This specific content was written 14 years ago.
Please keep this in mind as it may be outdated and not adhering to best-practices.
What must someone consider for calculating required bandwidth for IP cameras?
It is not only resolution, but also FPS, the amount of activity (motion), and the compression level which determine the bandwidth required.
Obviously, when the frame doesn’t have so much traffic there is less data to transfer (due to the compression in H.264).
There is a very nice Axis Design tool which estimates bandwidth based on various scenario videos located at:
Within the tool you can select from various videos (“Scenario Combobox”) and view how the bandwidth requirements change based on the activity.
The train station is the extreme example with movement everywhere.The amount of activity within the video makes a tremendous difference as well as the compression, so you need to test reading at multiple compression to see what is acceptable
in order to not undermine results especially if you are using video analytics software.
Also, instead of viewing using RTSP over HTTP it is optimal to view through VLC and RTSP using the axis rtsp api.
The API is available at: ( http://www.axis.com/files/manuals/RTSP_API_2_01.pdf – page PDF 14 – parameter specification ) and specifies options to build URLs such as:
rtsp://IP:PORT/axis-media/media.amp?videocodec=h264&resolution=768×576&compression=10
Mr. Menelaos Bakopoulos is currently pursuing his PhD both at Center for TeleInFrastruktur (CTiF) at Aalborg University (AAU) in Denmark and Athens Information Technology (AIT) in Athens, Greece. He received a Master in Information Technology and Telecommunications Systems from Athens Information Technology and a B.Sc. in Computer Science & Management Information Systems from the American College of Thessaloniki. Since April 2008 he has been a member of the Multimedia, Knowledge, and Web Technologies Group.
More Posts
Jan 30 2013
Calculating required upload bandwidth for Axis IP Camera
It is not only resolution, but also FPS, the amount of activity (motion), and the compression level which determine the bandwidth required.
in order to not undermine results especially if you are using video analytics software.
Also, instead of viewing using RTSP over HTTP it is optimal to view through VLC and RTSP using the axis rtsp api.
The API is available at: ( http://www.axis.com/files/manuals/RTSP_API_2_01.pdf – page PDF 14 – parameter specification ) and specifies options to build URLs such as:
rtsp://IP:PORT/axis-media/media.amp?videocodec=h264&resolution=768×576&compression=10
Menelaos Bakopoulos
Mr. Menelaos Bakopoulos is currently pursuing his PhD both at Center for TeleInFrastruktur (CTiF) at Aalborg University (AAU) in Denmark and Athens Information Technology (AIT) in Athens, Greece. He received a Master in Information Technology and Telecommunications Systems from Athens Information Technology and a B.Sc. in Computer Science & Management Information Systems from the American College of Thessaloniki. Since April 2008 he has been a member of the Multimedia, Knowledge, and Web Technologies Group.
More Posts
Related posts:
By Menelaos Bakopoulos • Uncategorized 0