Avigilon's Control Center 4.6 Camera Support Examined

While Avigilon offered advanced integration and video management of their own IP cameras, limited 3rd party IP camera support has an important Avigilon weakness. In their VMS Version 4.6 release [link no longer available], Avigilon has significantly addressed those limitations. 

3rd party IP camera support in the previous version, 4.2 [link no longer available], was limited to Arecont, Axis, Panasonic, Samsung and Sightlogix. Version 4.6 support [link no longer available] adds ACti, Mobotix, Pelco, Sanyo, VideoIQ and ONVIF. 

Adding ONVIF is especially important as over 250 cameras now support ONVIF [link no longer available]. Avigilon, of course, is not alone among VMS systems providing ONVIF support. 20 VMS/NVR systems now support ONVIF.

Avigilon's VMS support for ONVIF is similar to its recent camera support for ONVIF.

We believe both moves will help make Avigilon more competitive in the broader surveillance market. The downside is that the new Avigilon H.264 cameras and 3rd party cameras will not support their High Definition Stream Management (HDSM). The two most material benefits from HDSM is data aging and bandwidth optimized remote viewing. While we think these are useful, we believe most users will prefer the bandwidth savings of H.264 and the choice that open camera support provides.