The Video Encoder Bridge

Put yourself in Mr.Bobka’s shoes. His company has invested in analog CCTV cameras over the years until they have quite an extensive network throughout his manufacturing facilities. Now he’s hearing there’s an IP camera revolution a-foot. If he converts to an IP-based surveillance system, he’ll see a quantum leap in the quality of his images; his costs will be lower due to the ease of scalability; and event management will be so much simpler using the intelligent video features available. Yes, it sounds good. Maybe he should update his security.

 But then he begins to crunch the numbers. He’s not looking at one or two cameras. And the ones he has aren’t giving him any problems. Discarding them would be like throwing money away. Same thing for the cabling; he’s invested quite a lot in laying coaxial cables. He’s not so sure this is what he wants to do.

Mr Bobka is not alone. It’s been estimated that of the more than 40,000,000 surveillance cameras operating on the planet, 95% are analog. And since the lifetime of your typical analog surveillance camera is five to seven years, many of them will be in good shape for years to come. Between the capital outlay and the necessary down time, replacing their analog cameras begins to look like a daunting proposition.

Well, Mr Bobka can just relax. The best of both worlds can be at his fingertips. He does not have to convert in one fell swoop. He can leave his analog cameras and cables in place and use them in conjunction with any new IP cameras he adds. What he needs is a video encoder. Also known as a  video server, a video encoder contains electronics that takes incoming analog video signals compresses and converts them into digital video. This video stream, identical to that of any coming from an IP camera, can now be transmitted for live viewing and video recording on any of the computers on the network. Video encoders use compression standards such as motion JPEG, MPEG-4 or H.164 so they are economical in the areas of storage and bandwidth as well as scalability.

With a video encoder Mr Bobka can avail himself of many functions attributed to an IP system such as

·         Controlling a pan/tilt/zoom  using  a joystick or mouse

·         Distribution of video motion detection

·         Tamper alarm

·         Event management

·         Audio support

·         Easy addition of more cameras that have megapixel capability

Since digital images retain their quality no matter how far they travel, standalone encoders with single or multi-channel connections positioned close to the analog cameras provide a solution for cameras in a remote facility or where the setup is some distance from a monitoring station, However security officers overseeing a large centralized system might choose high density racks with blade versions of encoders. Depending on the size of the operation, blades are available that can support one, four, or six channels. Racks can be outfitted with a mix of blades, thus accommodating anywhere from one to eighty four analog channels. 

It all sounds well and good, but Mr Bobka might have one last concern? Image quality. After all that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Yes, and here he’ll have to do due diligence for not all video encoders are equal. He wants to choose one that can give him image fine-tuning as well as aspect ratio correction to avoid PC screen distortion.  So there he has it, a flexible and expandable system for migrating all his analog installations to network video with resulting high resolution video, progressive scan, megapixels, and HDTV quality images. And when he adds or removes any of the blades, hot swapping means he won’t need to shut down the system.

Kintronics helps the Mr Bobkas of the world every day, customers who want to embark on a gradual evolution from analog while enjoying immediate IP images.  Sound like you? We’re here if you want to call. Contact us at 1-800-431-1358 (in the USA), or +914-944-3425 (outside the USA) or use our contact form.