More Processing Power
Unfortunately, this increased capability comes at a cost – H.264 requires more processing power than the older MJPEG and MPEG4 standards. There have been many recent advances in the field of software configurable processors and digital signal processors, however, and the computation power of these new processors has made a tremendous impact on video compression capabilities. Multiple channels of H.264 compression can now be performed using a single processor at a lower cost-per-channel than the old MPEG4 installations. Designers and system integrators now have available an engine to support the increasing demand for bigger and better surveillance systems. Almost all new video surveillance equipment being designed or delivered today supports H.264.
Figure 1: H264 provides significant improvement in codec efficiency.
As the surveillance industry reaps the rewards of the lower operating costs and the flexibility of digital video in these new and better H.264 driven systems, new use models are emerging. Digital content was made to be distributed and shared. Remote monitoring and video content delivery to first responders requires digital video to be pushed further out into the network. For the first time, there is a requirement to scale video content, both in resolution and in frame rate, as it reaches out to diverse client devices, depending upon the bandwidth of their connection, and the decoding performance of their hand-held, laptop, or desktop device. The surveillance community will increasingly require scalability both in streaming media and in the stored content.
To address these new requirements, a new generation of scalable video codecs is being developed to augment the capabilities of H.264 and unlock new applications and use models for the surveillance industry. This new codec is H.264 SVC (for Scalable Video Codec).
H.264 SVC, also originally developed by the broadcast industry, offers features that are particularly valuable to the surveillance community and H.264 SVC is destined to take the place of H.264 as the standard codec for surveillance installations. While H.264 SVC is rolled out to the surveillance market, early adopters are making efforts to ensure backwards compatibility and interoperability with existing H.264 installations. This will speed adoption and allow equipment manufacturers to quickly enter the market with differentiated product. Video surveillance companies will drive the adoption of H.264 SVC, and, rather than being laggards, they will be at the forefront of promoting this exciting new video compression standard.
About the author:
Robert K. Beachler is Vice President of Marketing, Operations, System Design for Stretch Inc. A 20-year veteran of the semiconductor industry, he also spent two years as a Senior Industry Analyst for Dataquest, a leading high-technology market research firm. He joined Stretch in May 2006 to oversee marketing for Stretch’s entire portfolio of products worldwide. Previously he was with Altera Corp for over 15 years, where he led worldwide product launches; led new product architecture development for the industry’s best-selling programmable logic family and design automation tools; and held titles including Senior Director of the Intellectual Property Business Unit, Senior Director of Business Development, Senior Director of Software Tools Marketing and Product Planning, and Director of Strategic Marketing and Communications. Beachler began his career as a Field Applications Engineer for Fairchild Semiconductor, and then joined Altera as one of its first Applications Engineers. He grew with Altera from its early start-up days until 1991, when he left for a short engagement as Methodology Marketing Manager for Cadence Design Systems, a leading developer of EDA tools, followed by his time as a Dataquest analyst. He rejoined Altera in 1993. Beachler received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from The Ohio State University (Columbus). He served on the board of directors for the Virtual Socket Initiative Alliance and has been a board observer for a number of start-up semiconductor and EDA companies.
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