IP CCTV allows one camera to be viewed by multiple agencies; however the image can deteriorate in quality, unless the IP camera has a multicasting option.
Bikal IP Cameras lower the TCO for IP CCTV by allowing multicasting configuration to give multi agencies access to the same camera. Through multicasting, video streams don’t lose image quality to enable more video analysis.
London, UK: Vigilance can reveal authoritatively that Bikal has been promoting its Intelligent Video Analysis, facial recognition, fire and smoke detection and soon License Plate Recognition (LPR). It is said these IVA software’s have traditionally come from different software providers and this tends to get the developers to have a single-minded view that their software will run alone. IP CCTV evolved from remote viewing to central viewing to multi location viewing. The multi location viewing has come about partly from things like smart mobile device apps.
According to a source at Bikal the end user simply wants to have a low TCO (total cost ownership) of a system and this is more likely to happen with upgrades and not replacement, adding network robustness is occurring through the natural demand, and supply, of IP TV bandwidth so it is now the content provider to provide better quality content. The source said most IP Cameras are dual stream, but the second stream is usually of lower quality, not necessarily bad quality. However, he said the second stream might not have the quality for effective or reliable analytics results.
Vigilance learnt that BiKal proposal team experienced this with a recent application. The main stream was to be utilised for the main video management system in the monitoring centre. As the camera has multicasting capability Bikal were able to propose this into the configuration design.
In London there are currently three cameras pointing in the same direction. The congestion charge (the Capita group), the police (the Metropolitan Police Service) and the local authority (Westminster Council) are the three agencies using CCTV in central London. There are three sets of recording and three sets of cabling. IP CCTV can reduce this cost as we know but now there is a secondary case for future proofing with IP Cameras that have multicasting capability. Bikal will start to promote this to the system and enterprise integrators in line with requests for Intelligent Video Analysis proposals. Bikal training will extend this into training programmes as well. Overall the TCO will reduce further.
