It’s H.264 for Axis Communications

At ISC, Axis Communications announced a new generation of AXIS Camera Station, the company’s comprehensive video management software for monitoring, playback and event management of up to 50 Axis network cameras or video encoder channels.

AXIS Camera Station 3.0 features an enhanced user interface and support for the H.264 video compression technique. The new offering is part of Axis’ new generation network video products (see AXIS P3301 Network Camera announcement and Encoder announcement) that take full advantage of the in-house developed ARTPEC-3 chip. The new product generation incorporates the H.264 video compression standard, which allows improved image quality, simplified deployment and management of large systems and better cost-efficiency.

Axis offers the industry’s first native implementation of H.264 that takes full advantage of this standard. By using H.264 in all new generation network cameras, video encoders and video management systems, Axis saves up to 50% of storage and network bandwidth compared to MPEG-4 Part 2 and up to 80% compared to Motion JPEG. This allows more cost effective video-surveillance systems and simplified deployment and management of large-scale video surveillance systems.

"For many users, especially in small-to-medium-sized installations, it is vital that the application is quick to install and easy to configure and use,” said Fredrik Nilsson, general manager, Axis Communications Inc. “The new user-friendly interface and simplified management of AXIS Camera Station 3.0 is our response to these user demands. In addition, the support for H.264 in AXIS Camera Station will allow users to build cost-efficient video surveillance systems that deliver unparalleled video image quality.”

AXIS Camera Station is the ideal network video surveillance solution in retail shops, hotels, schools and other environments. It now supports H.264 video in addition to the already supported Motion JPEG and MPEG-4. H.264, the new global standard for video compression, allows high video quality coupled with significantly reduced network load and storage, and is a key capability of all of Axis’ upcoming network video products.

AXIS Camera Station is a robust, field-proven video management software solution, with more than 100,000 video channels installed worldwide. The application is specially designed for Axis network video products, offering automatic camera discovery and a versatile Event Configuration Wizard coupled with powerful recording and search functionalities, timeline visualization and export functionality. In addition, scheduled and event-driven recording can be triggered manually, by motion detection or external I/O. The Windows client of AXIS Camera Station can be installed on any PC, enabling remote viewing and control from anywhere on the Internet or the corporate network.

This third-generation video management software offers PTZ and dome camera control using a mouse or joystick along with its digital PTZ support in live view and in playback. AXIS Camera Station also offers security with multiple access levels and an unlimited recording database that is restricted by disk space only.

AXIS Camera Station offers an open architecture and comes with a well-documented API for easy integration with other systems like point-of-sales and access control.

AXIS Camera Station will be available through Axis’ distribution channels in April 2008. Suggested retail price for a 4-camera base license is $649, while a 10-camera base license is $999. Interested parties attending ISC West can obtain more information about this and other Axis products at booth #13601.