Upgrade Existing Cameras to H.264

•Published Oct 13, 2009 00:00 AM

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Most IP camera manufacturers migrating to H.264 require the purchase of new hardware. If you are using existing MPEG-4 cameras and want to upgrade to H.264, you generally need to replace them with new cameras that support H.264.

In Bosch's recent 4.0 software release, existing Bosch cameras [link no longer available] currently running MPEG-4 may be field upgraded to H.264.

The main constraints of this upgrade include:

The maximum resolution for H.264 for existing hardware is 2CIF compared to 4CIF for MPEG-4.
Using H.264 codec, only 1 stream of video is supported while with MPEG-4, 2 simultaneous streams are supported.
Bosch does not recommend running IVA (video analytics) when the H.264 codec is being used.

With these constraints, the best applications are those that simply what a single stream of lower bit rate video without video analytics.

Bosch notes the following devices support firmware 4.0 and the upgrade to H.264:

IP Cameras
Dinion IP
    NWC?0455
    NWC?0495
FlexiDome IP
    NWD?455
    NWD?495
AutoDome IP
    AutoDome Easy IP
    AutoDome Modular 100 Series (with IP)
    AutoDome Modular 200 Series (with IP)
    AutoDome Modular 300 Series (with IP)
    AutoDome Modular 500i Series (with IP)

Extreme IP cameras: EX7-IP, EX30-IP, EX36-IP, EX80-IP and EX82-IP cameras

IP Encoders
VideoJet X10
VideoJet X10 SN
VideoJet X20
VideoJet X20 SN
VideoJet X40
VideoJet X40 SN
VIP X1600
VIP X1600 XF