There is no substitute for resolution. This is according to Italian-based digital CCTV company, Cieffe. An image of higher resolution will always be sharper and have more detail than a lower resolution image.
According to the company, an important aspect of resolution is often neglected ie the size of an image on the computer screen is proportional to its resolution. Higher resolution will give 'bigger' images in any given screen resolution, as the pixels will occupy more space.
Compression engine
Due to today's storage and transmission limitations, images have to be compressed before they are stored and transmitted. For example, a 100 GB HDD would store only 53 m of full resolution uncompressed digital video at 25 IPS; a 56 Kbps modem connection would take approx 3 m to transmit only one uncompressed image at full resolution.
According to Cieffe, compression is the only solution to the storage and transmission problems but compression itself presents a technical challenge if it is to deliver many high-resolution, high-definition images of small file sizes, in realtime. Compressing video data involves heavy computational work and the time available to do it in is very limited.
There are two basic approaches to compression - hardware and software.
In general, a hardware-based compression engine is able to compress images with consistent performance and minimum impact on the rest of the system. On the other hand, a software-based compression engine relies on the CPU to provide the processing power.
Cieffe's decision to go with the full resolution images required the company to develop a compression engine that is able to provide the power (sheer data volume per s) and performance (very high quality compressed images with minimum visual quality loss).
Wavelet compression implemented in proprietary hardware was the best choice. This allows products such as the company's PROXIMA DVR to have full resolution capability as well as full screen live and recorded images that match the visual quality of live analog video.
Cieffe has also developed Delta Wavelet, which is the technology that allows it to build on its existing full frame recording architecture and provide clients with both hardware wavelet compression-based full frame recording at the server and variable full frame or changes-only transmission. Delta Wavelet is also the workhorse of the embedded Cieffe VisionWeb web server, ensuring high visual quality and performance for every user connected via the Internet (bandwidth usually very limited relative to LAN environments) from the Internet Explorer web browser.
For further details contact Fabrizio Colciago, Cieffe at fcolciago@cieffe.com
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