Pelco Criticizes Arecont's Multi-Imager

If this was an accurate comparison against Arecont, at least one Arecont image would have the cut filter stuck and another image flipped.

Not totally accurate. What I can gather from both the flip and filter reports is that while the cut-filters will stick on any number of imagers, the 180 flip occurs on all imagers or none . So your mixed-orientation image above wouldn't be expected from the result of those two defects.

Perhaps the most jarring, yet technically feasible image would be this:

:)

The accurate comparison part of the article is hilarious!

I wonder if Pelco is not being more aggressive because of concerns about potential litigation. I am far from qualified as a lawyer, so I don't know if there is a risk of that occuring. I would say Pelco could put up a pretty strong defense against any defamation litigation for this particular product.

Wait, let me see if I understand this. We're being criticized for being too polite?

Great article John, and the comments were similarly entertaining (and educational).

I have to say that the blending of images on the Pelco camera is not significantly better. Literally as the narrator says the phrase "no duplication" at 1:41, a person is duplicated moving between sensors in the middle of the scene.

I do like the ability to interact with the the overall panorama as a single stream.

Max framerate for the Optera is 12.5 fps @ 12 megapixels.

Interesting that Pelco claims the problem with the Arecont image is one of white balance, not mentioning anything about stuck IR cut filters.

Which is weird because, it most likely is due to both the imagers on the left having their filters stuck open. Because

1. The loss of contrast and telltale purplish tint
2. The softer image on the left, due to the slightly different focal length of IR
3. The fact that the two on the left match, and the two on the right match
4. Arecont has settings available to match color among the imagers.
5. We know that Arecont has this problem.

Making it a white balance issue seems weaker. One might think that the Arecont could be fixed with some adjustments, which it can't, assuming it's the cut filters.

Jason, any thoughts?

I haven't touched an Arecant camera in years, and it's incredible they still have ALL the same problems they had back when I did, and yet people keep on buying them! John, your replies to other people's posts can be very entertaining.

Surprised no one has mentioned the other ridiculous nuance of the Arecont 180's. The multi imagers number themselves in a nonsensical manner. They look fine in the browser, but when you go to add them to a VMS you have to number them from left to right: 4-2-1-3. Arecont's explanation is that they are randomly assigned camera numbers in the order that they identify themselves, however I've found them all to be in this order described above. Very frustrating. Have also seen VMS/Arecont confusion where a duplicate image may show up on 2 feeds even though the cameras are correctly numbered. Only solution was to uninstall/reinstall in the software.

Arecont's engineers have told customers that their multi imager cameras spit out as many frames per second as they can per second, and that the order in which they are sent is random...sort of a first in first out process. I realize this wasn't your point, but I think its an interesting tidbit that indicates there isn't an exact scients to how many frames per second each imager will consistently provide.

Thanks for the feedback Alex, and it's good to see you're still around. It was stated in the webinar that the sample video that was used had to be compressed significantly to keep the bandwidth and webinar file size down, so it's not representative of the actual use video. Others have discussed this already above.

When you say "some of the errors" can you be more specific?

I think it's important to note that overlap is absolutely impossible to avoid due to spherical fields of view. That overlap also helps in the stitching (any stitching software app you use on your phone or camera today uses overlap to perform the stitching) and that overlap helps in the blending of images as well.

I know our Engineering team has spent a considerable effort reducing object duplication and will continue to make improvements on the product.

As far as your question goes, imager positional indexing is performed and calibrated at the factory, and is not field-adjustable.

There was some discussion early in development about allowing re-calibration to be done in the field. This isn't my product line (I'm the Analog Camera and IP Accessories Product Director), but if I recall, it was found to be too complex a calibration to be performed reliably in the field. That's not to say at some point that won't be made available, but I believe right now we're not providing for such field-calibration.