Security and Surveillance Industry News

The new buzzword in the video surveillance industry these days is H.264 video compression. What exactly is H.264 video compression and what are its benefits as it applies to our industry?

H.264 is equivalent to MPEG-4 Part 10, or MPEG-4 AVC (for Advanced Video Coding). As of 2008, it is the latest block-oriented motion-compensation-based codec standard developed by the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) together with the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG), and it was the product of a partnership effort known as the Joint Video Team (JVT).

The benefits of H.264 video compression in the security industry are many including drastically reduced file sizes, higher quality recordings and quicker refresh times for remote viewing applications using limited bandwidth.

Without compromising image quality, the H.264 Codec can reduce the size of a digital video file by more than 80% compared with the Motion JPEG format and as much as 50% more than with the traditional MPEG-4 standard.

H.264 presents a huge step forward in video compression technology. Because the file sizes are much smaller, you can record longer periods at higher quality settings. With standard MPEG-4 video compression, you are forced to choose between extended storage capacity and higher quality recording resolutions.

This has a negative impact on the quality of playback as video images can become blurry or less detailed. With H.264 compression, you get higher resolution images at increased frame rates which mean you no longer have to compromise.

By using variable block-size motion compensation, H.264 video compression offers file sizes up to 3x smaller than MPEG-2 and 2x smaller than MPEG-4. With file sizes up to 60% smaller, a digital video recorder using H.264 compression will use significantly less disk space than a standard DVR using MPEG-4.

Digital Video Recorders with H.264 compression offer smaller file sizes for faster more efficient recording which translates into substantially higher image quality and faster remote download times utilizing less bandwidth.

The reduced image size offered by H.264 utilizes dramatically less bandwidth that either MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 which makes video surveillance recorders utilizing the new codec remarkably better at remote video transmission than any brand using the older MPEG standards. For remote monitoring applications, DVR’s using H.264 can download images over the internet up to 4x faster than MPEG-4 recorders.

The benefit to the end user is faster download speeds which translates into higher quality video without the motion blurring which is inherent in MPEG-4 video compression. You won’t use all of your available bandwidth for remote viewing and you will be rewarded with more fluid playback and substantially higher quality video.