April 2007 - Bosch Security Systems recently announced a new firmware release for its IP network video products. Maintaining the company's tradition of keeping its network CCTV products at the leading edge of surveillance technology, Firmware Release 2.5 features a wide range of enhancements including a new recording scheduler with flexible profile settings, the addition of advanced features to its VCA (Video Content Analysis) software, and a higher level of security provided by more advanced encryption techniques.
The new Recording Scheduler provided with Firmware Release 2.5 allows for up to 10 independent recording profiles to be set up and assigned to individual cameras. It is possible, for example, to set up a schedule with specific recording profiles for different time slots during the day, and to assign different schedules to different days of the week. For every recording profile, the Scheduler also allows pre- and post-alarm recording modes to be set up. So that when an alarm is triggered, the cameras monitoring the scene can be automatically switched to record at higher resolution and streaming rate to capture more details of the triggering event – for example, from a pre-alarm recording mode of, say, 1CIF@1ips to a post-alarm mode of 4CIF@25/30ips.
Firmware Release 2.5 also includes a licensable option to enable IVMD 2.0 (Intelligent Video Motion Detection), the latest version of Bosch's powerful VCA software. IVMD 2.0 offers all the features of the earlier version, including an advanced background learning algorithm. The algorithm prevents unwanted alarms from, for example, moving branches, clouds, shadows and falling rain or snow, and the ability to adapt to changes in background. The VCA software also offers powerful new features including object identification by aspect ratio, idle-object and object-removal detection, and trajectory mapping for detecting suspicious behavior such as loitering.
The new firmware release also provides a high level of security with SSL (56-bit DES) encryption for web browsing and for connections to video management systems. Moreover, to increase access security, the HTTP, HTTPS, telnet and RCP+ ports can all be configured or even disabled independently. The release also provides 802.1x authentication support, enabling the system administrator to authenticate products connected via a wireless network through, for example, a RADIUS server.
More advanced time-server support includes daylight-saving time (with an editable daylight-saving time table) and support for both SNTP and RFC868 time servers. With SNTP selected, time accuracy is an unprecedented 0.25 microseconds that provides highly accurate time synchronization between, for example, video and audio signals.
A CPU performance meter shows processing resources available for VCA and other system functions, and a Live-page Configuration option displays VCA trajectories on live video in addition to standard VCA metadata. A low-pass filter is also provided to suppress noisy signals that can occur with some cameras and could result in undesirable increases in encoding load.
Firmware Release 2.5 is now available for downloading onto all Bosch IP network video products, including the VIP X1600 encoders and the FlexiDome IP camera series.
