IFSEC Roundup - Avigilon Impresses - by CCTVINFO Editor Tom Reeve
BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND - May 15, 2008 - Avigilon is an impressive company. I don’t say that very often but this Canadian company has completely re-imagined not only the megapixel camera but the whole support system that goes around that. Pierre Parkinson took me through a demo of their system and I was so impressed that I told a number of people to go and see them.
So what’s the big deal? Avigilon understand the capabilities of megapixel CCD and CMOS chips and they have designed a system that copes with the huge amount of data that megapixel cameras generate. The traditional method is simply to throw lots of stuff away by using aggressive compression techniques, but the results of high compression usually aren’t very pretty.
So how do Avigilon do it? To start with, forget about motion codecs ~ Avigilon uses JPEG2000, a progressive layered compression algorithm. This allows you to preserve a high level of detail on the recorded image while streaming a much lower resolution image back to the control room for real-time monitoring.
Compare that to a compression technique favoured by other leading manufacturers. They either use motion codecs or they compress images by reducing the dynamic range of the image.
So what? It means you run the risk of getting motion artifacts in your playback image or throwing away information about the intensity and hue of individual pixels with the result that objects in shadow become unrecognizable.
Their video management system is also very impressive, providing an intuitive user interface and a range of playback options. And if you have legacy analogue cameras, they have a box of tricks that will allow you to continue using them.
In terms of cost, I was pleasantly surprised. If you are prepared to think about your system architecture in a new way (which you can with megapixel cameras) the cost is quite reasonable.