Forecast Camera’s Trend and Future of Intelligent Development

As the current network camera technology has been a major breakthrough, the market mainstream of smart camera has turned to network cameras from analog cameras. The video technology, which has been subject to network conditions and video CODEC, has already matured and shown some features like targeted, high adaptability, etc. The main function of smart cameras is intelligence analysis. 

Currently, the intelligent video analysis can be divided into pattern recognition and behavioral analysis. Pattern recognition includes face detection, face contrast, license plate recognition, fireworks identification and detection; behavioral analysis includes crossing line, enters & leaves, lost, remnants, crowd, slipping and so on.

Safer smart high speed camera

In recent years, the development of intelligent cameras has made considerable progress in nature. Firstly, the quality is more stable. With the surveillance industry matured, technology improved, smart cameras achieve low power consumption, low heat. As we all know, low-power itself means a more stable quality. Secondly, the security is higher. The new generation of intelligent network cameras revolutionized conventional analog monitoring mode. Such mode is the bond to the network, separated the data encoding from data storage, using special data storage devices to realize remote data collection, storage and management, with a high security. Finally, it is the reliability that many users are concerned about. Just think, a constant false alarm system is tantamount to a wolf story for the security manager, which will greatly affect the user's confidence. In the past market, the performance of intelligent video analysis products on the market is uneven, and there were many false positives due to the complexity of the scene and the algorithm. As the continuous development of intelligence analysis technology and algorithm improvement, the accuracy of intelligence analysis gets greatly improved.

There accompanied some impediments with rapid development of smart cameras. Firstly, the cost is relatively high. That focuses on investment in infrastructure and the system itself. For the deployment of intelligent systems, requirement at storage, network bandwidth and other infrastructure facilities is higher than other systems. And the cost of intelligent device itself is higher than a lot of other products. For many ordinary users, the cost is an important factor affecting their further selection. Secondly, network transmission obstacles camera development. Current smart cameras move towards networking, but as network transmission obstacles fully promotion, only applies in some industries. Thirdly, the awareness of market demand is not high. The demand for intelligent network camera is certainly different among different industries. Take transportation industry as example, there are very strict requirements at vehicle capture, lane monitoring, license plate recognition, identification and even the drivers identifying. Therefore, manufacturers should introduce more subdivided and diversified products, programs to meet the needs from different users. 

The intelligent camera technology in the future will evaluate two opposing trends: the high-precision professional industry cameras and generic cameras relying on the back-end support. For high-precision professional industry cameras, the more usage scenario of smart cameras is traffic recognition and financial guard, such as license plate recognition in intelligent transportation, face recognition and trajectory tracking in financial protection. These require highly not only the production facilities of product also the professional of handling personnel. Then smart cameras will gradually be monopolized by large and medium enterprises with professional qualification and knowledge of industry needs. And its products will be increasingly targeted and with characteristics of industry application. In addition, generic cameras relying on back-end support will become the mainstream of the future smart cameras. The reason is including its relatively low technical threshold, the greater degree of intelligence and lower investment. During practical applications, there usually adds a intelligent analysis module in the existing network monitoring solutions. This module can not only be stand-alone run, also couple with the overall operation of the system. In other words, consumers do not need to transform the original facilities environment, to have the ability of intelligent analysis. Then all the cameras have become smart cameras. This method is more conducive to advance products and projects to upgrade and transform.

Currently, foreign markets have already used intelligent video surveillance systems largely. Domestic intelligent analysis and monitoring market is also growing rapidly. There will be more and more industries to introduce intelligent demand in the future. Intelligent video analysis technology is the direction of future video surveillance development, and also is the most high-end application mode in video surveillance.

Q&A about Video Surveillance Storage Techniques

Q: 1, what’s the main way to achieve video surveillance storage system?

A: With the rapid development of network in recent years, security surveillance moved rapidly from traditional analog system to HD digital, network intelligent. Also, the monitoring video storage recorder evolved gradually from traditional analog DVR to H-DVR with modulus mixed, and to current NVR (Network Video Recorder). Network storage NVR inherits the traditional advantages of analog DVR - friendly interface, easy to backup data, supports local queries, enables video monitoring channels expanded and unified management, convenient operation and maintenance, etc. These characteristics are welcomed by the majority of users.

Concentrated Storage

Distributed Storage

There are types of layout and ways for storage: mainly NVR storage and IP-SAN storage.

Seen from the image of concentrated storage, NVR supports certain size of centralized storage. Users can take low-cost advantages of IP network; discover police intelligence quickly via convenient NVR video playback and improve response time. It is convenient to expand monitoring scale. NVR storage architecture also supports later online storage expansion. The embedded NVR has significantly lowered construction costs. As the market of hard drivers gets complicated and diverse, it is more efficient to reduce early construction costs by improving NVR technology to support the use of low-cost hard disk. The functions of centralized configuration, upgrade and intelligent diagnosis providing by entire system also greatly reduces maintenance costs. Both distributed storage and centralized storage are nearly the same and also fully able to meet the system’s unified management.

IP-SAN storage

It is more common to opt for IP-SAN centralized storage in HD data center. SAN (Storage Area Network) is based on storage structure of fiber channel or IP standard. IP camera, media data and data visiting must pass through the server, and then visit the related storage device via bus. The middle server takes the role of store and forward. With the birth of high speed hard disk, the read-write performance of SAN data increased much. Advanced IP networking technology reduces the configuration of SAN storage device, the complexity of the maintenance. The entire system supports cross-platform data sharing and adding storage devices at any time without capacity limitation. Along with the development of IPv6 and 100Gbps Ethernet, IP-SAN's performance will go to a higher level.

IP-SAN is the storage system based on IP network. With the price of traditional Ethernet fiber to meet the cost to fiber transmission, IP-SAN realizes real plug and play without client hardware and software upgrades. It has near-zero maintenance costs, reduces project cost of ownership and maintenance.

Q: 2. what is the state of the HD storage technology?

A: In medium-sized high-definition storage project, NVR storage method is the leading direction, easy to operate and maintain when customer-oriented, low cost, relatively low storage requirements for applications. As the superiority of particular application, IP-SAN is still the main storage mode for big data, high capacity and high data requirements applications.

Q: 3. what is the core technology of HD storage?

A: Take Onvif and GB/T28181, etc. international standards access protocols, and high efficient storage read-write, retrieval management, leading encoding, transcoding, streaming distribution technology as the core.

Q: 4. at the high-definition era, what are the challenges of storage facing?

A: As the advent of high-definition era, from the original analogue of 100,000 pixels, to current 2.0MP, 3.0MP or even higher 5.0MP acquisition unit, the human’s eyes demand higher for the video quality. Compared DVR storage devices at the analog era, HD digital storage device NVR and IP-SAN get more demands. Security monitoring usually requires 30~90 days for storage, or longer at some important place. There needs higher stability and reliability for network environment, bandwidth, HD storage devices.

Q: 5. at the high-definition era, how to solve problem of storage capacity and bandwidth?

A: Storage plays an important role at the HD era. To solve problem of storage capacity and bandwidth, the best way is to reduce the stream of HD front-end equipment and accelerate the development of Ethernet. At present, there are some companies to improve the encoding mode of HD digital signal. A few years ago, there were also manufacturers initiated H.265 encoding format. The HD stream needs get a certain decline with the equal image quality between H.265 and H.264.

Q: 6. what are the new technologies and new applications for HD storage?

A: At HD era, storage will be wider further on digitization. Intelligent and big data applications combined, can dig and analyze video data recorded, and become the ready-to-use wealth of data. The H.265 encoding technology can reduce bitrates further under the same clarity, as well as reduce storage space occupied.

Q: 7. what is the future trend of HD storage?

A: One is the application of intelligent storage. Collected HD data can be searched and analyzed by keywords such as varied scene, number of people. Store effective high-definition data aimed at critical information. Another is standardization. HD storage supports various domestic and international standard access protocols, and also support plug & play further, without secondary development.

Q: 8. what’s the impact that cloud storage brings to HD storage?   

A: Cloud storage solution is a product of cloud computing technology. Cloud storage can be centrally managed, reduce maintenance costs and visit via remote access. But because of cyber attacks, hackers and other factors, there likely leads to leaks of high-definition data. Also, the security and reliability of network HD signals exists some problems.