Level-3 Hardware Acceleration Is Needed in Video Surveillance System
Surveillance is widely used in many areas today, covering traffic, public safety, home security, banking, smart home, military, supermarket, school, office building, factory, hospital, etc. The demand of surveillance products is increasing all the time. The trend of surveillance system can be concluded to 4 points: Networked, Intelligent, Popularized, and especially, Toward High Definition/4K. However, along with the improvement of video resolution in video surveillance system, surveillance also faces some technical obstacles now.
The first is bandwidth problem. The bitstream of 1080p/4K video is large and the bandwidth can influence the transmission of 1080p/4K videos. Improving the bandwidth is important. The second is storage issue. Since video surveillance has video playback function, it must store the recorded videos. 1080p/4K surveillance videos can occupy huge storage. For long time video storing, an efficient data storage method is needed.
But most of all is the video encoding/decoding problem. Decoding/encoding 1080p especially 4K UHD videos requires high performance of video decoder & encoder. The mainstream PCs spend a large amount of CPU power when using CPU software decoder to decode 1080p/4K surveillance videos. Choosing to improve the hardware equipment is an option, but it raises the cost of surveillance. Therefore, many producers begin to develop hardware accelerated encoder and decoder, so as to realize hardware accelerated video decoding, processing, encoding on PC.
High-definition video monitoring system with the hardware-acceleration codec can cause the great reduction in CPU utilization (at least reduce 50%) and significant enhance in speed of video decoding and encoding compared with the traditional software codec. According to a research, using software decoder can decode and play 1 channel live 1080p HD surveillance video at most, while applying H.264 hardware-accelerated codec on Intel Quick Sync Video technology can simultaneously decode and play 9 channels 1080p HD surveillance videos while delivering a fast speed.
Besides, 4K resolution and 4K UHD network surveillance cameras/video recorders are becoming more popular. Many surveillance cameras/recorders are equipped with revolutionary HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding/H.265) video compression codec, trying to keep small file size, low bit rate without losing the 4K video quality, and conserve bandwidth. Without hardware acceleration tech, streaming, decoding, playing, compressing or converting large 4K HEVC/H.265 monitoring videos can be extremely slow, let alone 4, 8, 16 channels 4K HEVC security & surveillance videos. (>> Professional 4K HEVC/H.265, 4K H.264, 1080p HD surveillance video compressor & converter with Intel QSV, NVIDIA CUDA/NVENC and AMD level-3 hardware acceleration: WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe)
To sum up, surveillance system is also catching up with the prevalence of 4K UHD resolution, high-end HEVC/H.265 codec, 4K HEVC cameras/drones/recorders, AI tech, etc. The research and application of hardware acceleration for 4K/1080p video surveillance system is really a great need.
Top FAQs on (4K) Surveillance Video
1. How does hardware acceleration speed surveillance video decoding/playing?
A: Hardware acceleration technologies like Intel QSV, Nvidia CUDA/NVENC, and AMD can utilize computer GPU to specifically decode and play surveillance videos at superfast speed, meanwhile, largely reduce the workload of CPU.
2. What's the advantage of 4K monitoring system?
A: 4K UHD IP cameras offer 4 times the resolution of 1080p HD (1920 x 1080), 9 times of 720p and 27 times of conventional analog cameras (VGA). If cropping a specific area of the 4K video image and magnify it several times, you can still get a very clear image, and this helps focusing on specific monitoring areas greatly. >> Best Free Windows (10) Video Editor
3. Why 4K network cameras favor HEVC but not H.264 codec?
A: HEVC can encode 4K video at half bit rate and half file size of H.264 while remaining the same quality. Using HEVC codec in 4K monitoring system can reduce the network load greatly and save much storage.