Hemispheric Technology Made Possible With Decentralized Platform

Imagine an IP camera that can be ceiling mounted in a room and cover the same area as three to four standard CCTV cameras, allowing users to pan and zoom smoothly within the recorded images stored, not on a computer, but in the camera. In fact, analysis can be done quickly within the scene, enabling users to inspect every section of the room, panning and zooming into every detail!

The technology is called ‘Hemispheric’ and if you haven’t heard about it yet--watch this space--as it’s set to change video surveillance as we know it.

Hemispheric camera technology is not to be confused with the generic panoramic (wide-angle) video technology offered by some IP camera manufacturers, which often deliver disappointing image quality and are costly to support at the back end. Based on the centralized system topology, these IP cameras are server-centric, meaning the entire camera system relies on a central DVR/NVR to handle the image analysis, video processing and storage management. These systems have not proven to be commercially viable, consuming massive amounts of bandwidth and requiring enormous CPU power for the purpose of processing the incoming video streams server-side.

How is Hemispheric technology different?

Based on the decentralized platform, the camera has all the recording server (DVR) functionality built-in, thus all the image analysis, video processing and storage management is handled by the camera.

DVR-in-the-camera technology is unique to MOBOTIX. The camera can record internally and store video internally, which means zero bandwidth usage while recording. If long-term storage is needed, then recording via the network directly to a NAS (network attached storage) or low cost file server is possible without the need to invest in a central NVR server and licensed video management software. This equates to huge savings on the overall system cost.

How does it work?

The raw megapixel image is produced, analyzed, corrected and processed inside the MOBOTIX camera – this unique decentralized process is key to the success of the system. To reproduce the same high quality image results, other IP camera systems would have to send the raw three megapixel image over the network to be corrected and processed at the NVR. With each individual raw image around 10 megabytes in size, this would kill the network dead. Even if, in this case, the raw video stream did make it to the server, it would require huge amounts of CPU power to process.

To get around this problem, other IP camera systems have to compress the images at the camera first (normally using MPEG-4/H.264) and then send them to the recording server to be processed again for the image analysis and distortion correction to be performed – explaining why the video quality is so substandard in these centralized-based surveillance systems.

To ensure the integrity of the Hemispheric video delivery, MOBOTIX use the MxPEG codec, the only video codec in the world that has been specifically designed for video surveillance applications. It delivers consistent JPEG-like high-resolution image quality, at around five times less storage utilization of M-JPEG.

The MOBOTIX Q24 represents the very latest in Hemispheric technology. The camera ships with 4GB of internal storage factory fitted, allowing for several days of on-board video recording in most applications. With the video management software, storage and NVR system built-in, the Q24 is install-ready, with nothing else to spend, for just $995 MSRP.

Wolfgang Ritter is the sales director for MOBOTIX Corporation, New York City; [email protected]