Axis / Canon Launch 20MP Avigilon Rival

Author: IPVM Team, Published on Sep 12, 2016

For years, Avigilon has essentially owned the 'super high resolution' single imager market.

And Axis has resisted, most famously in 2012, when Axis declared the MP race over.

But now, Axis is teaming up with their parent company Canon to go after the super high resolution market, taking aim at Avigilon.

In this report, we examine the Axis Q1659, its feature sets, lens options, and comparative positioning vs Avigilon.

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Comments (27)

Undisclosed #1

09/12/16 07:44am

Is the camera ONVIF compliant at its highest resolution?

John Honovich

IPVM | In reply to Undisclosed #1 | 09/12/16 01:33pm

Is the camera ONVIF compliant at its highest resolution?

Axis says yes.

Undisclosed #2

09/12/16 10:37am

+2 points for dropping the infrequently used word heretofore in the last sentence...

Michael Miller

09/12/16 11:00am

Will be interesting to see how well 3rd party VMS platforms support this camera. In our testing they require very high performance client computers and still struggle to decode 4k video.

John Honovich

IPVM | In reply to Michael Miller | 09/12/16 01:32pm

"In our testing they require"

Testing with Zipstream or testing without smart codecs?

Mike Dotson

Seneca | IPVMU Certified | In reply to Michael Miller | 09/12/16 01:54pm

Also....which VMS was being used for the test?

The Avigilon Client app was one of the most efficient ones in my testing.

Then again...I am not testing these super hi res cams simply because I do not have any (yet).

Michael Miller

09/12/16 01:59pm

@John Axis P1428-E doesn't support Zipstream so I haven't been able to test that to see if it makes a difference or not. Hikvision's 4K camera do support H.264+ but that doesn't make a difference from what I have seen. Regardless I have seen significant resource increase on VMS clients when 4K cameras are connected. For a reference my desktop has GTX 980 TI, Intel i7-3930K, 32GB RAM and SSD for OS and handles everything I throw at it but my Surface PRO struggles with any VMS with 4K cameras besides Avigilon.

Undisclosed Integrator #3

In reply to Michael Miller | 09/13/16 02:18am
Try setting quality to max in ACC client settings and see if the results under 4K differ. The change should disable HDSM benefits. That should essentially put the CPU load on par with most other VMS in terms of processor load.

Undisclosed #1

In reply to Undisclosed Integrator #3 | 09/13/16 02:25am

Are there any benefits to HDSM when looking at one 4k camera on one 4k monitor at full resolution?

Undisclosed Integrator #3

In reply to Undisclosed #1 | 09/13/16 02:02pm

I would expect zero. The role of HDSM is to scale the video resolution to fit the pixel count of the window. 4K at 4k would be native. If there were 4x 4K cameras in a quad on a 4K I would expect it to scale them to 1080p. As long as no one sets "maximum quality", which appears to disable HDSM in ACC client it's pretty hard (I'd say impossible based on testing so far) to overwhelm a modern quad core processor (passmark score above 8K) even driving 4 displays.

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Claudio Almeida

09/13/16 02:38pm

Theoreticaly proving if it was possible that a 29 Megapixels Avigilon-type camera would really has a 0,1 Lux of minimal illumination was one of the first articles I wrote for my website. You can check it here: http://www.cctvinstitute.com.br/29-megapixels-ip-camera.html

Undisclosed #1

In reply to Claudio Almeida | 09/13/16 02:44pm

Proving something possible is possibly not the same as proving something.

John Honovich

IPVM | 09/13/16 10:19pm

Update: this camera is not shipping until Q1 2017, which ~6 months from now. This is quite atypical for Axis announcements which generally are done a month or two before. This is also good news for Axis rivals.

Undisclosed Integrator #3

In reply to John Honovich | 09/14/16 02:28pm

They have had a greater quantity of soft launches lately. The Q3079 and the Q6000-e combo unit were on similar time frames and both launched at ASIS. The Q3079 didn't actually end up shipping to us until July due to production issues and we purchased as soon as the pricing was available.

Thumbnail brk1

Brian Karas

IPVM | 09/14/16 06:15pm

Someone commented to me today that they really liked the SFP port on this camera. Apparently in many stadiums, which are a common application for super high res cameras, the Ethernet runs are usually over 100M, which certainly seems likely in that kind of environment.

Michael Miller

09/14/16 06:28pm

@BK I think it is useful if you only have one camera. If you have more than one camera at a location it is easier to install a small switch and feed the cameras via Cat cable over using multiple fiber pairs. Though it is nice to have the SFP port option.

Undisclosed #1

In reply to Michael Miller | 09/14/16 07:03pm

What if the cameras are not close to each other?

Michael Miller

09/14/16 07:19pm

U1 I edited my post.

Undisclosed #1

In reply to Michael Miller | 09/15/16 01:42am

Thanks for the clarification.

Honestly, I had no idea that no Avigilon cameras have SFP until you didn't mention it.

Leo Jang

01/13/17 03:53am

Q1659 support H.265(HEVC)?

Thumbnail profile pic

Ethan Ace

IPVM | In reply to Leo Jang | 01/13/17 04:17am

To our knowledge, the Q1659 will be H.264 with Zipstream. Not H.265.

Leo Jang

In reply to Ethan Ace | 01/13/17 04:25am

Thank yoy for reply.

How to process 20MP video data using ARTPEC?

Undisclosed Manufacturer #4

In reply to Leo Jang | 01/13/17 12:42pm

Axis is sticking their head in the sand and only pushing ZipStream, and will not admit to H.265.

However, their ZipStream whitepaper states that it is not a replacement for H.265.

(My understanding is that Axis does a lot of ODM, but does not make their DSP, so they are dependent on their supplier implementing H.265, and then need to adapt their platforms to support it.)

John Honovich

IPVM | In reply to Undisclosed Manufacturer #4 | 01/13/17 12:44pm

Or Axis realizes that the manufacturers who went to H.265 early (like your company) made a mistake (low VMS support, decoding issues, limited bandwidth gains) they are smartly avoiding.

Undisclosed Manufacturer #4

In reply to John Honovich | 01/13/17 12:47pm

Leader vs. Follower mentality.

We will see. Many VMS are adopting H.265 Q1, and we will see.

John Honovich

IPVM | In reply to Undisclosed Manufacturer #4 | 01/13/17 12:48pm

Leader vs. Follower mentality.

Axis is the leader in smart codecs. They were first to release and they have improved it multiple times, e.g., Testing Axis Zipstream, Axis Zipstream 2 Tested

John Honovich

IPVM | 03/01/17 12:38pm

Update: Camera was scheduled for release in Q1 2017. Axis confirmed to us that it is still planned for this month, pending final quality assurance tests.

We plan to buy one and test when available.

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