Poor Man's Gorgon Stare?

[PeteCress 0]

After fooling around with multiple IP cams for a couple of years (http://ExtremeSurfCam.DynDNS.org) on limited bandwidth, it occurs to me that something along the lines of a Gorgon Stare-type system with a few extras is the logical solution to wide area coverage for multiple concurrent users over limited bandwidth.

 

Streams from multiple el-cheapo cameras merged into a single large image: lots of processing power required by the server, but minimal bandwidth required per concurrent user..

 

Has anybody heard of such a thing - either in production or under development?

 

 

Essential Features:

 

• Ability to stitch the streams of multiple IP cameras into a single large view. e.g. three 1920x1080 streams => one 5750x1080 stream.
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• Ability to record that combined stream to disk
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• Ability to allow a user to log into the DVR and watch the stream over a WAN connection with 3 special features

 

 

The 3 Special Features:

 

1. The stream is presented as a mostly low-rez picture to conserve bandwidth.
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2. There would be a rectangle overlaying the low rez image and the rectange could be slid around on the image by the user and digitally zoomed by the user.
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3. Within the rectangle, resolution would be at some much higher level - but the rectangle would be small enough that it would not use too much bandwidth.

 

 

This makes so much sense to me that I'm thinking somebody somewhere is either marketing or developing it.

 

??

[dexterash 0]

The idea of stitching images together/dynamically zooming on them seems interesting, but the multiple-user low-bandwidth issue would not be solved, nor much bandwidth will be saved - due to compression algorithms.

 

From my point of view, the best approach is to use an off-site server/service that will restream the low-bandwidth one.

[PeteCress 0]

The idea of stitching images together/dynamically zooming on them seems interesting, but the multiple-user low-bandwidth issue would not be solved, nor much bandwidth will be saved - due to compression algorithms.

I wasn't thinking so much compression as just shipping fewer bits. Something fairly fuzzy... but with that little rectangle of high def.

 

Hard...maybe brutal on the CPU... But CPU cycles keep getting cheaper - likewise cams - while bandwidh/streaming site charges seem to be holding steady.

[LittleScoobyMaster 0]

The idea of stitching images together/dynamically zooming on them seems interesting, but the multiple-user low-bandwidth issue would not be solved, nor much bandwidth will be saved - due to compression algorithms.

I wasn't thinking so much compression as just shipping fewer bits. Something fairly fuzzy... but with that little rectangle of high def.

 

Hard...maybe brutal on the CPU... But CPU cycles keep getting cheaper - likewise cams - while bandwidh/streaming site charges seem to be holding steady.

 

 

Geovision GV-NVR has a panorama feature where you can tie up to 4 cameras together, but as recent as version 8.5.8, the limitation was to allow only up to 1920x1080 as the largest stitch video. They need to upgrade that feature because I would like to stitch together two 2056x1600 streams (4112x1600) to be viewed on a 4K set, but presently it won't let me do that due to the panorama limitation.

 

This whole thing reminds me of this Frankenstein camera, the Arecont AV12186DN. (it's 4 camera's in 1 dome stitched together):

 

http://www.arecontvision.com/product/SurroundVideo+Series/AV12186DN#KeyFeatures

 

This camera is a master of stitchery, indeed.

 

Has anyone here tried this Frankenstein monster camera? If so, in the words of Patrick Bateman from American Psycho, "Whaddaya think?"

 

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[dexterash 0]

Streams from multiple el-cheapo cameras merged into a single large image: lots of processing power required by the server, but minimal bandwidth required per concurrent user..

 

Has anybody heard of such a thing - either in production or under development?

Something like this?

 

What would be a target bandwidth?

[PeteCress 0]

Something like this?

 

What would be a target bandwidth?

That looks like what I had in mind presentation-wise if the rectangle can be moved by the viewer.

 

Target Bandwidth? As small as possible while retaining functionality.

 

Right now one 1280x720 cam seems to be taking up about 500kB/s.

 

"Seems to be" because I'm kind of clueless on this stuff and 500kB/s is what my cam server is showing for one camera.

 

What I was thinking was three cameras stitched and taking up something less than that - the more less the better.

 

Do you have a link to a live cam? Looks like it's one of these guys: http://tinyurl.com/p7cegy7, but I don't see the rectangle on the demo vids that I watched - so maybe there's some server software between the user and the cam?

[dexterash 0]

I was just trying to envision the problem and if this kind of solution is what you are looking for.

 

A 1920x1080 or a 1280x720 one can, usually, take up to 1MBps (8Mbps) if it's using H.264 (not MPEG4/MJPEG) compression and the max quality settting.

Newer ones are lowered to approx 3Mbps(400KBps), but you'll get a quality loss.

 

There can be an out-of-box solution, but the image stiching has to be done hardware-wise (as in optically aligning the cameras). We' re looking for a solution to efficiently software crop&re-stream a part of a stream, but that's not an easy option.

 

Yes, that is the camera. I've just used it to be sure we're talking about the same concept. No, the camera itself doesn't have this feature - nor does any hardware that we've worked with.

 

You're very right - it would involve a server between. Digging after a solution, but a bandwidth limit could give us a clue what should we be after to obtain - and also an implementation case.

 

Cheers!