Video has evolved beyond the traditional store, airport, and stadium applications commonly used by surveillance teams and law enforcement. In recent years, we have seen related systems more frequently introduced in workplaces, city centers, offices, homes, commercial buildings, and higher education campuses.
It is not just uses that have evolved, but also the technology, image, footage quality, and intelligence of the output that has reached new heights. This type of video usage has truly moved beyond the essence of simply capturing images and footage.
Artificial intelligence, deep learning, machine learning, computer vision, and the Internet of Things (IoT) turn what was once a simple video feed into intelligence and insights. Surveillance systems’ footage helps predict and manage scenarios to improve security, identify objects, and ensure worker safety, making way for everything from remote management and traffic monitoring to leveraging biometrics for identification and authentication.
This use of video has played an influential role in organizations and society. Integrated cameras, sensors, recording systems, and analytic software form single systems, sometimes with workflows attached, making raw footage intelligent, searchable, and actionable.
The rise in sophistication of video technology has also seen camera technology and image quality reach dramatically improved resolutions, leading to significantly larger file sizes. Organizations must manage unprecedented volumes of data, storage capacities, and high bandwidth requirements, which prove costly. The challenge heightens when considering remote use cases like utilities, logistics, and transportation and when to transmit data from the edge to the cloud using cellular connectivity. The high transmission and bandwidth availability cost often limits the application’s usability or adversely impacts reliability.
Data compression is the answer to managing these volume, capacity, and bandwidth challenges in modern video surveillance. Video compression allows large, raw video streams to be compressed into smaller files for efficient transmission. However, for compression to be highly effective, it is essential the solution incorporates a video stream optimizer. This addition further reduces the bandwidth and storage space required per camera stream, significantly reducing overall management costs while video resolution and frame rate are not compromised.
Our Seneca xCompress video compression solution helps navigate the challenges of operating mission-critical surveillance installations. The solution enables file compression of up to 90%* without compromising video quality and lowering bandwidth and storage requirements, reducing the compute and processing necessary when allowing the transmission of large files. xCompress also minimizes the hardware needed to process and store data, meaning lower overall costs.
Seneca’s xCompress solution recently received an honorable mention in the Video Surveillance Data Storage category of the ISC West New Product Showcase.
*Compression will vary based on camera configurations