With the explosion in use of video surveillance cameras a lot of data is being generated worldwide. There is scarcely any public place in the United States that is not covered by video surveillance equipment. And since there is an increasing trend in increasing investment in high definition video surveillance cameras the data generated has increased all the more. How important is this data and how can we expect to handle so much data? These are interesting propositions and thankfully we are moving forward toward using new technology to handle so much data.
So how much data is produced by high definition video surveillance cameras? To give you a comparison let us consider the amount of daily data produced by all the security cameras that were installed in 2013 throughout the world. The data generated is equal to all the video and photo data that was stored in Facebook in February 2012. This data generated would require 92.1 million single layers, single sided DVDs. Today the data generated by video surveillance equipment worldwide is not measured in TB but PB. And the daily data that we just talked about is equal to 413 PB. By 2017 the amount of daily data generated by high definition surveillance cameras will be equal to 859 PB. Sounds astonishing? Well, it is.
So how is it possible to handle so much data generated by the video surveillance cameras worldwide?
There is now H.256, a new High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard that promises to compress double the amount of data that can be compressed using the H.264 standard.
The data generated by video surveillance equipment can also be managed better by Video Content Analysis (VCA). This technology can reduce the recording time of a video camera by using no entry zones and virtual tripwires. The VCA technology is used to make a camera record only when a specific event is triggered. An example of this could be someone entering a parking lot. Thus, a video camera will not record continuously but only when it is required to. This means data generated will be lesser and the storage capacity would not overflow.
The modern hard disk drives are also now able to contain much more data than before. This is another way to ensure that no matter how much data is generated by video surveillance equipment there is space enough to store that data.
Since there are now more installations of high definition video surveillance cameras (because of much better picture quality) there will be massive generation of data. One cannot say for certain that all this data will be required. But yes, from the security standpoint no one would like to take any risk in this matter. We will, thus, continue to see more investments being made in security cameras.
Video surveillance cameras keep us safe from many crimes. Video surveillance equipment finds more use in public places but as homeowner one feels safe when there is surveillance equipment installed at home for security purposes.
With more and more data being generated by video surveillance cameras there is an increasing requirement of storage space. With more advanced video surveillance equipment work is on to produce more efficient storage space.