CCTV

Panomersive camera Q&A

by Mark Rowe

In our camera and dome supplement, that came free with the September 2015 print issue of Professional Security magazine, Roy Cooper quizzed Mark Pritchard, EMEA Marketing Director for Pelco by Schneider Electric, about the new panoramic or ‘panomersive’ camera, called Optera, after the launch at IFSEC 2015.

Roy Cooper: The Optera is not like anything I’ve seen before. Who is it designed for?
Mark Pritchard: It is uniquely suited to wide area surveillance applications, such as car parks, airports, warehouses and sports stadia where, previously, many more cameras would have been necessary. With the Optera cameras, security operators can view a seamless 180, 270 or 360 degree panorama to take in the complete picture or situation at a glance but importantly they can also simultaneously select and drill down into multiple, crisp, detailed immersive views where they can pan, tilt, and zoom to their areas of interest. That’s why we call it ‘panomersive’. No one else in the industry does all of that. And Pelco does it with one camera, one connection and one license, and it works seamlessly with our new video management software (VMS) platform, VideoXpert.

Roy Cooper: So what is the ‘panomersive’ experience?
Mark Pritchard: Basically we combine a single seamless panoramic view with multiple immersive views. It provides amazing image quality and clarity at a distance. Unlike PTZ cameras where you might zoom in tight, lose the rest of the scene, and could be pointing in the wrong direction, Optera cameras always capture the entire scene. And that goes for both live and retrospective or recorded analysis.

Roy Cooper: Should customers choose between using an Optera camera or a PTZ or fixed camera?
Mark Pritchard: Optera is a specialist camera designed to fit on walls for 180 degrees, corners of buildings for 270 degrees and centrally in large spaces for 360 degree views. It produces a panoramic video stream with a wide field of view of an entire scene, missing nothing. In some applications where closer-in surveillance is needed it could replace PTZ or fixed cameras. However, in many other applications Optera cameras will complement PTZ and fixed cameras. For instance, if operators want to zoom in to details far away in a scene, such as a license or number plate at a distance, a PTZ camera will still be the best choice for that application. However including Optera cameras in your projects could reduce the overall project cost and labour requirements as they have a single mount point and a single cable to install.

Roy Cooper: How does it work?
Mark Pritchard: The Optera cameras seamlessly blend high-quality images from four, high-performance, 3MP cameras, mounted in the same housing. They use Pelco’s advanced SureVision 2.0 technology to optimise the images from each of the four sensors and then seamlessly blend them together at the boundaries to present you with a natural, continuous panorama. This eliminates poor alignment between sensors, having to manually sequence images, or gaps in information – Optera cameras are the next best thing to being there. Surevision also deals with the high contrast or low light situations; using wide dynamic range anti-bloom technology, 3D noise filtering and advanced tone mapping, ensures exceptional image quality in scenes containing both low-light and high-contrast areas.

Roy Cooper: In terms of field use, how does a VMS look at Optera in terms of licensing?
Mark Pritchard: One connection, one IP address, one license. Each Optera camera uses one VMS camera license. The cameras integrate with Pelco VideoXpert VMS and Pelco Digital Sentry systems; integration with major third party VMS solutions is by using the Pelco API, Panomersive SDK and ONVIF standard with client-side de-warping.

Roy Cooper: What about installation? Do the technologies involved simplify or complicate the process?
Mark Pritchard: Feedback we are getting from our customers is that the Optera cameras are easier to install than competitors’ on a couple of accounts. Customers won’t need to adjust the lenses. The lenses are all pre-aligned and pre-focused at the factory and locked down. The entire lens assembly of the 180 degree camera can be tilted and panned to set field of view across the panorama. Plus, our pan and tilt mechanisms are easy to adjust and have a robust feel to them.

Roy Cooper: Is storage an issue? How much bandwidth will the Optera cameras use?
Mark Pritchard: Optera cameras are ONVIF Profile G compliant and there is a microSD card slot provided for local storage. If the connection to the VMS is lost, the cameras leverage edge storage to store video, audio, and metadata to an SD card directly in the camera for uninterrupted monitoring. This enhanced functionality makes it possible for ONVIF Profile G compliant VMS platforms to retrieve missing video from the camera when the network connection is restored for reliable security supervision. (This is not available in all ONVIF Profile G compliant VMS platforms. Check the VMS platform’s documentation for availability.) Any ONVIF Profile G compliant VMS now has standardised access to storage in the camera to complement head end storage. This capability is advantageous for mission-critical installations, such as at an airport, where edge storage in cameras could be a critical part of the strategic backup plan. To optimise bandwidth requirements, Optera cameras deploy advanced CVBR (Constrained Variable Bit Rate) encoding, which uses compression to vary the bit rate while limiting the upper bound to the specified bit rate. For 180 degree Optera cameras, the default maximum setting for CVBR is 28Mb/sec, meaning that you will never go over 28Mb/sec when CVBR is turned on and depending on the scene complexity you may operate considerably lower. We estimate for typical usage the bit rates will be at about 70 per cent of the maximum.

Roy Cooper: In terms of using the information captured, which analytic behaviours are available on the Optera cameras?
Mark Pritchard: The Optera cameras come with the same eight analytic behaviours as on Pelco’s Sarix Enhanced Range cameras. But remember that the analytic behaviours work across the entire panoramic view. They are configured through the web client and the VMS platform will see them as an alarm.

•Abandoned Object
•Adaptive Motion Detection
•Camera Sabotage
•Directional Motion
•Loitering Detection
•Object Counting
•Object Removal
•Stopped Vehicle.

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