon camera I saw, the sensor was, I would have to say, the same physical size as the ones in my Canon DSLRs. Most "normal" IP cameras as 1/2" sensors at best. With 4 times the surface area or more, even with the same pixel count, a larger sensor can collect far more light, and thus (all else being equal) provide far better low-light performance.

 

And as you noted, that goes back not just to clarity, but MOTION clarity, as most cameras will compensate for low lighting by either boosting the signal, which increases noise, or reducing the shutter speed, which results in blurred/streaked/torn images when you try to get stills from them.

 

Even their 2MP is very inexpensive, and that would give you real 1080p rather than 1080i.

 

Even a 1.3MP camera like the IQ-511 is close to 1080, at 1280x1024. As far as I'm concerned, that Axis camera is wasting available resolution for the sake of marketing - why would you crop your camera at 16:9 1280x720 instead of using a larger 4:3 1280x1024? Because people expect "HD" to be widescreen, so you chop off vertical data?

[Soundy 1]

Wow you guys are hard to impress

 

We have to be. We make a living on this stuff. We can't allow ourselves to be easily swayed by glitzy marketing. It's easier for me to sell a client an IQ511 for $800 than a lower-resolution Axis for $1500, unless the Axis really offers something EXTRA. Aside from what appears to be powered optical zoom in that second video, I don't see anything that makes it worth the extra $700.

 

I willing to bet that if I could digitally zoom in the image (I use VLC to play the video so I can't) we could make out the plates in the video.

 

I can make out the plates in the first video, if I pause it in VLC. But that's not the point - any 1.0-1.3MP camera should give at least the same results.

 

Digitally freezing and zooming won't be any better than you already have, because there's motion blur in the recorded frames. That's a drawback of slower shutter speeds, which is common with most cameras in lower light.

 

That camera has a 10x optical zoom, auto focus, day/night, WDR, h.264 with multi-streams, SD card and component video output.

 

The only things particularly unique there, at least compared to what I'm used to, are the optical zoom and autofocus, the SD, and the component output.

 

SD is of questionable usefulness in many situations - I mostly put IQEye cameras into environmental housings above gas pumps, and in one recent job they went into a 35-foot-high ceiling in a restaurant lounge. In either case, they're largely if not entirely inaccessible, so being able to record to a card in the camera is pointless.

 

Component output in a surveillance camera is about 99.999% useless, mostly for the reasons frank3 mentioned. I can't record it to a DVR without a highly specialized (and thus very expensive) capture card. It's nice for the gimmick factor, but not practical in most security applications.

 

I'll grant you, it's a neat toy... but for CCTV, the toys aren't really worth paying double the price.

[Soundy 1]

Just one other thought: powered, remote-controlled optical zoom is also a "neat toy" but it's useless with recorded video, because you can't zoom it after the fact. With live, real-time, manned surveillance, it's great, but still of limited advantage without pan/tilt as well, because your field of view becomes extremely limited.

 

In both the video examples, if I were specing cameras for *recording* surveillance video, I'd far prefer a high-megapixel fixed-zoom (or manual varifocal) that will capture a large area at very high resolution, so I can zoom in a small area of the recorded footage.

[robert 0]

This is a game changer!!!

 

http://www.axis.com/products/cam_q1755/index.htm

 

I have a demo video. It is the best video I have ever seen from a cctv camera ever!!

 

Well, then you have seen very little amount of megapixel CCTV videos

HD - marketing trick and it doesnt cost 1500$ but 700$.

 

Cant see any reason this camera to be special.

[Soundy 1]

Realize, wireguys, we're not saying this is a BAD camera... just that aside from all the gimmicky stuff, it's nothing SPECIAL. At least from what you've shown us so far, there's nothing about it that makes it worth the extra cost.

[frank3 0]

Wow you guys are hard to impress

By the way, I didn't want to offend by not sharing your excitement, so sorry if I did.

After having seen the video, I just wanted you to realize that you wouldn't get such a good quality/value ratio compared to competitive offerings, whether it's equivalent at a lower price or higher end at a similar price.

While I admit the 10x optical zoom is interesting, it would only make sense if paired with pan/zoom and a human operator. Without that, it's better to buy a quality lens with a fixed zoom calibrated for the optimal field of view for your purposes. Also, it would be nice if they didn't try to trick people with 1080i versus 1080p, because interlaced footage is definitely horrible when paused. That should really be avoided.

[thewireguys 3]

Wow you guys are hard to impress

By the way, I didn't want to offend by not sharing your excitement, so sorry if I did.

After having seen the video, I just wanted you to realize that you wouldn't get such a good quality/value ratio compared to competitive offerings, whether it's equivalent at a lower price or higher end at a similar price.

While I admit the 10x optical zoom is interesting, it would only make sense if paired with pan/zoom and a human operator. Without that, it's better to buy a quality lens with a fixed zoom calibrated for the optimal field of view for your purposes. Also, it would be nice if they didn't try to trick people with 1080i versus 1080p, because interlaced footage is definitely horrible when paused. That should really be avoided.

 

There is a gate keeper function that will auto zoom in on a object. So you could have wide shot and zoom in on door every time it opens up.

 

 

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