Network cameras face many problems

Today, the rise of the "Safe City" and "Smart City" in the country has made many people aware of the importance of protecting their lives and property. With the popularization of the Internet and the improvement of the network environment, online video surveillance has developed rapidly. The monitoring of the network has become a trend in the security industry. The technical reserves and network facilities of IP cameras are being improved, and the high definition of network cameras has been significantly improved. The combination of other advanced technologies and devices has brought about smart and intelligent applications, which are increasingly popular.

Faced with the problems and solutions With the advent of the era of high-definition, network video surveillance, high-definition network camera applications into the mainstream, but it also faces many problems to be solved, such as high bit rate bandwidth pressure, storage pressure and high-definition lens in the actual Project selection and cost issues, etc.

One of the biggest bottlenecks encountered by bandwidth IP cameras in video network applications is the transmission bandwidth. With the wide application of network video surveillance, high-definition video has become the mainstream of the market. However, the current H.264 standard presents more and more limitations in high-definition video surveillance applications.

The 1080P video image generally needs to occupy 4~10M of bandwidth, which brings greater cost pressure to the network and system construction. Bandwidth, cost, technology and other factors have all become the bottleneck restricting the rapid development of the industry to high-definition. The H.265 technology, the next-generation digital video compression standard officially released in 2013, received great attention in the industry.

Compared to H.264, H.265 offers more different tools to reduce the bit rate. In terms of coding units, each macro (marcoblock/MB) size in H.264 is a fixed 16x16 pixels, while the H.265 encoding unit can be selected from the smallest 8x8 to the largest 64x64. With the same image quality, the video size encoded by H.265 will be reduced by about 39-44% compared to H.264. In the case where the code rate is reduced by 51-74%, the quality of H.265-encoded video can be similar to or even better than that of H.264-encoded video.

In addition, the H.265 standard also supports 4K (4096×2160) and 8K (8192×4320) ultra-high definition video, which can improve the accuracy of intelligent analysis technology. Because H.265 has great improvement compared to H.264 in terms of compression efficiency, parallel processing capability, and network adaptability, it will become the mainstream of compression technology in the next few years.

Cost In addition to bandwidth, costs are another major factor constraining the development of network video surveillance. The increase in bandwidth requirements, resulting in complex codecs, will inevitably lead to increased costs. The simplification of network camera products, the ease of installation, and the degree of understanding of network cameras by end-users can all affect the healthy growth of the network camera market. Now most vendors have implemented the concept of system solutions to push IP cameras, focusing on the current core value of the network cameras does not reflect the situation, focusing on the function of the entire system and added value, in order to enhance the competitive advantage.

Multi-technical cooperation to enhance performance With the continuous development of technology, many problems faced will be gradually cracked, high-definition monitoring will become more easy, and the IPC market of high-definition networks will also expand rapidly, so when we see the problem, we also To see its future direction of development. Compared with the traditional analog surveillance, the network camera can undoubtedly provide more functions, clearer pictures, and more intelligent applications, making the IP monitoring system built with IPC as front-end more in line with the current development trend of informatization. In general, the main application technologies of the current industry network cameras and the future development direction of IPC are embodied in the following aspects.

The ultra-wide dynamic wide dynamic technology is mostly used in indoor light scenes such as school classrooms, bank counters, parking lots, road toll stations and other strong backlighting locations. IPC's wide dynamic technology mainly solves the dark indoor scene caused by strong contrast between the brightness of the camera illumination scene. In general indoor scene monitoring, a large amount of sunlight penetrates from the window or outside the door. When the IPC camera displays the image, the indoor scene will be dark or black. The general backlight compensation can make the indoor view clear, but the outdoor scene is basically Is a white, wide dynamic camera through the exposure of indoor and outdoor or before and after the scene, respectively, exposure control and image synthesis technology to achieve a balanced image, so that you can not only see the indoor scene, you can see the outdoor scene. The wide dynamic range is the ratio of the brightest luminance signal to the brightest luminance signal that the image can distinguish. Generally, the larger the value, the better the dynamic performance of the IPC camera. Now the wide dynamic range of mainstream manufacturers can reach 120dB.

Low-light statistics indicate that more than 90% of public security cases occur at night, so monitoring at night is more important than monitoring during the day. Minimum illumination is an indicator that people evaluate the camera's sensitivity to light. In the industry, cameras with a illuminance lower than 0.1 Lux are called low-illuminance cameras. The lower the value, the higher the camera's sensitivity and the better the performance.

The fogging function removes fog from the video and improving image quality is a key technology for enhancing the value of outdoor video surveillance systems. Recently, PM2.5, a professional vocabulary in the field of meteorology, has become a hot topic of social concern. The droplets and solid particles in the air not only endanger human health, but also reduce the visibility of the atmosphere due to scattering of a large number of suspended particles, and the color and contrast of outdoor images. Degradation affects the extraction of image information, and it also causes outdoor visibility to become low resulting in frequent traffic accidents. Therefore, image dehazing technology has become an important topic in the field of image processing and computer vision research, and it is also one of the issues that people urgently need to solve. The image enhancement and image restoration technologies used in the system can truly restore the clear image before the fog, and the targeted and defogging effects are natural.

Smart Analysis General smart analysis includes motion detection, occlusion alarm, and so on. More sophisticated intelligence analysis includes behavior identification and analysis, such as face recognition, alertness, and so on. Smart Analytics has launched related products in previous years, including various network cameras with intelligent analysis capabilities. However, due to the complexity of the actual use of the environment, coupled with the algorithm itself is not very mature, not adaptable, causing a lot of false positives missed. On the other hand, the customer's expectations are high, but in actual use, the poor performance of smart products is often difficult to meet the actual needs of customers, and high maintenance costs, often making these devices become a decoration. However, there is no doubt that intelligence is an inevitable trend. With the increase in the number of monitoring, Imagine tens, hundreds, or even thousands of videos. It is unrealistic to rely on the human eye to stare at it 24 hours a day. How to quickly extract useful information from a huge amount of data is very important to users, and it is also an urgent need for customers to solve. For example, in the field of transportation, the development and application of relevant intelligent products are relatively mature, such as road condition analysis, vehicle statistics, license plate recognition, retrograde, yellowing lines, illegal parking, including the monitoring of traffic conditions and the capture of illegal activities, etc. Both have been widely used.

Ease of Use Unlike conventional analog cameras, the *type IP megapixel camera involves knowledge of IT. Therefore, there is a big difference in the use of network cameras and analog cameras, especially for operators and users. Claim. Therefore, in the development and design of network cameras, these factors must be taken into account, and the ease of installation and the ease of use must be fully reflected. For example, support for PoE power supply, local video output, and local debugging and wireless support Wait.

Future Technology Trends If you want to build a long-term network camera based on the security industry, you must not only have high-tech technologies, but also need to keep pace with the times and continue to innovate. What direction will the future develop?

Higher resolution and higher resolution are an important factor in HD IPC. Since its development, high-definition surveillance front-ends for 720P and 1080P have become commonplace, with 3 million pixels and 5 million pixels of high-definition IPC also having a certain market share. The current 4K resolution (4096×2160) is the trend of development. It is equivalent to four times the resolution of 1080P. Of course, the cost of Ultra HD is also high, and the data volume of each frame reaches 50 MB. Higher is bound to increase costs.

High-compression algorithms The current mainstream compression algorithms are MPEG and H.264. The former will be used under certain format requirements, but it will bring more pressure on the bandwidth, and H.264 doubles the compression capacity than MPEG, so it can obtain a higher compression ratio. However, with the ever-increasing resolution of high-definition network cameras, the bandwidth and storage pressure on bitstreams is increasing, and the industry needs higher-performance compression algorithms.

H.264 Highprofile has doubled in performance over the first generation of H.264. Today, mainstream IPC vendors use this algorithm to compress video. In the future, the H.265 algorithm is a representative of new technologies, which can effectively improve the compression efficiency, reduce the delay, etc., and can realize transmission of 1080P quality images using a 1 to 2 Mbps transmission code stream. This also means that mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets will be able to play 1080P full HD video directly online.

The application of cloud computing to cloud computing will revolutionize the business model of the security industry and enable users to use security services like water and electricity. With the continuous development of virtualization, big data and networks, cloud security is constantly emerging. As an important part of the security system, the camera has achieved cloud storage with the network hard disk recorder NVR. When the cloud camera is connected to the NVR and is damaged, the IPC will be automatically stored in the NVR of the cloud to which the NVR belongs, thus realizing the capacity of the cloud camera. Disaster storage. Cloud technology can also include front-end technologies such as cloud alarms, cloud images, and cloud sharing. Users can browse and operate through Internet Explorer or cloud software.

The domestic and civilian use of civilian video surveillance is developing very rapidly. At the same time, it also contains huge business opportunities. In the past, the people did not have much awareness of safety precautions. This was inextricably linked to the economic conditions, network infrastructure, and advanced equipment at the time. Even today, even the price of high-definition IPC is affordable to ordinary home users. It is an inevitable trend that the mobile phone will be able to browse the home in real time and the mobile phone controls the turning on and off of home appliances. IPC will play an irreplaceable role in the smart home. And civilian high-definition IP products P2P plug and play, automatically penetrate multi-layer routing, no IP domain name configuration, adaptive network, support for multi-terminal system monitoring and other simple and understandable features, making the installation easier, just follow the instructions Simple instructions can be installed.

The deployment of 4G mobile monitoring 3G and 4G mobile data networks makes it possible for wireless networks to be used as video image carriers. In particular, the three major operators now have started 4G construction and testing, and have promoted 4G networks with a maximum speed of 100 Mbps. Can meet the communication bandwidth of the current high-definition IPC, mobile video surveillance is an important development direction in the future. Mobile video surveillance enables the original video surveillance based on fixed network to gradually transition to distributed mobile video surveillance, such as railways, buses, subways, etc., thereby breaking the limitations of the original video surveillance in terms of area, technology, cost, etc., enabling business applications. The audience is expanding.

Platform integration as a front-end product, high-definition IPC must be inseparable from the back-end platform software support. Therefore, it will become the main competition point of the future of high-definition IPC in terms of applicable scale, system software functions, system scalability, system stability, and user-friendly operation. The current high-definition network monitoring, monitoring points, system users, and image clarity are all increasing and increasing. In a high-definition system, we cannot expect only one camera product, but also more network video servers, NVRs, and other products. .

Feature-rich and diverse Network camera products are more feature-rich than traditional products, and can bring more added value to users. Camera manufacturers will also incorporate rich and practical features in their IPC products to attract more users. . For example, you can add functions such as sending SMS, electronic image stabilization, 3D printing technology, and corridor mode. Among them, we can configure the built-in email client in the HD network camera. When the Internet access is available, the camera device can also send the captured picture when the alarm is triggered to the specified mailbox via Email. It can also be connected via a COM port to a device that can connect to a SIM card, and can be sent to a designated mobile phone terminal using a short message or a multimedia message. In this way, real-time and intelligent monitoring can be achieved while using only a small amount of bandwidth and cost. So many rich features are bound to bring about a better user experience.

The standardization of unified video protocol standards still has very important significance. In line with national standards, the integration of ONVIF and GB/T28181 and other protocol standards will become the passport for HD network cameras to reach the market.