When the Japanese Embassy in Cairo moved to its new building on the banks of the Nile, it chose a Geutebruck CCTV monitoring system despite fierce international competition - especially from Japanese manufacturers.
The Embassy's hundred-camera, five-workstation system is based on the GeViScope digital CCTV platform. With a dedicated digital signal processor for each video channel, the GeViScope has both the capacity to process large amounts of data, and the flexibility to process each signal differently, precisely as required. Dual channel streaming enables it to stream and record the same scene in different qualities simultaneously, here for example, 25fps 4CIF video for smooth real-time viewing and 10 fps 4CIF footage for later detailed analysis.
How did it outperform its competitors? According to Harun Oezerdem, Geutebruck's area manager for Eurasia: "The GeViScope system was selected primarily because it records faster and at higher resolutions, and because it supports multiple CCTV platforms, but it has other things going for it too. At the new embassy sensitive areas are protected by video motion detection and the GeViScope can deliver alarm pictures to GSM mobiles if required. Also, because it's a DSP-based system, adding new functionality is just a matter of loading new software, so the system is easy to expand and update, and you can keep it state-of-the-art indefinitely."
The GeViScope delivers faster recording at higher resolutions not only because of its multiple processors, but also because of its unique compression process called MPEG4CCTV. This method of encoding was specially developed by Geutebruck for generating large numbers of different video-audio channels simultaneously, without overstretch at high loads or speeds. It is an MPEG4 process but it incorporates variable quality and variable compression. It lets the user define the image quality (including the GOP sizes) for each individual recording and each individual live streaming channel from each camera - whether analogue or IP (or megapixel). The process then maintains this desired picture quality, while automatically changing the frequency of reference frames in real-time, in accordance with the overall movement in the picture, the motion in selected areas, other event triggers and any scheduled routines.
By focusing on delivering what is important to the CCTV user, and only generating data relevant to his needs, MPEG4CCTV minimises data volume, bandwidth and storage costs, and has such a low latency (120ms) that it can be used to control fast dome and PTZ cameras. Users enjoy exceptional display characteristics: smooth, multi-camera synchronised playback, forwards and backwards at any speed (from 1 picture/10s to 25fps and even image by image), and, with a single keystroke they can jump back seconds or minutes to view sets of synchronised recordings. Easily to copy for back-up and evidential purposes, MPEG4CCTV footage can be protected with individual password encryption and cannot be manipulated in multimedia editors.
