Smart CODEC Usage Statistics 2016

•Published Jul 13, 2016 12:00 PM

Smart CODECS are one of the big new trends in the past year, with real ability to save significant amounts of bandwidth and storage.

But how widely are they being used? 90 integrators provided data for this report on smart CODEC usage.

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Comments (6)

Donald Gordon

•Jul 13, 2016

IPVMU Certified

I can't imagine fielding 2MP, HD quality video, or better without the use of Smart CODECs. H.264 yields about 50% over MJPEG. We have measured as much as another 80% savings with the Hikvision Smart CODEC for video with no motion. We really hope Hikvision offers the automatic frame rate elevation on video motion detection which will also offer even more dramatic savings as well (Axis just came out with this). Presently we are using the Milestone rule engine to elevate our frame rates from 10 fps to 30 fps on motion and that works pretty well but we would rather the camera provide this processing which will cut down on network bandwidth.

We are seeing streaming bit rates of 300 kbps to 600 kbps for HD video (50 out of 100 quality points) at 30 fps. This is remarkable since we are replacing analog video encoders with only 4 CIF resolution that are streaming at 1000 kpbs using MJPEG.

The pink elephant in the room though is the computational intensive decoding that must take place on the workstation clients. It is bringing our server-class HP workstation to it's knees. Our workstation has two processors with 14 cores each. With hyperthreading this gives us 56 threads of execution. It can't decode more than about 16 cameras live at 30 fps. Our customer expects up to 75 cameras per workstation spread across three monitors. We really hope the VMS manufactures address this limitation. Milestone has started down this path supporting Intel Quick Synch processors but unfortunately that processor line is limited to the lower end (single processor, four core). Leveraging the GPUs engines in AMD and NVidia graphics cards could really allow scaling of this problem while still using a more reasonably priced workstation.

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John Honovich

•Jul 13, 2016

IPVM

In reply to Donald Gordon

The pink elephant in the room though is the computational intensive decoding that must take place on the workstation clients

Do you mean for H.264 in general or something specific to smart codecs? I just want to clarify first.

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Luis Carmona

•Jul 13, 2016

Geutebruck USA • IPVMU Certified

In reply to Donald Gordon

"I can't imagine fielding 2MP, HD quality video, or better without the use of Smart CODECs."

Lot's of people imagine it, and do it, and it's not that big a deal. Would be nice if everyone [manufacturers] did [smart codecs], but there are other significant cost factors that minimize whatever savings this incurs, namely overall cost of other equipment and labor.

"Our workstation has two processors with 14 cores each. With hyperthreading this gives us 56 threads of execution. It can't decode more than about 16 cameras live at 30 fps."

And now you're talking about something I can't believe. So your saving on bandwidth and storage but trading it off for what? 16 cameras at 30 FPS is a lot of decoding but who the heck other than casino needs to do that, and that still sounds like an inordinate amount of overhead needed for one workstation.

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Mike Dotson

•Jul 22, 2016

Seneca • IPVMU Certified

In reply to Luis Carmona

To go along with what Luis said, in my lab testing, doing any resolution at 30FPS forces higher hardware demands.

For Live viewing we suggest 10FPS, 15 max as a compromise between those who ask for 30 but can realize that the lower FPS on Live streams does the job decently.

One will still Record at 30 FPS so that forensic playbacks has useful info.

These new CODECS are a balancing act.... need less storage...but bigger clients.

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Undisclosed Manufacturer #1

•Jul 14, 2016

In reply to Donald Gordon