Realizing the benefits H.265 brings, many vendors have already rolled out H.265 cameras. Yet more and more, vendors have also announced H.265 NVRs to offer complete end-to-end systems that bring out the full benefits of H.265.
The evolution of video compression has gone through several stages. The MPEG-1 standard has given way to MPEG-2, MPEG-4 Part 2, MPEG-4 AVC (a.k.a. H.264) and now H.265, which claims to be able to reduce bitrate and storage consumption by as much as 50 percent from H.264.
“For H.264, with a 2MP camera, surveillance on a 24-hour basis consumes 50GB of storage. For H.265, it uses only 25GB,” said Joseph Vo, Technical Manager at Vantech.
This has significant ramifications in the midst of security’s migration to 4K (3840x2160) and even 8K (8192×4320) video. “H.265 compression provides the power to meet the challenge posed by these large high-resolution video files by offering a higher level of compression to make the best use of the available limited bandwidth and data storage space,” said Karen Sangha, Field Marketing Specialist for Security Solutions at Panasonic.
The bandwidth and storage reduction also translates into better savings for the end user. “The greatest benefit of H.265 system is a reduction of bitrate by more than 50 percent than H.264, which means the users can save half of the cost on storage and get better image quality over limited bandwidth,” said Clarence Lin, Director of Afidus.
Benefits of Using End-to-End System
Realizing the benefits H.265 brings, many vendors have already rolled out H.265 cameras – those with H.265 chipsets that are currently offered by Ambarella and Hisilicon. More and more, vendors have also announced H.265 NVRs to offer complete end-to-end systems that bring out the full benefits of H.265.
“If a customer would purchase a H.265 camera but the recording device is only supporting H.264 streams, the H.265 advantage of the camera is gone,” said Pieter van de Looveren, Senior Manager for Marketing Communication at Bosch Security Systems. “All supporting components – that is, video management software, monitors, network equipment and storage solutions – must be available in order to effectively use a high resolution H.265 video surveillance solution. Customers should think about a complete end-to-end solution.”
Getting an end-to-end H.265 system would also make more business sense. “End-to-end systems are more cost-effective from the outset as everything is purchased and supported by one supplier, so this saves installers a huge amount of time,” said Brian Song, MD of IDIS Europe. “Purchasing NVRs, cameras and video management software (VMS) from different suppliers can mean three calls with different technical support teams. Levels and quality of support also differ greatly depending on the manufacturer.”
Verticals
Vertical markets with the need to record high-resolution video with reduced bitrate and storage consumption can especially benefit from an end-to-end H.265 system. These include large-scale, multi-camera megapixel projects. “The demand for organizations to be able to capture ever more detail from their surveillance systems and the requirement for longer retention times put pressure on decoding and storage particularly for large-scale monitoring such as car parking, leisure, retail, large enterprises and transportation. H.265 then becomes critical for multi- megapixel camera applications,” Song said. “H.265 allows security professionals to consider deploying more cameras at the same resolution and frame rate without placing a burden on bandwidth and storage.”
Another ideal application for H.265 is city surveillance. “Are customers willing to spend on H.265? That depends on which customers. Big cities are willing to spend on the new technology because to them, picture clarity and quality are the most important,” Vo said.