Applies to: DesignPro

Summary

A critical component of DesignPro storage calculations are the bandwidth assumptions. This article explains the different DesignPro profile scene types, their associated quality settings, and their impact on bandwidth.

Factors that Affect Bitrate

A camera’s bitrate is affected by many things, including the following:

• System on Chip (SOC) - For example, Wisenet 5, 7, or 9. Newer generations require lower bitrates.
   
• Image size - Larger image sizes require higher bitrates. Also referred to as resolution.
   
• Framerate - Higher framerates require higher bitrates.
   
• Codec Selection - H.265 provides higher resolution at lower bitrates as compared to H.264.
   
• Lighting - Brighter lighting require more bandwidth because of the greater detail.
   
• Scene activity - Scenes with more activity require higher bitrates because they are harder to compress.

The Scene activity is a crucial factor, because it significantly scales the final calculations. There are nine scenes to choose from.



Refer to DesignPro: Scene Types for descriptions and examples of all the scene types.

Weighting

Selecting a scene with an activity rate that is lower than actual will result in a storage calculation estimate that is lower than required for the deployment. To remedy the miscalculation, subsequent adjustments of the camera may be necessary to reduce the bitrate required, otherwise, the camera will be forced to increase the amount of compression resulting in image artifacts such as pixilation and reduced resolution.

For example, selecting Emergency Exit for a camera viewing a busy, crowded square means your calculations will under-estimate the bitrate required in reality.

Conversely, selecting Crowded Square for a camera viewing a static, mostly inactive door, estimates more bandwidth than the scene requires in reality. Both bandwidth and storage will be wasted.

The following chart shows the relative weighting each scene type has on bandwidth. For example, a camera configured for Highway consumes twice the bandwidth of an identical camera configured for Retail.

NOTE: When adding a recording platform such as WAVE or BLAZE, DesignPro
also uses four additional quality steps: Low (gray), Medium (green), 
High (orange), and Best (red), as these groups correspond to the 
nomenclature used with  BLAZE and WAVE Profile settings. As a point of 
reference, High is about double the bitrate of Medium.

For example, a retail store with 16 cameras configured for Retail at 5 Mbps uses approximately 24 TB of storage per month. Configuring the cameras for Shopping mall instead doubles the storage to approximately 50 TB, which is assumes a much higher camera scene activity level by comparison, which may or may not be warranted.

Changing the Weighting

When you add a recording system, such as BLAZE or WAVE, to DesignPro, you can change the weighting for the profiles you are using.

For example, a profile created using the Highway scene (High) could be halved by half by lowering it to Standard.