Subscriber Discussion

Throughput / Processor Consumption For IP Cameras?

Michael Brimmer

•Jan 22, 2014

Is there a calculator for through-put. I was wondering is there a way to calculate the through put that a processor has on different cameras?

John Honovich

•Jan 22, 2014

IPVM

Michael, that's a good question. Do you mean something analogous to a VMS / VNR metric, where the vendor says this box can support max throughput of 80Mb/s or 250Mb/s?

I have never heard of anything like that though I think it could be useful. This is often a problem determining camera support for multistreaming - i.e., how many total streams at what resolution, fps, codec, etc. On the other hand, I am not sure if a single metric is possible because it depends on multiple factors.

Yowie De

•Jan 23, 2014

I know on the Bosch solutions you can access processor usage via telnet or in the topright corner of the cameras webpage it has a graphical indicator so you can see what happens when you turn on analytics or have multiple streams running out of it.

John Honovich

•Jan 23, 2014

IPVM

In reply to Yowie De

Thanks, Yowie. That's pretty neat. Unfortunately, I can't recall others who do similar (especially a webpage view). I'd be interested to learn other manufacturers who do that.

Marc Pichaud

•Jan 23, 2014

I do agree. Camera CPU overload is a reccurent issue, especially on entry level range of products. Camera sometime get saturated when generating 2 streams + motion detection ( MD is CPU killer)

Some Smart phones still using Mjpeg, requires that you generate a VGA Mjpeg in addition to your master HD, H264... double coding isn't also appreciated by entry level camera CPUS...

I have asked to some vendors to add a CPU indicator for installers to prevent them from too bad installations

Then the other point is that NVR/VMS get also saturated : one key stress test is to launch a Fast Speed Playback on 4 or 8 cameras...

If you imagine that normally , you are recording 4 Mb/s for 12 fps ( so 0,5 MB ) when you do fast speed you can have 60 fps/s , so 5 x 4 Mbs, and then 20 Mb/s multiplied by 8 cameras = 160 Mb/s during ...and your are supposed to keep on recording all your cameras (even motion detect is a 24/24 recording with auto delete if no alarm)

Most NVR are given for 60, 80 or 120 Mb/s ....so you can imagine.

This is calculated by using Port miroing feature on the managed switch to "see" (Wireshark / Networx..etc) what really happens on the input or output NVR port.