H.265 is going to be released in Macroscop 2.2! While waiting, let us look back and remind you, what Macroscop’s “4X times more” actually means. Using H.264 IP-surveillance systems provides higher image quality along with the lower data storage and transmission requirements. It also requires a smaller network bandwidth and less hard drives necessary for storing video archives. Along with all these benefits, the use of H.264 can also lead to higher stress on computing equipment.
H.264’s influence on computing resources
An IP-surveillance system’s bandwidth should be taken into consideration at the design stage. The use of a large number of IP-based cameras in a network, especially megapixel, may lead to break-ups in image broadcasting. It may even lead to a partial loss of data for viewing and archiving. The H.264 compression format allows one to effectively solve the problem of high volumes of high-resolution video stream transmission. Along with all benefits of video data processing in a modern compression format, it can be a stressful task, even for high-speed PCs. The server’s hardware performance is strongly affected by a software platform which is used to build the system. One such platform is Macroscop’s software solution for IP cameras, based on several exclusive technologies. These technologies allow reducing on servers’ loads.
H.264 efficient processing technologies
One of the major advantages of Macroscop’s video analysis technology is its ability to analyze compressed video streams from IP cameras without their full decompression.
This technology increases the speed of data processing, while, on average, the load on the CPU is 4X less. Thanks to this feature, you can connect 4X more cameras to a single Macroscop’s server. The second major advantage is the possibility to use less powerful, and thus, less expensive CPUs, which results in reduced cost of the server hardware.
Video streams processing on a video card
In order to increase efficiency in computing resources usage, Macroscop’s developers moved part of transaction to a video card. This approach was taken because modern graphics cards are able to do some decompression themselves. Using this approach allows the client to reduce the CPU’s load by half. This leads to an overall cost reduction because a less powerful and less expensive CPU can be utilized.
The transfer of decompression operations to a graphics card allows one to save not only on the server’s cost, but on the client’s side of a video surveillance system as well. In order to utilize this feature, a processing component must be specified in the client’s part of the software settings. It is either the CPU or graphics card.
H.264 processing by mobile and web-clients
The majority of mobile customers and web-based clients do not support the H.264 format in their video surveillance systems. In order to be able to see a picture in such cases, a video recoding procedure into MJPEG needs to be undergone. This procedure requires a lot of resources and leads to additional stress on a server.
The latest version of Macroscop’s software includes support of this format for iOS and Android devices. As clients are able to process video streams in H.264 format, the server does not have to execute unpacking and re-encoding tasks, which saves time and resources. H.264 format processing is possible on mobile devices if there are enough of computing resources. In the event a device does not have enough resources, video will be switched to MJPEG format automatically. Video format is user defined.
By choosing Macroscop, you not only get great opportunities for building your video surveillance systems, but can also save your computing resources, thanks to a variety of exclusive technologies available to you.
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