While there are hundreds of articles, product descriptions and manufacturer specifications on what makes a “true” day/night surveillance camera, there may be a misunderstanding of how to design them into today’s networked surveillance systems. On the surface the industry has a very good understanding of the many camera specification requirements that make up today’s day/night cameras.

It’s safe to say that the video management software products have begun the 2.0 era. This era is all about how big the software can scale, and each year the industry will announce the new “biggest” system thus far. Included in this 2.0 era are concepts like VSaaS and virtualization, which decouples the hardware limitations from the software scalability.

Over the past year big improvements in how to install, configure and operate video analytics were made that will enable the acceleration of growth in adoption of video analytics. As any technology matures, new features are added and capabilities increase.

The two-way Motorola radio has been the cornerstone of real-time communications for the emergency response and security industry for nearly a century, and is soon to be complemented by smartphone technology. However, the smartphone isn’t going to be used for real-time voice, but will instead be a “must have” device for surveillance operations.

What’s happening in the IT industry should be seen as a predictor for the future of networked surveillance. Approximately a year ago, a major indicator occurred that predicted that managed services would experience a period of accelerated growth and become a permanent segment of the IT services market.

Some of the most challenging needs facing decision makers in today’s networked surveillance come after the initial deployment. After the selection and installation of hardware, software and camera providers, many begin to realize the benefits of the new system. This involves utilizing the new technologies within a framework of existing training policies, with the objective of exploiting the greatest capabilities of the system.

It often appears that everyone in the industry is talking about how to lower the costs of networked surveillance cameras compared to that of the analog security video type. What doesn’t seem to get as much attention is the fact that the really expensive cameras are growing as fast as is the low-end camera market.

Over the coming years the surveillance industry will follow a similar path that the IT industry has tread increasingly more service offerings. These offerings will range from live remote monitoring to managed surveillance systems, with both private and public cloud deployments.

As the surveillance industry adopts network cameras, it leaves behind the legacy NTSC/PAL-based video constraints. These constraints are mostly characterized as resolution limits. This is a great thing for the security industry as a whole, because the increased level of image detail improves the speed and accuracy of investigations.

Much has been written about the significant bandwidth and storage savings H.264 provides when compared to MJPEG or MPEG4 Part 2. A related topic is the various ways H.264 can be configured and the resulting impact to image quality. Resolution, lighting, scene activity, bit rate, rate type, I-frame interval and compression all dramatically change how image quality is captured, transmitted and stored.