HD network cameras with intelligent analysis will become new highlights

With the rapid development of video surveillance technology, especially the rapid development of network video surveillance technology, the requirements of customers for video surveillance products are also increasing, requiring more perfect functions, more stable work, and clearer images. How to see a person's facial features? How can I see clearly the license of a moving vehicle? How can we expand monitoring coverage in open areas such as crowded railway stations, stadiums, and plazas? High-definition video surveillance products have become an important trend in security development. As an end user, which industries are in urgent need of high-definition video, which industries may lead the high-definition surveillance market, users of these industries will become the first object of high-definition network monitoring.

At present, the high-definition network monitoring market on China's security market is basically still in its initial stage. The sales of various chip vendors, product vendors, system integrators, and system platform vendors in the HD network monitoring market are still in the test stage. HD network The monitoring technologies and systems are still in a period of continuous improvement.

As the front-end device for high-definition video surveillance, HD network cameras are the source for video surveillance. The video is HD encoded and IP-encapsulated, and it carries high-definition images over an IP network, enabling surveillance functions such as high-definition surveillance and video recording. The development of high-definition network cameras can be viewed in terms of clarity, speed, and application. Zhang Yong, president of Axis Communications, China, told reporters that HD network cameras have achieved megapixel resolution at the beginning but they cannot provide full frame rate transmission. And now the standard of megapixel HDTV is more and more prominent, the application of 720P, 1080P standard is more and more popular, has a 16:9 widescreen format, the frame rate has been continuously improved, and the standard of compliance - HDTV, using H. 264 compression technology enables the transmission of high-definition images. With the combination of HDTV standards and smart pre-applications, the development of HD network cameras will be even more rapid.

Demand for clarity increases to create a good market environment The development of video surveillance systems has gone from analog to digital at different times, and its video clarity has also been correspondingly improved. At the same time, with the continuous development of the CCD, the resolution of analog video surveillance and digital video surveillance has increased vertically. The horizontal resolution of analog cameras has grown from 380 lines to 540 lines, and the number of digital camera pixels has grown from 250,000 to 16 million. Since 2009, all surveillance camera manufacturers have begun to introduce HD network surveillance cameras to the market.

According to the statistics of the semiconductor industry, from January to May 2010, the shipment of millions of high-definition photoreceptor chips nationwide was 150,000-200,000. According to statistics, domestic million HD cameras launched into the engineering application market in the first half of this year were about 70,000 units. The development of high-definition video surveillance originated from high-definition surveillance cameras. The technology of high-definition surveillance cameras is of utmost importance in high-definition video surveillance systems.

Hikvision's IP camera product line director told the group that in the field of security monitoring, people really are not satisfied with seeing, but also want to see clearly, high-definition network cameras can meet this demand. However, due to a variety of factors, the popularity of high-definition network cameras still requires a step-by-step process.

According to Tan Guo, network camera product manager of Shenzhen Langchi Xinchuang Technology Co., Ltd., digital video surveillance is currently in a period of rapid growth. The introduction of high-definition surveillance products has pushed the digital video surveillance industry to a new stage of development. From the market point of view, industry users have a strong demand for high-definition network cameras, and they are mainly used in projects with high requirements for image clarity in transportation, safe cities, military, airports, subways, and finance. These projects have played an exemplary role in the widespread promotion and application of HD network cameras. For the traditional monitoring market, which accounts for a large amount of total market demand, it is plagued by high investment in high-definition costs and applications such as high-bandwidth and large-capacity storage. However, from the perspective of the long-term development of the market, with the improvement of the price-performance ratio of HD network cameras and the maturity of related technologies, the application of high-definition network cameras will become wider and wider.

Manufacturers are likely to combine “HD” and “network”. At the CPSE AMB held in Shenzhen last year, it is not difficult to find that each monitoring company has played “HD” cards, which leads to “2010 will be the first year of HD”. Slogan. Nowadays, half of 2010 is already in place. Can HD continue to be the focus of manufacturers' pursuit? The "high-definition" and "network" strong combination, this can become the manufacturers of new technical appeal points and product highlights?

As a leader in the field of high-definition, Sony currently offers more than 10 new models with 1080P or 720P full-frame-rate (25fps, H.264) streaming capabilities, consisting of "V series," "E series," and "X series." Respectively for the enhanced, standard and compact market demand. New products use Sony's latest Exmor CMOS technology. Compared with CCD, it has the characteristics of high speed, high sensitivity, high cage-quality, etc., and it significantly reduces production costs. The View-DR technology used therein has excellent wide dynamic performance and a wide dynamic range of 15dB, a two-fold increase in sensitivity over traditional technologies. Visibility Enhancer, XDNR and other technologies can also provide a revolutionary improvement in brightness and noise reduction of the image, which makes HD applications even more powerful in video surveillance.

Qin Jie, video security product manager of Sony China Professional Systems Group's application business marketing department, told reporters that Sony is a manufacturer that can provide CCD, CMOS, DSP and other core devices and core technologies in the industry. With this kind of upstream core technology resources, It has the ability to support Sony's overall superiority in high-line simulation and network HD. Sony's recently launched Security Solutions Membership Program (SSA) has been joined by dozens of industry leaders from around the world and domestically, and it is believed that it will establish a good example for promoting active and open cooperation in the industry.

Hikvision is a leading provider of comprehensive surveillance products with industry-leading technology and sustainable R&D capabilities. The group should be told to reporters that Hikvision combines the various needs of the market, and actively promote the development of high-definition network cameras, introduced a full range of products: from VGA resolution to 5 million pixels, 篭-covered 4CIF, 1.3 million pixels , 2 million pixels, 3 million pixels and other various resolutions; in the industry subdivided products, launched a high-definition camera for traffic, bank-specific and other industries. In appearance, 篭-covered various appearances from the bolt, indoor hemisphere, mini-hemisphere, card type, and outdoor hemisphere, satisfying the needs of different application scenarios. In terms of technology, the latest CCD and CMOS chips have been selected, and major breakthroughs have been made in independent research and development of ISP technology. Various types of Sensor chips can be flexibly selected to make the product more abundant and cost-effective.

It is understood that Axis's high-definition camera product line is relatively complete, to meet the various needs of customers (such as indoor and outdoor), different resolution, different intelligence and so on. In terms of applications, Axis' HD network cameras are all compliant with the HDTV standard, ensuring high resolution based on standards, ensuring a frame rate of 25 frames per second (fps/30 frames) and color-reporting, and occupying a low level of bandwidth. Industry, to achieve compliance-standard HD applications. In addition, Axis launches the ACAP (Axis Camcorder Open Platform), which provides a completely open environment and platform for software applications, providing the greatest possible possibilities for satisfying customers' various needs.

As a rising star of high-definition surveillance, Gong Wenju, marketing manager of Marketing Technology Co., Ltd. of Shenzhen Wave Grain Technology Co., Ltd., said that Wavelet Intelligence launched the low-light camera with the latest CMOS sensor in March of this year, which greatly expanded the applicable field of high-definition network cameras.

The cost-price became the biggest resistance of the market popularization. The reporter interviewed a number of monitoring companies in the industry about the current market resistance of HD network cameras. They all agreed that price is the biggest resistance.

Hikvision's IP camera product line director should tell the reporter that the investment in high-definition applications is relatively high, which is mainly reflected in the investment in infrastructure and the system itself. The deployment of high-definition systems has higher requirements for infrastructure and storage facilities such as storage and network bandwidth than standard definition systems, and the costs of high-definition devices themselves will be higher than standard definition products. For many ordinary users, input costs are one of the important factors affecting their further choices. Therefore, the application of high-definition at this stage is still mainly concentrated in some high-end applications.

Gong Wenju, manager of Wave Grain Technology Marketing Center, believes that the market resistance to the widespread adoption of HD network cameras is concentrated on the price. High-definition monitoring is very sensitive to cost. How to ensure the integrity and stability of high-definition monitoring solutions at low cost is the key to the application of high-definition monitoring scales, and even replaces traditional analog monitoring. According to Tan Chiu-chih, product manager of NetChip Network Camera at Langchi, the price control of megapixel high-definition system products is mainly at the front end of the image sensor. Therefore, in a short period of time, price factors will restrict its development.

However, besides the biggest factor of price, there are also factors that result from the popularity of the market. Zhang Yong, president of Axis China, believes that the design cycle of large projects on the market is very long, which has affected the rapid application and popularization of high-definition network cameras to a certain extent, and there is no uniform application standard on the market. The market cultivation of network cameras is still in progress. The market's awareness and acceptance of HD network cameras have yet to be improved.

In addition, the market resistance encountered by HD network cameras also stems from people's misunderstandings about HD network cameras. Gong Wenju said that after millions of years of development, millions of high-definition cameras have increased by more than 30% each year. However, due to factors such as price, high-definition support, and low-light performance, they have not reached the expectations of many HD manufacturers. Not only that, it also caused many people to have a lot of misunderstandings about millions of HD, blocking the development of millions of HD.

The high technical threshold is not conducive to widespread adoption. Only the front-end camera can reach high definition and does not represent the entire system's high-definition. The real high-definition system is the high-definition of the entire monitoring system. The supporting products, including front-end video capture, transmission, browsing, playback, and storage, must support HD. Hikvision's IP camera product line director said to the group that the technical threshold for HD applications is relatively high. First of all, the existing high-definition network monitoring system generally has higher requirements for the user's application level, requiring the user to have a certain amount of network knowledge, storage knowledge and accustomed to a new software operation interface. For engineers and ordinary users who are accustomed to analog monitoring, there is a need for a process in the transition of using operations.

Secondly, high-definition technology continues to advance, and to achieve true high-definition applications requires a complete high-definition solution, not just high-definition cameras, constantly exploring the trend of technological development and updates, and providing a complete solution that requires Manufacturers have comprehensive overall strength. At this stage, there are not many such manufacturers. Taking the camera resolution as an example, from the 1.3 million pixels to the current 2 million, there will be 5 million or even higher-pixel HD cameras in the future, and other links in the system also need to be upgraded with the times. It is a challenge.

Ron Chi, a product manager of network camera products, said that in addition to the technology of the camera itself, it also needs to improve the transmission of broadband, storage and other aspects. High-definition transmission bandwidth, the existing monitoring system network capabilities generally only support the CIF code stream, and for more than 10 times the network bandwidth requirements, it must go through large-scale network system transformation to meet the requirements. HD also requires large-capacity storage for support. The resolution of 1080P is about 20 times that of CIF. The adoption of high-definition network camera video storage will increase the occupied space, and the recording capacity will increase by a factor of 2, which will greatly increase the input cost of the storage system.

It can be seen that the popularity of high-definition network cameras is an embarrassing and gradual process, that is, the process of gradual application from high-end projects to common projects, from key parts to many parts. In response to the characteristics of this period, it is necessary for powerful companies to introduce more detailed and diversified products and solutions to meet the needs of different users.

Different types of applications require different custom HD network cameras to gradually apply to various fields with their superior performance. However, do HD video cameras with the same product form are used for different types of application requirements? Actually, different industries have different requirements for HD network cameras. For example, the transportation industry has very strict requirements for vehicle capture, lane monitoring, license plate recognition, and even crew identification. Therefore, what is needed here is not only a high-definition network camera that can support the above functions, but also a complete set of high-definition bayonet or license plate recognition system that uses this camera as a key device, so as to achieve comprehensive monitoring of people and vehicles. . In the financial industry, cameras are mainly installed in counters, halls, etc., so they require a wide dynamic function. On the counters and other locations, there are high frame rate requirements for high-definition cameras to see the details of banknote counting.

Zhang Yong, president of Axis China, stated that there are differences in the specific needs of different industries for HD network cameras. We will provide customized services based on the different attributes of each industry. For example, for the monitoring of the transportation industry, low-light, wide-dynamic high-definition network cameras will be provided, which will facilitate the daily monitoring and management of traffic surfaces. As for the video and audio requirements of the metro industry, the corrosion resistance requirements of the port industry will also provide customized products and services according to different environments and industry requirements for different materials, functions, and image quality.

In addition, different application scenarios have different requirements for the video itself. Hikvision's IP camera product line director told the group that some applications would like to see more, but the requirements for clarity are not very strict, such as the square; some applications want to see more clearly, need high resolution Rate, but can be low frame rate; Some applications want to see more smoothly, the image does not jump frame, so the product form needs different customization. There are even more customizations for functional applications, such as temporary storage, network data encryption, user security, etc. Different customers will also put forward different requirements.

Actively improve the level of technology and expand market applications Although the market of domestic HD network cameras is at an initial stage, it is certainly the future trend. Tan Guo said that at present, high-definition network cameras are mainly used in industries where there are special requirements for definition. With the improvement of high-definition network cameras and transmission equipment and the reduction of costs, the application of high-definition network cameras and high-definition integrated solutions will be applied to security monitoring. more and more. At the same time, high-definition network cameras with intelligent analysis will become new highlights.

The application of HD is based on networked video surveillance. Global survey data show that in recent years, the network monitoring market has grown at a rapid rate, while the market share of traditional analog surveillance products has remained stable. Sony China’s Qin Jie believes that the current network monitoring business has a limited share in China’s overall security market. This is not only related to the immature Chinese monitoring market, but also to the fact that network monitoring has no “killer” compared to traditional analog products. The technical advantages. Therefore, only the development of high-definition technologies and solutions to the problems that limit their development can enable networked high-definition video surveillance to win the market. In fact, in the mature technology reserves and network infrastructure of IP cameras, there are no major obstacles in enhancing the clarity of technology and application, reflecting the pursuit of high-definition images.