H.264 Compression Technology

By Jason Barton, EIT

H.264 compression will allow us to stream and record the same video we do today with MJPEG, but without losing any quality. Another advantage is it uses about 1/10th of the bandwidth and storage as MJPEG does. This will allow us to greatly reduce our storage requirements (less hard drives = less money = less maintenance).

Video Management Systems and IP camera manufacturers are just beginning to incorporate the H.264 compression standard into their products. There’s been a big push within the last year to take advantage of this new technology in the security industry. One thing to keep in mind; the compression technology is great, but it requires more processing power. Server hardware requirements will be greater when using a total H.264 solution and each server may not be able to manage as many cameras as before.

To learn more about H.264 compression and related technologies please click here.

Jason Barton, EIT, is a security consultant with EDI. He can be reached at jbarton@ediltd.com.