Three major issues in security video surveillance

With the development of science and technology, IT technology continues to infiltrate the security industry, and networking and digitization have quickly become hot topics in the industry. In this era, network video surveillance technology has moved from science and technology laboratories to large-scale public buildings.

Network video surveillance market cold

Network video monitoring For remote monitoring, the monitoring method is more flexible. The network-based video surveillance breaks the time and geographical constraints, eliminating the need for traditional wiring and line maintenance costs and reducing monitoring costs; the user is authorized Next, you can monitor it on demand and implement plug-and-play, ready-to-use, and ready-to-use. The many flexible features and powerful networking features of network cameras have become a topic of interest for a short time.

Many optimists predict that digital cameras will replace analog cameras within two years, and network video surveillance systems will replace analog surveillance systems. A large number of production analog cameras and supporting equipment companies in the industry will die. In order to keep up with the pace of development of the times, many manufacturing companies scrambled to join the digital camera production team.

However, in an applause, the development prospect of the network video surveillance market is not satisfactory. According to Li Jinbao, technical director of Shenzhen Das Intelligent Co., Ltd., the company has built video surveillance alarm projects in multiple cities. However, so far, there has not been a true urban network video surveillance system. Most of them are network monitoring of a community or a building. Now across the country, it is difficult to find a completely digital network video surveillance system in the city.

Wang Qiang, general manager of Shenzhen Jiaxin Jie Electronics Co., Ltd. estimated that the domestic use of network video surveillance equipment and software projects less than 10% of monitoring projects, the ratio of foreign countries may be higher. Nowadays, domestic users have a low level of enthusiasm for network video surveillance systems. Traditional surveillance equipment occupies half of the surveillance market. The development of the network camera product market is not easy.

Wang Qiang used a vivid example to describe the impact of network bandwidth on network monitoring: a high-performance sports car that can run on highways at a speed of 300 kilometers per hour. If you let a sports car walk on a rough road, its speed Immediately fell to 120 kilometers per hour. At this point, the performance advantages of the sports car simply cannot be played. There are many similarities between the network monitoring system and sports car roads. Network monitoring is not used independently and needs to match the "highway". This road is the network bandwidth. At present, the network bandwidth provided by China's telecom operators is generally 2 megabits. In a wide area network, the bandwidth required for a camera is 2 megabytes. Such a bandwidth cannot meet the video conferences of tens of road network conference cameras of general enterprises, let alone Large-scale urban network video surveillance system. Domestic network bandwidth simply cannot meet the demand for ultra-large amount of video information transmission generated by network monitoring. In this situation, the network video surveillance system has lost its place of use and has become a flashy "furniture."

In the industry, Wang Qiang, who has the same views, is not the only one. Xu Yongfei, deputy general manager of Shenzhen Shengdaxin Technology Co., Ltd. believes that China’s network infrastructure is weak and broadband networks are not widely used throughout the country, especially in cities and remote areas in the Mainland. There is no access to the local area, people know little about network monitoring; and in many areas where the network is popular, the phenomenon of bandwidth lag is obvious. Many bandwidths can no longer meet the requirements for the transmission of audio and video signals with large traffic and affect the final monitoring effect.

When the traditional network encounters the development bottleneck, many people in the industry place their hopes on another kind of transmission medium—optical fiber. Compared with copper cables, optical fiber has no speed loss, and its speed is 20 times or more than copper broadband. At present, the “Fibre-to-the-home” project that is being launched nationwide can directly connect individual optical fibers to users’ homes, which is equivalent to opening up a unique freeway for users. Even if people in the same area all access the Internet, it will not affect the network. speed. Even with a large transmission advantage, industry experts are not optimistic about this new type of data "transmission channel." At present, domestic fiber-optic households are still in the pilot phase. First-tier cities such as Guangzhou and Shenzhen are far from achieving fiber-to-the-home access. The popularization of fiber in the central and western regions is far more unattainable. When will an online video surveillance system enter the public? Vision also becomes a distant thing.
In addition to bandwidth, costs are another major factor constraining the development of network video surveillance. Network video surveillance technology has not been around for a long time. Many systems and products have high technological content and the cost is higher than that of analog surveillance and digital-analog hybrid monitoring devices. In the survey, the author found that most of the respondents are now limited by bandwidth. When choosing to monitor products, they still tend to choose traditional analog and digital-analog hybrid monitoring equipment. It is difficult for network monitoring products to gain consumer recognition in the short term, and it occupies the mainstream of surveillance video market.

Some analysts in the industry believe that telecom operators have launched a series of broadband fiber-optic reconstruction projects to promote the upgrading of network hardware facilities, which is a good news for the network video surveillance industry. Network video surveillance will also rapidly spread in 3 to 5 years. However, some experts believe that the fiber optic transformation is completed as scheduled, and the user's fiber optic use cost is much, the telecommunications sector did not give a clear answer. It is still too early to predict the popularity of network monitoring. Industry analysts believe that, according to the current situation, in addition to the bandwidth is not enough, the cost of the use of fiber optics is a mixture of digital and analog, high prices will also block many people outside the fiber. Therefore, only by accelerating the speed of the transformation project of the optical fiber and reducing the use cost of the optical fiber will the network monitoring system be truly popularized in the market.

Three major problems in HD

Low-light and signal-noise processing solutions for CMOS products

As previously analyzed, although megapixel camera products based on CMOS technology currently have deficiencies in low illumination environments and signal-to-noise processing, this does not fundamentally affect its application prospects. First, related international companies are stepping up efforts to solve these two problems. It can be believed that the effect of CMOS will be closer and closer to that of CCD, and the price of CMOS devices will be lower than that of CCD devices. On the other hand, the flexibility of engineering integrators in China's local engineering industry can greatly reduce the impact of the environment on monitoring performance through work on construction wiring and external lighting. Therefore, the market will still leave a considerable space for CMOS technology network HD cameras. CMOS megapixel cameras are also practical in engineering.

How Users Choose Different Sharpness Product Systems

In the actual project, how should the user select the D1-level system or the megapixel-level system according to the actual needs of the project and the surrounding supporting conditions? This is a very practical issue.

To solve this problem, experts believe that: “Building a high-definition video surveillance system will lead to many improvements in network bandwidth, video storage space, and image decoding capabilities. Correspondingly, in practical projects, various factors must be considered comprehensively. Make the right choice between the traditional D1 or even CIF video surveillance system and the new high-definition video surveillance system.These factors ultimately come together, mainly by the customer's ability to bear the cost of project construction, and the customer's video surveillance system. The effect is determined by the expectation."

The price will not be the threshold for high-definition network monitoring applications

At present, network monitoring is tempting to hit the platform system, and the price is relatively expensive. Once the network high-definition monitoring system is established, the price threshold will also be expensive, which is not affordable for the average user. So, the price will not become the threshold for high-definition network monitoring applications.

Experts believe that: "megapixel products are also divided into high, medium and low grades, where the price of low-end products will not be high, in fact, the industry is selling more and more high-definition products prices have become more and more civilian. But the construction of high-definition video surveillance system The corresponding investment in all aspects of supporting construction is still very expensive, so under current conditions, high investment will become an obstacle to the promotion of high-definition video surveillance systems."
Experts believe that: "At present, these industry users with strong HD demand are basically not very sensitive to prices. What they really care about is quality! From any new technology development, we can see such laws, demand, and technology. Feasibility, starting price is high, with the industrialization development and industry popularization, the price will gradually decline until a new technology completely replaces the old technology into the mainstream.The price control of the megapixel high-definition system product is mainly the front-end image sensor. In the short term, prices may be slightly limited, but with the advancement of image sensor technology, more and more demand for high-definition trends, the cost reduction is inevitable!”

Experts believe that: "High-definition monitoring system products, from the cost of certainly higher than the traditional D1, CIF monitoring system. At the same time, the entire monitoring system and network, storage prices are related, high-definition encoder is also subject to the price of high-definition cameras. In the short term, The price will be a factor, and it may only be applied to some high-end customers. But with the development of industry and technology, HD IP cameras are becoming more and more popular, and the price factor will become smaller and smaller."

The price will not become a threshold for the application of megapixel high-definition surveillance systems. The reason is that the front-end high-definition IP cameras use CMOS sensors and ASIC compression chips. Therefore, the price is very high, and the price of CCD high-definition sensors is already high. Reducing to a reasonable range; in the platform part, HD and SD are the same architecture; PC-based client display, because quad-core has become the mainstream configuration of desktop computers, and many graphics cards with their own hardware HD decoding capabilities, Therefore, it is no problem to display high-definition images on PC clients; hardware decoding and dedicated high-definition ASIC decoding chips are also mature and cost-effective.