Like the round peg trying unsuccessfully to fit into the square hole, many surveillance cameras have been similarly hampered by trying to reconcile their horizontal nature within a vertical video monitoring scenario.
Consider all of the security-related situations in which a vertical camera image would be preferable over a horizontal one — policing the long, tall aisles in a big box store, home improvement center or supermarket; or watching over the straight, narrow corridors found in hospitals, schools, and even some office buildings.
In all of these instances, a vertical or portrait view of the scene would be preferable to a horizontal one. So rather than lock the user into a 16×9 horizontal world, if the user needs a full HD quality video stream, why not allow the maximum number of pixels to the field-of-view (FOV)?
Today most security cameras have been designed for the horizontal perspective so simply rotating the camera to a 9×16 FOV sounds easy enough, but the resulting video is simply a sideways oriented 16×9. In addition to rotating the camera or effectively turning the imaging sensor on its side, the data recorded by each of the pixels on the sensor has to be rotated to reorient the video stream into a true 9×16 streaming HD video. Sounds simple, but doing so without quality loss or sacrificing video frame rate can be a challenge.
In theory, of course, it is possible to cover those narrow, vertical corridors and aisles with traditional landscape-style camera views, but it will take additional cameras — and additional cost — to achieve it. This is not only limited to camera and installation costs, because each of the cameras deployed will be recording additional scene area to the left and right of the center scene, which adds cost for bandwidth and storage to the overall cost calculation.
Fortunately, the industry is now responding with highly efficient bullet and mini-dome cameras that have the higher-level processor and memory capacity so the camera can be placed in permanent portrait mode. It’s not just about switching the aspect ratio from 16:9 to 9:16 for these cameras, but it’s also about having sufficient horsepower to properly achieve and support this functionality with no residual impact on the camera’s resolution or frame rate performance.
By having cameras that reconcile properly with the space they are covering, operators will get the most complete, most usable images for active surveillance and forensic purposes. No more wondering what has been cut off from the picture, no more parsing together images to get a complete look.
And when these new cameras are made part of a larger system that includes an NVR with preconfigured layouts to accommodate the taller, narrow viewpoint, it becomes an even more ideal fit for viewing, archiving, and retrieving these images.
Kind of like putting that square peg into the square hole. It’s a perfect fit.
Contact MCC’s Security Solutions Division today to learn more!