Sensor Security Systems recently held an event in Johannesburg for its partners and resellers, highlighting the latest Hikvision range of products that Sensor distributes. Sensor’s MD, Jean Brown hosted the event and noted that Hikvision has quickly grown to be one of the largest surveillance manufacturers in the world due to the quality of its products and its focus on research.
Hikvision is only 12 years old, but in those 12 years has posted tremendous growth and is also listed in China. The company’s South African branch MD, James Dong, notes that Hikvision posted revenue of $1.16 billion in 2012 and is looking at $1.6 billion in 2013.
Most of its business still comes from China, but its share of the international market outside of China has been growing steadily over the years in territories such as the USA, South Africa and the Middle East, and more.
To better serve its customers in South Africa, Dong said that Hikvision will be establishing a local branch in the country this year. The goal of the office will be to provide local support to all customers.
While the Sensor event covered a broad range of products from Hikvision, Sensor was keen to point out the company’s new range of HCcctv cameras, offering HD images over analogue, as well as its Smart IP cameras.
“Smart is the latest concept which aims to bring video surveillance into every aspect of professional, intelligent, efficient, and convenient surveillance. Enriched with Smart technologies – such as Smart Codec, Smart Detection and Smart Control – Hikvision Smart IP cameras are specifically designed to deliver this concept to the market and convey the idea of smart security,” noted Keen Yao, international marketing director at Hikvision.
Smart on bandwidth and storage
With an advanced codec algorithm, Hikvision’s 4-line smart IP cameras deliver images at a very low bit rate without compromising on image quality. Compared to traditional cameras, these Hikvision 4-line cameras can boost image quality up to 30% when under a 2 Mpbs bit rate/720p resolution mode. This significantly minimises the system’s load and storage requirements.
4-line smart IP cameras also support the company’s ROI (Region of Interest) codec. This allows the cameras to decrease non-ROI’s image quality to save on bandwidth and storage. Additionally, these regions of interest will be smartly transmitted with better detail and image quality under identical bit rate streaming conditions.
In vertically-shaped areas (such as corridors or hallways), the camera’s horizontal-shaped image may result in pixel waste. However, Hikvision’s 4-line smart IP cameras address this problem by using a ‘Rotate Mode’, which creates a vertically-oriented video feed from the camera. This further maximises image quality while eliminating bandwidth and storage waste. As well, triple streaming is supported to perform live monitoring with up to three independent streams.
In order to meet various applications where image detail is critically important (such as the handling of cash and financial transactions) Hikvision’s 4-line smart IP cameras offer an ultra-high frame rate of 60 fps in HD or Full HD resolution. This results in detailed and excellent image quality. Meanwhile, the improved Smart IR function allows IR strength adjustment and better visibility for the specific requirements of an application.