I remember walking the floor at more than a few trade shows in 2005 and witnessing the excitement around two little letters, IP. IP cameras, IP controllers, IP this, IP that, worming their way into marketing presentations and press releases, dribbling off the lips of newly enlightened security professionals in every aisle. It was fun to watch an entire industry break into an awareness of the power and utility of Internet protocol.
This week at ISC, though, it seems IP is trumped by a new alphanumeric jumble. H.264. Suddenly compression standards are all the rage, I guess. Cisco, Axis, and more than a dozen other companies made announcements or breakthroughs related to creative implementation of the H.264 compression standard. More video squeezing through the wire, more efficient storage, faster searching for video clips, easier sharing of video to your iPhone. Faster, easier, cheaper – all the promises of IP in 2005.
If IP Video presents the brave new world for video surveillance, it's just a shame that so much emphasis is placed on the ever so exciting engineering aspects of connecting up all the equipment, and so little time is spent in actually discussing whether it's even the right tools for the job.
H.264 may be the latest greatest thing in terms of video compressions, but if the systems profile and overall design have not been developed in terms of the fundamental operational objectives, then it really doesn't matter what 'state of the art' equipment is used, the results will invariably be less than acceptable for the purpose.
Posted by: Doktor Jon | April 05, 2008 at 06:04 AM
A man after my own heart. Thanks, Doktor Jon.
-Steve
Posted by: Steve Hunt | April 06, 2008 at 08:12 AM
It's a marketing and sales technique, not a value proposition. If one makes enough buzz about how important a particular technology, it will likely become a checkbox on customer's RFP's.
Posted by: Darren Loher | April 09, 2008 at 09:21 AM
H.264 video compression has been in use in security video equipment for over 4 years. That's an EPOCH in terms of this kind of technology. That H.264 video compression is being paired with IP cameras to produce the best video quality at the smallest network requirement IS somewhat new to see on that market. However, the technology in use to compress the video is not new.
Value Proposition:
H.264 provides better quality video at smaller total data size. That smaller data size means that you spend less on storage (hard drives) and transmission) networks. You literally don't have to build the same network for H.264 that you would have to build for older video technologies, simply because the video compression is better. How much better? Think 1/2 the size of MPEG-4 and 1/4 the size of MPEG-2. And it can actually be better than that.
How's this for value? Spend 50% of the money on hard drives and networking than you used to.
Can I drop an ad? http://www.airshipdvr.com
Posted by: Gryphon MacThoy | April 09, 2008 at 12:56 PM
IMHO IP video will come for long time. Nowdays people installing IP cameras at home and making their own house surveillance.
You can have a look on software for home surveillance:
http://www.video-home-surveillance.com/software-reviews/
The most popular software now supports IP cameras. And I think IP came forever.
Posted by: cctvvideo | August 14, 2008 at 04:06 AM