Exclusive Technology
There are many challenges with effectively using video for day-to-day operations.Whether video is being used for productivity, security, or conferencing, a common challenge is the amount of storage and bandwidth consumed. Video takes up large amounts of storage space, making it difficult to store long periods. Video also uses tremendous amounts of network bandwidth, making it very difficult to transmit quality live video over a Wide Area Network, VPN, or Internet Connection.
The solution to these problems is in making the video more efficient, through various means including Video Compression and intelligent use of network resources.
Intelligent Content Analysis
MPEG-4 and most other compression formats in common use today were not specifically designed or optimized for security or surveillance video, but instead for broadcast or entertainment purposes like movies and television. The surveillance world does not have the luxury of a controlled studio environment, and thus has additional challenges. The video is often in situations of poor lighting, outdoor cameras deal with weather and vibration from wind and other objects, and video quality and framerate can be degraded because of cabling and transmission limitations. Specialty cameras with Megapixel offer extremely high-resolution and quality, but then take up exponentially more space. The answer is Intelligent Content AnalysisT. An exclusive new technology from SAM Systems, ICA is an intelligent pre-compression filter. ICA analyzes and enhances the video before it is compressed and thus is compression-independent; the resulting video is of higher quality while still maintaining compatibility. SAM content that is enhanced with ICA is Windows Media compatible and will still play back on nearly any computer without any additional software requirements.
ICA is especially designed to enhance video for security purposes. It analyzes video on a sub-pixel level, and works with the compression system to focus attention on important areas instead of storing background noise, vibration, and image defect introduced by the camera or image transmission. In typical circumstances ICA reduces the bandwidth and storage requirements by an additional 75%. The result is an average improvement of 90% compared to MPEG-4.
Network Video Tunneling
Network Video TunnelingT (NVT) is another exclusive patent-pending feature that works by allowing multiple remote users to share a single video stream. For example, Bob is in his office at headquarters watching live video from a remote location. This operation is using a certain amount of network bandwidth. Now Mary connects to the same location to view this video. Under normal circumstances, this would result in double the bandwidth consumption. With NVT the server can detect multiple users viewing the same video, a situation common in medium to large organizations. The server sends the live video to the first user as normal, and the viewing software on their PC shares the video in real-time with second user. The feature is scalable to hundreds of connections, and happens automatically with no special network configuration required. Like ICA, Network Video Tunneling is compression-independent, and can work with Windows Media or with other formats if needed. The more users that need access to video, the larger the potential cost savings.
Adaptive Video Resolution
Adaptive Video Resolution is a patent-pending technology that senses the usage of the system by a particular client, and scales the video as needed. For example, while watching a screen full of 8 or more cameras each image is much smaller than it's full resolution, however other systems would still send the high resolution (and high bandwidth!) image, only to be resized when displayed to the screen. SAM is smart enough to detect the size the video is being displayed and can scale the image in real-time before it leaves the server. The same images and quality are seen by the viewer, it is simply a matter of scaling before instead of after the video is transmitted, resulting in a substantial decrease in bandwidth usage.
