IP CAMERA LEARNING & RESOURCE CENTER

The 2nd Generation Y-cam boasts a new MJPEG video compression format which has been added to make the camera compatible with a wider number of Internet browsers and computer platforms.

Since the update we get a lot of interest from Mac users as the Y-cam now represents an affordable home security solution on the Mac platform. However, we must point out that the Y-cam is NOT fully supported. You won’t be able to use the video clip creation tools, you won’t recieve any audio and you won’t be able to use the installation software which comes on the CD-ROM to help set up the camera.

This is where a Mac user will struggle. The software which comes with the camera is Windows only so the initial setup can prove difficult for the average Mac user. We are here to lend a hand.

This HOWTO guide shows one method of setting up your Y-cam using a Mac. This guide is suitable for the following cameras:

Y-cam White
Y-cam Black
Y-cam Knight

You will also need an Ethernet crossover cable so that you can connect your Y-cam directly to your Mac without using a router or switch. You can obtain a crossover cable from any good computer store.

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One of the added features in the lastest version (v6.5) of Milestone’s XProtect Basis+ and XProtect Professional recording software is hourly archiving.

Why do we need hourly archiving?

The reason behind multiple archiving slots is down to the constraints for daily recording which will only allow 600000 records or 40GB worth of data to be stored per camera, per day. This is normally sufficient for most cameras and uses but due to the increasing popularity of megapixel cameras you can find this limit running out quickly when storing a lot of high-resolution images. If the total amount of data goes beyond 40GB in one day then recording for that camera stops and won’t start again until the images have been archived. This leads to gaps in your archives.

Having multiple archiving slots alleviates this problem. You can now set the software to archive more than once per day and here’s how…

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Milestone have recently launched an update to their XProtect Basis+ and XProtect Professional software. This takes the version number from 6.0 to 6.5.

We blogged about this at the end of last month detailing the key list of updates found on V6.5 but we wanted to also include a more comprehensive cheat sheet to make the comparison between the two a little easier to understand:

Patrolling and scanning	NO	YES
Maximum number of clients	1	Unlimited
Evidence export formats	JPEG,AVI,WAV	JPEG,AVI,WAV, Native Database
Mobile client	NO	YES
Virtual matrix	NO	YES
XProtect central support	NO	YES
XProtect Analytics Framework	NO	YES
Maximum number of cameras	25	64
Device license packages	4, 6, 9, 16, 25	4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 50, 64
Product maintenance agreement	NO	YES
PDA Client	NO	YES
Bandwidth optimised multi-streaming	NO	YES
Two-way audio support	NO	YES
Supported audio channels	1	Multiple
Number of preset positions	25	50
Preset patrolling	NO	YES
Multiple patrol schemes	NO	YES
Preset scanning	NO	YES
Preset patrolling	NO	YES
Selectable archive retention time per device	NO	YES
Archiving to network drives	NO	YES
Dynamic archiving (disk spanning)	NO	YES
SMS Notification	NO	YES

For more information see Milestone’s comparison chart:

Milestone XProtect Comparison Chart August 2008

MJPEG is short for Motion-JPEG which is a means of storing video footage from IP cameras and digital camcorders.

An MJPEG Movie consists of many JPEG images, one after another. Since JPEG is a compressed format, so too is MJPEG, providing a low file size when compared to image dimensions. Each frame of an MJPEG movie has no reference to the next, so inter-frame compression is not used, making MJPEG movies larger than similar MPEG movies. However, since there is no inter-frame compression the file size of an MJPEG movie will not change dependant on the complexity of the images used. This means the file size is a lot easier to estimate when looking at recording solutions.

MJPEG, being composed entirely of JPEG images, is a video-only format.  Should you require audio recording you may wish to use another codec such as MPEG or H.264.

A JPEG is a way of storing images on a digital device such as IP CCTV cameras, digital cameras and mobile phones. JPEG is a compressed format, giving a greatly reduced file size compared to image dimensions. The compression is adjustable but greater compression rations will result in loss of data and as such grainier pictures.

JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group, who created the format when trying to produce a smaller file size for transmitting images across the internet. Most IP CCTV cameras support this format due to the reduced file size which helps to reduce bandwidth and hardware usage.

A Software Development Kit or SDK is a library of code used for creating applications, usually on specific platforms, to work with a specific IP camera, or range of IP cameras. With IP security cameras SDKs usually consist of code designed to access and retrieve images from a camera over the network, or to alter settings. SDKs are similar to Application Programming Interfaces (API) in that they allow remote communication with IP CCTV cameras, but SKDs differ in that they are created to allow camera-native communication to be embedded into proprietory applications.

Included with an SDK is full descriptive literature describing how the code works, how it should be used and often includes working examples to help developers understand how to integrate the code with their own. SDKs tend to cover an entire range of devices but may contain code chunks which are specific to one particular model.

Most IP camera SDKs are very tightly controlled by the manufacturer, often requiring registration and the signing of non-disclosure agreements to protect their software and intellectual property.