Video surveillance equipment manufacturers are developing more and more technologies to improve image quality while keeping bandwidth consumption and storage capacity low.
To cope with the challenges associated with the introduction of high-resolution video surveillance systems, a technology called High-Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), aka H.265, has been developed. The peculiarity of H.265 technology is a higher compression rate, which reduces the cost of data storage and transmission.
CCTV manufacturers try to optimize storage and bandwidth consumption by recording higher resolution video only when certain actions are detected. If nothing important is happening, video will be recorded at a lower resolution. If people or vehicles are detected, the video will be recorded at a higher resolution.
An example of such a solution is the Smart H.265+ codec offered by Dahua. It reduces bitrate and memory requirements by 80% compared to the H.264 codec, significantly reducing capital and operational costs.
24/7 video surveillance requires a high storage cost for the recorded video. Efficient recording and storage of HD/UHD quality video surveillance footage has become a major challenge for the surveillance industry. The cost of transferring large amounts of data while maintaining video quality and storing this data increases the cost of the entire surveillance system.
To address these challenges, many manufacturers are continuously investing in new technologies and innovations that will help reduce the cost of operating surveillance systems. Manufacturers can achieve savings by modernizing their production lines and implementing the latest encoding standards (including MPEG4, H.264 and H.265). By doing so, their customers will be able to take advantage of the benefits offered by the new, much more efficient, encoding standards.
Implementing new standards requires hardware upgrades, and in addition, their market adoption may take an indefinite amount of time. In order to stay ahead of the competition, Dahua has decided to release a suite of software updates to the market to better utilize H.265. To take advantage of these additional algorithms, customers will simply need to perform a software update on their device that utilizes the H.265 codec. Below you’ll find out exactly what improvements are in store for users of Dahua equipment.
Adaptation to the situation – the video episodes are continuously changing, although these changes may be imperceptible to the human eye. How the human eye perceives an object depends on many factors. For example, our vision is more sensitive to changes indoors than outdoors. Smart H.265+ technology utilizes this difference in perception to improve encoding efficiency.
Dynamic ROI – More often than not, users of video surveillance systems are more interested in the movement of objects in the surveillance area than in the background against which this movement occurs. Smart H.265+ technology implements a strategy to automatically separate moving objects from the background using video analytics technology.
Once objects are separated from the background, Smart H.265+ uses different levels of compression depending on the different areas of the image of interest to users. Smart H.265+ can increase the compression level for the background area and decrease the compression level for moving objects, thereby improving compression efficiency.
Noise suppression. Noise not only affects video quality, but also increases bandwidth consumption and storage capacity. Traditional noise reduction techniques transform the entire image, and in the process, important details may be removed. Achieving a balance between noise reduction and video preservation is a challenge.
The Smart H.265+ video compression codec uses advanced video analytics technology to distinguish between motion and background areas, and applies varying degrees of noise reduction to each. The Smart H.265+ codec is able to reduce noise and maintain the expected video quality in the image region of interest. Thus, it can not only reduce noise but also preserve video quality while reducing the overall bitrate.
The industry’s transition to H.265 compression technology will improve the efficiency of video surveillance systems and reduce the cost of implementation and operation.
