VIDEO surveillance is in the midst of a revolution that will change the nature of CCTV. But while there’s a lot of talk about the technology and its benefits, it’s not always easy to pin down the facts. What percentage of systems installed are IP and which standards will prevail in the world of networked video? And just what are the keys to high performance?

More than that – just what is an IP camera? Is it a CMOS-based IP camera delivering 4CIF of H264 compressed video? Is it a CMOS HD camera working at 1020p? Is it a CMOS-based megapixel camera delivering a potential image of 16 Megapixels? Or a 3-sensor CMOS Megapixel camera giving an atmospheric view? Is an IP camera only a full digital camera or is it a network-enabled analog camera with an onboard encoder? Not surprisingly, the answers depend on who you talk to.

According to Bosch Security’s Sean Borg, the percentage of IP capable CCTV cameras his company sells is running at 30 per cent of total sales. That’s a high percentage and one he says is growing fast. You might think Bosch, with its market leading analog gear would be hesitant to endorse IP cameras as representing the immediate future but Borg does so, suggesting IP will supersede analog with 5 years. And Borg believes both improvements in compression and network infrastructure are vital to the future of IP video.

“I think IP technology definitely needs to move to an MPEG-4 Part 10 or H.264 algorithim supported by video analytics to reduce the volumes of data sent over infrastructure,” Borg says. “Switchers are going to need to have PIMDense technology rather than Sparse and be capable of handling larger bandwidth accepting topologies.

“This future proofing is due to the needs of the end users maturing and driving requirements for more technology. We’ve seen this with hard drive requirements, it was not that long ago when 1MB of memory was a lot but now my kids have 1TB external hard drives.”

Another question end users and installers are asking is which IP Video standards their providers should be meeting. Onvif (the Open Network Video Interface Forum) and the PSIA (Physical Security Interoperability Alliance) both have their allies and Borg says he believes Onvif is the gold standard, being supported by some of the world’s largest IP video players.

When it comes to low light performance there’s a general feeling that IP cameras have a harder time that CCD-based analog rivals. Bosch’s position on IP is shaped by the fact that many of its network capable cameras combine CCD-based analog Dinion cameras and an IP encoder in a single camera body. IP Video purists would argue an IP camera must be digital from nose to tail and that means CMOS, while others would say if a camera can be plugged into a network, then it’s a network camera. Then there’s Sony’s very capable CCD-based IP range. It’s a delineation that underscores the fuzzy technological characteristics of the times.

“IP cameras that offer all the wonderfully evolved features of the analogue era as well as the flexibility and accessibility of networkability can not be overlooked,” Borg says. “And I think it’s nice to see that some manufacturers have not sacrifice low light among other features to achieve their mark in networked environments.”

According to Borg, there are a number of important factors to take into account when choosing IP cameras.

“Buyers should look at the history of a brand’s IP camera, how has it evolved?” he asks. “They also need to look at the picture quality, ask about their national support, ask about their technological roadmap and ask if new software will be backward compatible. Other issues include built-in ISCUSSI and measures to reduce bandwidth costs – these are all major issues.

“Important issues for installers include establishing mean time between failure (MTBF), considering technical support and the total cost of an installation balanced against the benefits of a given technology.”

“I think IP technology definitely needs to move to an MPEG-4 Part 10 or H.264 algorithim supported by video analytics to reduce the volumes of data sent over infrastructure” Sean Borg, Bosch Security

Borg says Bosch’s flagship IP camera offers 540-lines of horizontal resolution, a default shutter speed of 1/1000 with an auto iris lens, on board video analytics, on-board ISUSSI reducing the need of a server, bandwidth throttling, an auto black feature to see through fog, tri-streaming with 2 streams of MPEG-4 and one stream of MJPEG. The Bosch IP camera also has a composite output at the same time for hybrid applications and a claimed minimum scene illumination of 0.024lux.

One of the huge issues for any networked IP Video solution is storage and Borg believes video analytics and VMD should be used to control recording. Importantly too, he feels the future will involve leveraging of server farms to guarantee redundancy and security of data.

“Bosch has a healthy roadmap with many exciting and at this point in time, confidential, technological breakthroughs to be announced,” Borg says. “This is a key. Another key is training and installers should get as much training in IP as possible. Bosch offers it free.”

And in the current economic climate, Borg believes IP has the benefit of being cheaper to run than analog, with benefits including PoE, the accessibility of networked surveillance systems and the use of video analytics at the edge to keep network traffic and storage costs to a minimum.

100 per cent IP

Over at VIVOTEK, William Ku, director of product marketing, expects IP camera revenue to overtake analog camera revenue in 2013-2014 and he says the percentage of IP gear his company sells is 100 per cent. VIVOTEK is a pioneer in IP Video with a number of award winning solutions including the beautifully engineered IP66 rated day/night camera, the IP7142. The company also has a neat SDK to allow integration with third party systems and devices – it’s all very nice stuff.

According to Ku, the things a user should be looking for in an IP camera include reliable and solid operation and excellent image quality under any conditions. Ku says future proofing and cost effectiveness are also vital, as well as technological capability.

“We have developed an intelligent network camera with embedded video analytics and we will continue to develop products with more advanced intelligent functions – these will be vital.”

Ku says improvements in compression and infrastructure performance are also important.

“With requirements for camera resolution rising sharply, megapixel cameras will be a future trend in the surveillance industry,” Ku explains. “However, this will lead to increased bandwidth requirements so improvements in compression and infrastructure will become even more important.

“It’s forecast that storage will be on the camera in the future, whether in the form of a removable or embedded memory,” he explains. “What this means is that only important and useful data will be transmitted for storage so as to save storage capacity.

“I think future development of a compression format hinges on users' needs. For example, users requiring more snapshot information may choose MJPEG; users demanding video clips may choose MPEG-4; users wanting to have better compression rate may choose H.264,” he says.

“While I do think HDTV video sequence will be embraced by many more consumer products like TVs or recorders I doubt all surveillance equipment will need this feature.”

“In any case we will not focus on a specific standard or a specific standard alliance. We provide products compatible with different compression formats to meet customers' demands,” explains Ku.

Interestingly, Ku says he believes low-light performance has nothing to do with whether the camera is IP or analog-based.

“Light sensitivity is attributed to the performance of the front-end optical elements rather than the backend compression elements,” Ku says. “An IP camera can deliver equivalent low light performance to an analog camera.”

“With requirements for camera resolution rising sharply, megapixel cameras will be a future trend in the surveillance industry,” Ku explains. “However, this will lead to increased bandwidth requirements so improvements in compression and infrastructure will become even more important” William Ku, Vivotek

When it comes to video management solutions Ku says VIVOTEK is keen to partner with VMS providers.

“Yes!” he enthuses. “We are very glad to cooperate with a VMS provider for big projects. Our SIA (Software Integration Alliance) Program assists partners integrate their platforms into VIVOTEK's network cameras and video servers to fit clients' various needs. We also provide technical support, SDK (Software Development Kits), and application components to our partners.”

It’s clear when talking to Ku, that like many pure IP camera manufacturers, VIVOTEK sees the advent of plug-and-play as a change that will significantly broaden the market and reduce overall installation costs.

“Plug-and-play IP technology allows users or installers to quickly set up and operate the system, leading to significant labor and cost savings,” he explains.

“I believe installation and maintenance of an IP surveillance system is more cost-effective than an analog system when network infrastructure has been well deployed. Wireless connection and PoE technologies further enhance the cost-saving advantage of IP surveillance.

“And PoE provides significant cost savings because in some countries cabling must be done by licensed electrician and hiring a licensed electrician for this duty can be expensive. With PoE, cabling can be done by regular installer, resulting in greater economy.”

When it comes to quality, Ku reckons installers should be looking for support for integration and config, as well as supply and the provision of training and certification.

“Basic knowledge of network structure/protocols and problem-solving capability for hardware failure is important for IP Video installers,” he says. “VIVOTEK will provide training courses and technological certificate problems starting 2009 to help installers enhance their professional knowledge and skills for IP surveillance.”

Ku refuses to identify a flagship VIVOTEK IP camera and for a very good reason.

“VIVOTEK does not offer flagship IP camera models,” he says. “We provide a variety of cameras all of which have with the best possible features, focusing on reliability and practicability.”

Market leader

Wai King Wong heads up the Australian operation at Axis Communications. Axis has only ever built IP so 100 per cent of Axis sales are IP and Wai King says Axis is not only the number one player in the IP video market with 33.5 per cent, it’s also the 6^th largest CCTV manufacturer in the world. Impressive numbers!

Wai King says the key elements of IP camera performance are ease of deployment, compression technology and reliability. He explains Axis’ latest generation of cameras take performance to another level with the integration of onboard intelligence.

“The new ARTPEC-3 chipset not only is designed to perform now and in the future. As for on-board parameters, these have been possible with Axis products since the very beginning,” Wai King says. “Axis also now has management software (Axis Camera Management) that can create templates of camera range to be deployed across all cameras. This will ease the installation by just using a few clicks.”

“Our strongest performing camera has a minimum resolution of 640 x 480 pixels at a frame rate of 30fps using your choice of MJPEG, MPEG4 or H.264 compressions,” Wai King says.

All IP cameras get talked down on backlight and lowlight performance but we’ve seen Axis cameras in a recent external application handling both conditions with aplomb – even getting colour in the presence of mercury vapour lighting in a large courtyard – that’s good going. It’s not like analog in extreme conditions but these cameras are more than capable in typical applications.

In terms of a changeover from analog to IP, Wai King isn’t certain about the exact moment of parity but he’s sure it’s coming.

“Based on a comprehensive IMS report, IP surveillance is growing at 40 per cent annually,” he says. “Taking that rate into account, IP surveillance will certainly exceed analogue growth which is only 10 per cent annually.”

Importantly Axis is a company that has gone out of its way to meet SMPTE HDTV performance specifications for its latest 16:9 HD network camera.

“As the market leader in IP surveillance, Axis strives to lead and provide the best solution in the industry,” Wai King explains. “SMPTE compliance is critical in video surveillance as it provides real time video with wider color spectrum over TV. By having SMPTE compliance, we are guaranteeing the images and accuracy of color coordination with high resolution images.”

Wai King makes the important point that compression improvements are important if today’s systems are going to successfully use current infrastructure.

“The current infrastructure is sufficient to run on H.264 compression that reduces the bandwidth compared to MJPEG compression by around 80 per cent,” he says.

“Axis’ new generation cameras are based on H.264 compression and can deliver superior images with lesser bandwidth requirement. The development of ARTPEC-3 chipset has enable Axis new generation products to provide multi-stream of H.264 and future upgrade for intelligent video.

“H.264 is the first and only compression standard that converged on various industries,” says Wai King. Whether it’s business with video surveillance, telecommunications and broadcasting or consumer with HD-DVD/Blue-ray, IPOD, Playstation 3, video cameras, etc, it’s all H.264.

“SMPTE compliance is critical in video surveillance as it provides real time video with wider color spectrum over TV. By having SMPTE compliance, we are guaranteeing the images and accuracy of color coordination with high resolution images” Wai King Wong, Axis Communications

“Axis supports ONVIF’s focus on IP surveillance in order to have a global standard that simplifies installation regardless of brand and supports the shift from analogue to digital surveillance.”

Wai King says Axis believes in open source and he says that by having an open solution, it enables customers to have more choices now and in the future.

“An example in a casino environment,” he explains. “A VMS has been deployed and the management would like to know how many people are at the premises at any one time. In order to collect such data, a possible different system that looks into the images via the camera to do the people counting.”

Like others, Wai King recognizes the high cost of storage and he says it’s crucial to reduce storage requirements.

“Storage is a continuous cost because any moving objects like HDDs, have a life span,” he says. “The life cycle of storage relies heavily on the hard disk manufacturer so it’s crucial to optimize the storage utilization. VMD does reduce the amount of require storage but H.264 is the only global standard that enables a full reduction of storage but yet provides the best image quality.

“With H.264 technology, the rest of the add-on technology will assist in reducing storage requirement or usable images - such as intelligence software to filter required images only.

Like other IP Video people SE&N spoke with, Wai King believes IP Video and functionality like PoE will give installation teams and end users real benefits.

“PoE does save money but most importantly, IP surveillance using Ethernet cabling consolidates a variety of functions into 1 cable structure. i.e. video, audio, PTZ control, I/O control and Power to the camera (PoE),” Wai King says.

“Benefits of PoE include centralizing the power backup, simplify installation and flexibility in installation.”

According to Wai King, Axis offers installers what he describes as a “real partnership program (AXIS Channel Partner Program)” supporting customers in order for them to succeed.

Megapixel is the key

According to Pacific Communications’ product manager Kieron McDonough, in terms of IP camera performance, megapixel is the most important element.

“IP cameras are not bound by the limitations of the PAL standard so it easily lends itself to Megapixel technology,” says McDonough. “Customers are demanding greater amounts of detail from their CCTV image, which Megapixel can achieve.

McDonough has an engineer’s heart and for him picture quality is king.

“Quality of image is first priority, without this the results will be disappointing. Installers and end users should make sure they have a choice of products and brands,” he says.

“Buying from a reputable supplier/installer that understands your requirements and has the knowledge to get the system design correct is very important.”

And McDonough also believes IP camera’s progressive scan technology does solve the interlace issues of analogue cameras.

“On fast moving objects in particular, the interlace jitter between two fields from an analogue camera is apparent resulting in persons or objects being hard to identify. Some manufacturers have devised various ways to reduce jitter but

this can result in loss of vertical detail.”

McDonough says when it comes to low light performance many camera manufacturers have overcome this low light performance with IP.

“In many cases they have done this by having an analogue front end to the camera and an IP back end.”

System performance is not only about the camera – it’s about all the components of a network. That means storage is a key issue and a major cost. McDonough believes leveraging VMD and remote storage in LANs and WANs will play their part in IP video solutions in alleviating some of the cost and load on network infrastructure.

“We feel that as compression methods improve, access to bandwidth improves, storage cost/real-estate becomes less and processors more powerful, VMD and remote storage will continue to have advantages,” he says.

“Of course the major advantage of storage at the camera will be if the network fails and then local buffering of the video can then take place.”  

Another key to performance is onboard software functionality – not just relating to camera functions but also analysis of video streams.

“Some of our cameras already have adjustments for onboard parameters and I expect more manufacturers will develop and release these features over time,” McDonough says. “Panasonic has already made some headway in this area with ‘advanced analytics’ in the WVCW970 outdoor dome camera.

“The camera features auto tracking but it’s auto-tracking that can identify the human form. The camera can lock on to a person and continuously track that person even if another person walks in front of the person being tracked. I believe this trend will continue and is very exciting for the industry.”

McDonough is a fan of PoE but he says it comes with a caveat and may not be ideal for all applications.

“In some situations yes, POE can save time and money,” McDonough says. “The install is quicker and easier and cable material costs lower. But in fact, currently most PTZ dome cameras cannot use POE. A fixed camera installation using POE would be difficult to convert to a PTZ dome as an extra power cable would have to be run. Also cable distances need to be watched as there are limitations.”

Doing the business

Pacific Communications is right at the coal face of the analogue to IP switch and that makes the company’s position all the more interesting. While Pacom’s range leans towards analogue, the company’s new distribution agreement with Panasonic takes Pacom right to the top of the class when it comes to IP surveillance thanks to Pana’s strong i-pro range.

According to Pacific Communications’ Rob Meacham, Pacom turns over about 5 per cent IP but he says the company sells a large number of network encoders with it’s analog cameras. And Meacham says he believes it’s only a matter of time before IP dominates.

“As customers demand greater and greater performance I think there will be a push to IP,” Meacham says. “It’s a fact, however, that sales of analogue cameras are still strong and encoders continue to dominate as a method of creating an IP solution. I would estimate within 5 to 8 years IP cameras will be over 70 per cent of camera sales.”

Meacham also believes that there’s a strong relationship between improvements in compression and infrastructure and take up of IP Video.

“We think they both go hand in hand and as we have seen compression and bandwidth improve so has the take up of IP based Video,” Meacham explains. “Further improvements are required or IP Video will be held back.”  

In relation to the current push for unified standards for IP Video Meacham says that as a distributor Pacom has little influence over these decisions.

“There are many different applications and products to suit those applications and as such we take an approach of best fit. That is one of the major benefits of Pacom – choice – it’s at the heart of what we do” Rob Meacham, Pacific Communications

“However, many of our manufacturers are members of the ONVIF approach and we certainly believe that a standard and co-operative approach to protocols is a key to speeding up acceptance and deployment of IP based video,” he says.  

Despite the challenges inherent in the economy, Pacom believes IP video has a very solid future with massive growth potential.

“The major advantage with IP video is scalability,” McDonough says. “In an analogue solution where a customer requires adding an extra camera to a switcher that is at full capacity it can be very costly. For an IP solution the extra camera is simply added into the software. This is major cost saving.

“In addition, cameras in an IP system do not have to be situated local to the CCTV site, they can be from another part of the world,” McDonough explains.

“This flexibility provides more usable CCTV solutions instead of the traditional ‘CCTV Island’ that can be an issue with analogue solutions. This results in cost savings as IP connectivity is becoming more abundant and lower in cost.

“Customers can now manage and monitor a CCTV system that is wide area and along with analytics, is more powerful. In this way IP Video delivers better results for security and wider use for other specialist areas such as marketing (human behavior for example) The technology is very exciting and the opportunity for growth is mind boggling.”

Training

There’s no question that training is the doorway to success when it comes to IP video. And Pacom’s Rob Meacham has good advice for installers looking to make the shift.

“Installers need to learn the basics of networking,” Meacham explains. “Pacom runs various courses on specific products as well as IP networking as well. Very often with IP video jobs you will be talking to the IT department and the IT department will assume you know something about networks so without this basic knowledge you will not get past first base.

“Once you get an understanding you should start small and treat your first few jobs as a learning process, working to provide a quality solution, rather than generating a huge profit, those profits will quickly come once you’re experienced,” he says.

While he acknowledges IT department involvement in IP video systems, Meacham believes there’s plenty of room for electronic security integrators in the mix.

“IT departments and IT companies will naturally play a part in our industry moving forward but IT departments are very quickly realizing that the placement of cameras, security processes, loss prevention techniques, chain of evidence along with the need to have 24/7 operations and support is probably not their area of expertise,” Meacham says.

“Public safety and asset protection comes with massive responsibility and unless people understand it and are prepared to be held accountable then they should hand it to those who are the experts,” he says.

“It is becoming evident that IT companies and IT departments are hiring security experts and visa versa which is an intelligent approach to providing a proper solution to the customer.

Making choices

One of the toughest things about IP is trying to work out what’s best to buy. According to Meacham, when installers think about buying performance IP cameras they should be looking reputable brands that are tried and tested in the field, and that fit the application they are addressing.

“The supplier the installer buys from should have a strong product management team that tests product before it is released to the market,” Meacham says.

“You want fast and easy access to tech support, warranty and support is critical. A good supplier should have sales people and tech support that have previous experience in installation and service. This speeds up the understanding between the installer and supplier when problems need to be resolved. Stock at the local branch is critical in this fast-paced industry.

“At Pacom we have a huge line up of IP solutions including many brands of IP and specialist mega pixel cameras. DVTel, Ikegami, Panasonic, AXIS, Pelco and Sony are just a few of the many IP cameras we carry,” Meacham says.

“There are many different applications and products to suit those applications and as such we take an approach of best fit. That is one of the major benefits of Pacom – choice – it’s at the heart of what we do.”

Sony’s perspective

Given Sony manufactures chipsets for a large majority of CCTV cameras, the company’s directions and perceptions can’t be ignored. Sony’s IP video business is built around the excellent Ipela range and it accounts for 90 per cent of the Australian operation’s sales - half those sales being megapixel.

According to Sony’s Tony Lagan, the crux of IP camera function is resolution and low light performance.

“Resolution and low light performance are crucial and they need to suit the security environment,” he says. “Also important are flexibility and scalability given we see so many varying applications.”

Lagan believes the problems of interlacing which have long existed in relation to analogue cameras.

“Interlaced technology is an issue for fast moving scenes, however, this has been overcome with technology like Sony’s Dynamic Frame Integration Processing,” he says.

“In the past, Interlaced CCDs produced better low light sensitivity than progressive scan alternatives. However, advances in progressive scan CCD imaging technology have made this irrelevant and now the advantages of progressive scan CCD’s can be fully utilised.”

Lagan believes there will come a time where IP will out-sell analogue.

“If you look at the majority of large projects these days, they are being specified IP,” Lagan says. “Analogue still has its place in smaller applications. However, the flexibility and number of applications that can be achieved with IP will ensure that it will become the major focus.

And according to Lagan it’s both compression and infrastructure improvements that will drive IP video forward in the future.

“H.264 is a great compression algorithm that can drastically reduce bandwidth requirement but the trade off is that they are very processor hungry at the server,” Lagan explains.

“For wireless, H.264 is a great option. Now that Category 6a has been ratified thus providing speeds of 10 Gbit/s over copper, it makes bandwidth issues less of a factor.

“With increasing HDD sizes and the reductions in prices of storage file sizes may not be the issue they once were. Sony’s DEPA analytics are based on edge device processing thus saving even more bandwidth and server processor resources.

“Sony supports the Onvif standard as we are one of the founding members. Our aim is to create a standard that will benefit the market as a whole,” says Lagan.

“As for compression, it really depends on the application. For example, H.264 is great for low bandwidth networks like wireless or legacy systems, however, MJPEG will still give the better quality still images.

In an interesting new development Lagan says Sony has recently developed a new CCD that gives a two times increase in sensitivity.

“I think analogue or IP is irrelevant in relation to low light performance as it comes down to the CCD being used,” Lagan says. “Sony’s new Exwave pro CCD with twice as much sensitivity is currently only available on our IP range of cameras. CCDs will generally give superior low light performance when compared to CMOS. All Sony IP cameras use CCD imagers and the Sony SNCCS50P is a good example of exceptional low light performance in an IP camera.”

Lagan explains that onboard intelligence is a feature of Sony cameras.

“Sony already has onboard camera adjustment and video analysis capabilities on all of our latest models,” he says. “For example, with DEPA analytics the processing is done in the camera therefore reducing the bandwidth required across the network and also takes load from the server’s processor. For example, the Metadata is created in the camera head saving the server from having to generate analytics for multiple cameras.”

And the company has just released a full HD (1920 x 1080) recorder with HDMI outputs to take advantage of the new range of Sony 16:9 HD cameras due to be released soon.

Performance is a key for Sony and that performance is built around the company’s 1.3 megapixel cameras.

“This range includes an indoor colour dome, an outdoor IP66 Vandal day night dome and a day night fixed camera,” Lagan says. “One of the major advantages of Sony Megapixel cameras is the Light Funnel feature. It’s a feature that combats the a disadvantage of high resolution cameras which is reduced low light performance.

“To combat this, other manufacturers slow their shutter speeds to improve exposure which results in image blur of moving objects which is not ideal for a security camera,” he says. “Sony’s exclusive Light Funnel technology combines pixels enabling the camera to maintain higher shutter speeds under low light conditions resulting in clear moving images.”

Lagan says leveraging of network storage and local storage technologies is going to be the way forward for high performance IP video cameras and he highlights Sony’s open architecture model when it comes to supporting third party management systems.

“Sony works with and makes available free of charge all of our SDK and APIs to ISVs who wish to work with us,” Lagan explains. “We also manufacture our own recording solutions that are optimised to work with specific feature sets i.e. DEPA analytics, while our recorders can also integrate with some other major manufacturers’ cameras.”

Something that has long been a bugbear of the analog surveillance industry is the vagary of standards. Some jobs are completed in exemplary fashion while others are studies in sloppiness.

Lagan thinks the move to IP may help with standards.

“I think moving forward the advent of IP video will help installation standards as there is a very strict set of standards for data cabling which does not exist for traditional coax analogue cabling,” he says.

“Having said this, end user should work with someone that understands traditional CCTV theory like placement, fields of view, choice of lens and camera, as well as a strong IP networking skill set.

“And installers need to find a manufacturer which has well established support structures in place that is willing to invest the time in training and supporting the installer’s customers. And they should also look for products that can add a point of difference to their installation,” Lagan says.

“For example, applications that can add value to the installation like two way audio or email notification of alarms including image attachment.

“Sony’s new Exwave pro CCD with twice as much sensitivity is currently only available on our IP range of cameras. CCDs will generally give superior low light performance when compared to CMOS” Tony Lagan, Sony