Is HDcctv a viable alternative to Megapixel IP Cameras?

[jhonovich 0]

A lot of you have recently heard about a new trade group promoting a digital, non-IP alternative to Megapixel cameras. Essentially, those cameras would re-use existing coaxial cable and would not require network configuration of the camera.

 

For background reference, see:

 

- http://ipvideomarket.info/report/hdcctv_analog_megapixel_video_surveillance

- http://ipvideomarket.info/report/hdcctv_alliance_ip_megapixel-competitive

- http://www.experteditorial.net/securitysquared/2009/06/hdcctv-alliance-releases-non-ip-hd-spec.html

 

 

What do you think? Interested? Skeptical?

[dopalgangr 1]

Wow, this would be GREAT

 

I was just contemplating getting rid of my DVR and analog cameras, coax, etc for some mega pixels. I hope this is true and they are just as good as the current ones. This would save me alot of time and hopefully some money. I will have to keep my eye on this, thanks for sharing!!!

[ak357 0]

A lot of you have recently heard about a new trade group promoting a digital, non-IP alternative to Megapixel cameras. Essentially, those cameras would re-use existing coaxial cable and would not require network configuration of the camera.

 

For background reference, see:

 

- http://ipvideomarket.info/report/hdcctv_analog_megapixel_video_surveillance

- http://ipvideomarket.info/report/hdcctv_alliance_ip_megapixel-competitive

- http://www.experteditorial.net/securitysquared/2009/06/hdcctv-alliance-releases-non-ip-hd-spec.html

 

 

What do you think? Interested? Skeptical?

----------------------------------------------------------

 

That funny u ask those ???

because I am getting soon sample of SDI camera and capture card

but I have ? for you

You collect here lots of info,opinions and so on

then on your website you want us to pay fee to access it

kinda not fair ?

may be for forum members u should provide it for free

hmm, on another hand may be we should charge you

What do you think? Interested?

[long520 0]

what's non-i Megapixel camera.is it Analog camera？

[ak357 0]

what's non-i Megapixel camera.is it Analog camera？

 

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Wikipedia+Serial+digital+interface

[Soundy 1]

SDI itself has been around for a long time - we had broadcast tape decks with SDI at the tech school I worked at some 10 years ago.

 

The problem with this concept, unless the spec is extended, is that it's still limited to 1080p video; at standard 16:9 format, that gives you 1920x1080 resolution, or just a hair over 2MP. That's your MAX resolution with current HDTV spec. 2MP is pretty minimal for megapixel IP cameras, 3-5MP cameras are already common, and the theoretical limit is far beyond that... meaning "HDTV"-based CCTV cameras are obsolete before they're out the door.

 

Yes, they can use existing coax... but so can IP cameras, with the use of HiWire adapters. The adapters themselves are a little pricey, but they ARE readily available.

 

Add that, as new technology, SDI cameras and DVR cards will have a ways to go before their prices can benefit from the economy of scale... by the time they're ready for mainstream, at the rate IP camera technology is improving and the cost dropping, IP will have left them far in the dust.

[survtech 0]

Yes, they can use existing coax... but so can IP cameras, with the use of HiWire adapters. The adapters themselves are a little pricey, but they ARE readily available.

Yeah, but IP still has its problems: latency and packet losses/dropped connections being among the worst. At least HDcctv should be free of those. Those are major reasons why I'm watching them closely.

[Soundy 1]

Latency IS there, although it hasn't yet been an ISSUE on any of our sites. Never had a problem with packet loss, either (at least nothing that's caused any noticeable problems - if it's happening, it's only measurable for someone who's looking for it).

 

I think a lot of the problems people run into with IP are, frankly, the same as any others they run into with CCTV, namey, the use of cheap equipment. People who generally diss PC-based systems, for example, have often run into too many low-end PCs that can't handle the load placed on them. Those who dismiss CCTV in general as not being any kind of useful are typically basing that on having seen the output from cheap systems. Likewise, most of the problems I've heard of with IP usually comes from overloading low-end switches, or the use of cheap or poorly-handmade cables.

[thewireguys 3]

I must agree with Soundy

[survtech 0]

Latency is a major problem in a casino environment where we use the PTZ's constantly. And I don't consider Arecont to be cheap equipment. Our demos of their cameras exhibited random dropouts connected through a Cisco 4507R Enterprise Switch. These can also not be tolerated in our environment.

[thewireguys 3]

Latency is a major problem in a casino environment where we use the PTZ's constantly. And I don't consider Arecont to be cheap equipment. Our demos of their cameras exhibited random dropouts connected through a Cisco 4507R Enterprise Switch. These can also not be tolerated in our environment.

 

What are you using for NVR software?

[Soundy 1]

Latency is a major problem in a casino environment where we use the PTZ's constantly. And I don't consider Arecont to be cheap equipment. Our demos of their cameras exhibited random dropouts connected through a Cisco 4507R Enterprise Switch. These can also not be tolerated in our environment.

 

What are you using for NVR software?

 

I've seen a casino set up with IQEye cameras and Vigil DVRs, they haven't had any issues that I've ever heard of. Obviously survtech's experience isn't universal.

[survtech 0]

Latency is a major problem in a casino environment where we use the PTZ's constantly. And I don't consider Arecont to be cheap equipment. Our demos of their cameras exhibited random dropouts connected through a Cisco 4507R Enterprise Switch. These can also not be tolerated in our environment.

 

What are you using for NVR software?

 

I've seen a casino set up with IQEye cameras and Vigil DVRs, they haven't had any issues that I've ever heard of. Obviously survtech's experience isn't universal.

We have a much modified Honeywell Enterprise NVR system. But that is not the point. The dropouts occurred while watching the cameras "live", not post-record.

 

Regarding the casino using IQEye/Vigil - I'll bet they have at least 150ms of latency. And yes, some people (especially manufacturers) will tell you that users become accustomed to the latency and learn to compensate for it. From experience, I can tell you that it depends on how the PTZ is being used.

 

If, for instance, you use one to zoom in on a table game or a slot machine, the latency is not any more than a minor annoyance. On the other hand, it is nearly impossible to follow a running suspect or a moving vehicle with anything more than 100ms latency; and difficult even at that.

 

For instance, a vehicle traveling at 25mph will go 5.5 feet in 150ms. If the PTZ operator is trying to identify who is driving, when they aim for the driver's seat they'll actually be seeing the trunk lid.

 

Yes, you can "lead" the object like you would shooting skeet, but that assumes the object travels in a straight horizontal or vertical line that doesn't require simultaneous pan and tilt. Angular and zigzag motion would be the most difficult to compensate for.

[Soundy 1]

Perhaps a better solution in that case then, is either an analog PTZ, or a higher-resolution, wider-angle IP cam with "virtual PTZ".

 

The one casino I'm aware of, AFAIK, is using only stationary IP cams (mostly 1.3MP IQs), not IP PTZs.

[Erron S. 0]

I've seen the drop out happen quite often when the POE is said to be the IEEE802.af standard of 15.4 watts per output, but -really- can't maintain that level of output. There are quite a few cameras hitting the market now that are class 2 or even class 3 cameras which require a lot more wattage to keep them up and running as well. Just about every single time we see cameras dropping the simple solution is to power a couple of the cameras locally with a transformer. Since the switch is probably diverting power to the cameras that need it most, it's pulling it from somewhere. (the other cameras) In these cases I look for the switch's power budget, then don't exceed 80% of the total power output just to be on the safe side.

 

What Arecont's are they and what make/model switch is it?

[survtech 0]

Keep in mind these cameras were only "proof-of-concept" tests, not actual production cameras. Of course, having failed the tests, we are not in a rush to go IP.

 

The cameras were Arecont AV1300 and AV3100. They were powered from 24VAC direct, not POE. The switch is a Cisco 4507R.

 

Although we probably wouldn't be using IP PTZ's to start, there are some serious issues if we don't - monitoring being a prime one. Since IP cameras won't pass through our matrix switch or our CRT analog monitors, we would have to have two completely different systems there. That creates confusion with the operators having to know which cameras appear on what system.

 

A virtual matrix is out of the question as long as we keep the Honeywell NVR since it has more than 250ms latency by itself. Besides, I have never cared for the picture quality of analog cameras on digital monitors or vice versa.

 

That creates a quandry that nothing I know of can solve and which is getting more acute over time: as our CRT monitors wear out what do we replace them with? We had a budget in 2008 to start replacing them but the continuing progress of digital cameras means that any CRT analog monitors we buy now will likely be obsolete before they wear out or are fully depreciated.

 

And every LCD monitor I've seen has an absolutely atrocious picture with analog cameras. So what to do? I'm waiting to see what happens in the world of CCTV that will solve these issues.

[jharrell 0]

Keep in mind it's not IP that contributes significantly to latency, most of it comes from the compression/decompression process.

 

SDI sends uncompressed video consuming 270 MBps for NTSC and 1.5 GBps for 1080i HD! HDMI used on HDTV's is similar running at over 3Gbps uncompressed video for 1080p.

 

There is technically no reason an IP camera couldn't be made that uses no compression or perhaps a very low overhead compression such as Huffyuv to improve latency at the expense of bandwidth.

 

I would imagine some cameras woulds improve significantly just by dropping back to JPEG instead of MPEG4/H.264.

 

Of course the issue is you would quickly saturate a gigabit ethernet network backbone with even one uncompressed HD cam, but the situtation is similar an analog setup, you don't use a single backbone for multiple cams, instead you would need basically a point to point connection between your cam and your monitoring station, with perhaps only a switch in between.

 

I am surprised this isn't more of a focus for ip cam manufacturers, they all seemed to be wrapped up in H.264 for low bandwidth and disk space but don't seem to let you trade that out for low latency when the situation calls for it.

 

As an aside if you have any packet loss at all on a LAN that is an unacceptable situation and should be resolved, if cameras are dropping packets they are broken in some way.

[Soundy 1]

Keep in mind it's not IP that contributes significantly to latency, most of it comes from the compression/decompression process.

 

...

 

There is technically no reason an IP camera couldn't be made that uses no compression or perhaps a very low overhead compression such as Huffyuv to improve latency at the expense of bandwidth.

 

In addition to that, that latency will continue to drop as on-camera processing improves. It wasn't that long ago that it took eight hours for my PC to recompress a two-hour DivX movie to MPEG-2 for DVD authoring... modern machines will do it in 30 minutes or less.

[megapixel man 0]

Latency is a major problem in a casino environment where we use the PTZ's constantly. And I don't consider Arecont to be cheap equipment. Our demos of their cameras exhibited random dropouts connected through a Cisco 4507R Enterprise Switch. These can also not be tolerated in our environment.

 

What are you using for NVR software?

 

I've seen a casino set up with IQEye cameras and Vigil DVRs, they haven't had any issues that I've ever heard of. Obviously survtech's experience isn't universal.

We have a much modified Honeywell Enterprise NVR system. But that is not the point. The dropouts occurred while watching the cameras "live", not post-record.

 

Regarding the casino using IQEye/Vigil - I'll bet they have at least 150ms of latency. And yes, some people (especially manufacturers) will tell you that users become accustomed to the latency and learn to compensate for it. From experience, I can tell you that it depends on how the PTZ is being used.

 

If, for instance, you use one to zoom in on a table game or a slot machine, the latency is not any more than a minor annoyance. On the other hand, it is nearly impossible to follow a running suspect or a moving vehicle with anything more than 100ms latency; and difficult even at that.

 

For instance, a vehicle traveling at 25mph will go 5.5 feet in 150ms. If the PTZ operator is trying to identify who is driving, when they aim for the driver's seat they'll actually be seeing the trunk lid.

 

Yes, you can "lead" the object like you would shooting skeet, but that assumes the object travels in a straight horizontal or vertical line that doesn't require simultaneous pan and tilt. Angular and zigzag motion would be the most difficult to compensate for.

 

As hybrid Analog / IP systems are deployed, would it be to difficult to keep the analog matrix in a casino environment for the 0 latency PTZ control where required and simply use the looping inputs of the matrix to convert the Analog feeds to IP via an encoder after the analog matrix switcher? Maybe a best of both worlds could be achieved.

 

Anyhoo, as big IP megapixel cameras develop the need for traditional analog PTZ will diminish.

[survtech 0]

Latency is a major problem in a casino environment where we use the PTZ's constantly. And I don't consider Arecont to be cheap equipment. Our demos of their cameras exhibited random dropouts connected through a Cisco 4507R Enterprise Switch. These can also not be tolerated in our environment.

 

What are you using for NVR software?

 

I've seen a casino set up with IQEye cameras and Vigil DVRs, they haven't had any issues that I've ever heard of. Obviously survtech's experience isn't universal.

We have a much modified Honeywell Enterprise NVR system. But that is not the point. The dropouts occurred while watching the cameras "live", not post-record.

 

Regarding the casino using IQEye/Vigil - I'll bet they have at least 150ms of latency. And yes, some people (especially manufacturers) will tell you that users become accustomed to the latency and learn to compensate for it. From experience, I can tell you that it depends on how the PTZ is being used.

 

If, for instance, you use one to zoom in on a table game or a slot machine, the latency is not any more than a minor annoyance. On the other hand, it is nearly impossible to follow a running suspect or a moving vehicle with anything more than 100ms latency; and difficult even at that.

 

For instance, a vehicle traveling at 25mph will go 5.5 feet in 150ms. If the PTZ operator is trying to identify who is driving, when they aim for the driver's seat they'll actually be seeing the trunk lid.

 

Yes, you can "lead" the object like you would shooting skeet, but that assumes the object travels in a straight horizontal or vertical line that doesn't require simultaneous pan and tilt. Angular and zigzag motion would be the most difficult to compensate for.

 

As hybrid Analog / IP systems are deployed, would it be to difficult to keep the analog matrix in a casino environment for the 0 latency PTZ control where required and simply use the looping inputs of the matrix to convert the Analog feeds to IP via an encoder after the analog matrix switcher? Maybe a best of both worlds could be achieved.

 

Anyhoo, as big IP megapixel cameras develop the need for traditional analog PTZ will diminish.

The big issue with hybrid systems is monitoring. Retaining the analog side requires two sets of monitors: one for the digital cameras and one for the analog. Casinos typically have between 20 and 100 monitors. There is no elegant way to deploy the two simultaneously in the same monitor wall. Yes, we could utilize LCD or plasma monitors but the they have trouble displaying analog cameras with the picture quality of a good CRT monitor and most CRT monitors can not display digital. When you add in the screen aspect ratio differences, any attempt to mix the two becomes klugy.

 

I also think it will be a long time before megapixel cameras of any type will be able to replace PTZ's. I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation of the minimum pixel requirement to replace a low end PTZ and came up with a minimum of 540 megapixels. Can you imagine the bandwidth and disk space needed to deploy such a camera?

[megapixel man 0]

Survtech, What do you see as the solution for large casio systems in terms of latency on PTZ controls within IP systems and availablity of Matrix Switcher compontents and CRT / analog monitors? Many CCTV consultants that I meet with that are involved with casinos are trying to put a time frame on the life of matrix based analog systems. The big megapixel cameras I was thinking about in my last post are not fixed cameras but rather PTZ. The main issue facing most of us dealing in big megapixels at the moment is "auto focus", most available technology in auto focus for us is 720p and 1080p and even in this small class we are not that happy with the current results, more development to be done here.

 

It will be interesting to see the end HDcctv product being developed by the forum and the market acceptance / adpotion of it.

 

We are doing a small-medium sized hybrid project, due to start very soon. There are 60+ existing analog cameras, 10 of which are PTZ, all analog cameras will be running at 25ips 4CIF PAL. we will be adding approx 20 megapixel cameras ranging in res from 720p, 1080p, 5MP and 16MP on a dedicated GIG network with a fibre backbone, recording for 1 month. There will be 3 operator work stations, one with a surveillace Joystick. 2 remote sites recording local and viewing back at the main site workstations over the client network (5Mbit/5Mbit) available bandwidth for each remote site. I will be very inerested to see what latency we will have, especially on the PTZ controls.

[jharrell 0]

The big issue with hybrid systems is monitoring. Retaining the analog side requires two sets of monitors: one for the digital cameras and one for the analog. Casinos typically have between 20 and 100 monitors. There is no elegant way to deploy the two simultaneously in the same monitor wall. Yes, we could utilize LCD or plasma monitors but the they have trouble displaying analog cameras with the picture quality of a good CRT monitor and most CRT monitors can not display digital. When you add in the screen aspect ratio differences, any attempt to mix the two becomes klugy.

 

I also think it will be a long time before megapixel cameras of any type will be able to replace PTZ's. I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation of the minimum pixel requirement to replace a low end PTZ and came up with a minimum of 540 megapixels. Can you imagine the bandwidth and disk space needed to deploy such a camera?

 

The key to displaying analog video properly on a digital display is proper deinterlacing and scaling.

 

This issue became obvious to folks over in the AVSForum years ago when everyone was originally trying to use a PC for home theater use on large DLP projectors and then plasmas and now LCD's. If you had money you bought Farjouda video scalers, but the PC guys knew a modern PC, even back then could do it, so they developed a program called DScaler.

 

It's still around today, and you should try it with an analog cam on a PC just to see how far you can take picture quality on a LCD display. It will require a very specific chipset video capture card, a bt8x8 series, which should be extremely cheap. DScaler will probably out perform any analog-digital video scaler you can find, at least it used to.

 

Now of course this doesn't help very much, as it probably wouldn't be practical to use DScaler for large scale monitoring, but it gives perspective on the problem, simply put the video scalers and deinterlacers built in to most LCD's and HDTV's is horrible, but there is no drive it improve it since it's mostly unnecessary with an HDTV feed.

 

I still say an IP cam manufacturer needs to add a low to no compression low latency mode, where you may only be able to stuff one megapixel cam on a single gigabit link, but would get under down around 10ms latency.

[survtech 0]

Survtech, What do you see as the solution for large casio systems in terms of latency on PTZ controls within IP systems and availablity of Matrix Switcher compontents and CRT / analog monitors? Many CCTV consultants that I meet with that are involved with casinos are trying to put a time frame on the life of matrix based analog systems. The big megapixel cameras I was thinking about in my last post are not fixed cameras but rather PTZ. The main issue facing most of us dealing in big megapixels at the moment is "auto focus", most available technology in auto focus for us is 720p and 1080p and even in this small class we are not that happy with the current results, more development to be done here.

 

It will be interesting to see the end HDcctv product being developed by the forum and the market acceptance / adpotion of it.

 

We are doing a small-medium sized hybrid project, due to start very soon. There are 60+ existing analog cameras, 10 of which are PTZ, all analog cameras will be running at 25ips 4CIF PAL. we will be adding approx 20 megapixel cameras ranging in res from 720p, 1080p, 5MP and 16MP on a dedicated GIG network with a fibre backbone, recording for 1 month. There will be 3 operator work stations, one with a surveillace Joystick. 2 remote sites recording local and viewing back at the main site workstations over the client network (5Mbit/5Mbit) available bandwidth for each remote site. I will be very inerested to see what latency we will have, especially on the PTZ controls.

I honestly don't know the answer to that but I can make an educated guess. There are a number of possible solutions that would work in a situation where low latency is a necessity.

 

One is the HDcctv method of eliminating the in-camera compression. I assume that if that idea takes off, at least a couple of IP manufacturers will likely offer that as an option. It could easily be accomplished using something like the Veracity or Nitek products and if those were built into the camera, the added cost would probably be minimal. There's no law saying that IP, or any other digital camera, must ride on a network. Existing analog systems typically use one-to-one transport.

 

Another option may be 10G ethernet. That would allow a number of noncompressed megapixel cameras to ride on a network.

 

Another possibility would be lossless compression, a la Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD consumer audio on blu-ray. Or more efficient encoders/decoders that insert less latency.

 

Then, if you want to intermingle analog and digital cameras, someone is going to have to invent a device for LCD monitors that will allow them to display analog video without all of the de-interlacing and other garbage on existing systems. Or better yet, a class of CCTV monitors that handle both analog and digital signals well.

 

Realistically, all of these concepts are simple engineering problems that any manufacturer could solve if they had half a mind to. Even latency issues can be resolved with PTZ's with just a little work on both the compression and packet size issues. If manufacturers could get PTZ latency down to 50ms or less, the problem would go away.

 

I'm not certain that HDcctv has much chance of success on its own, given the huge lead of IP, but I would bet it will at least give IP manufacturers something to chew on. It may just trigger a change in direction on their part. And that would not be a bad thing!