Unreal Streaming Technologies


	Hardware

IP Streaming Devices.

Q: Why UMedia IP hardware? Just another IP cam? Is there anything unique about it?

A: Our IP hardware allows streaming of hardware-encoded audio/video via central streaming server, with no software encoding process involved. Multiple concurrent users can view streams with Windows Media Player, with absolutely no additional software installation on their computers!

Today's IP cameras and encoders have a very important deficiency - they can't stream hardware-encoded content via central server. While these devices provide a perfect solution for a single or few concurrent viewers, it becomes practically impossible to use them for serving larger audiences with good quality audio/video streams. When IP camera is installed at a site with ADSL internet connection, it can only be viewed by several users at the same time because of limited ADSL upload bandwidth. The obvious solution is to have this camera upload a single stream to a central ISP-based streaming server which has enough bandwidth for multiple users. This approach can be partially implemented by using our software components such as IPCamSourceVideo, which allows connecting IP cameras to software encoding applications such as Unreal Live Server or Windows Media Encoder. However in this case, cameras stream JPEG images to software encoding applications and computer CPU is used to transcode these JPEGs to WMV/MPEG-4 content. You still need a computer to perform software encoding for a stream that has been already encoded on the hardware side! Most of today's cameras perform hardware MPEG-4 encoding. Even if it would be possible to deliver these MPEG-4 streams to Windows Media Encoder, the encoder would transcode this stream to WMV, defeating the whole purpose of hardware encoding!

Our MPEG-4 IP cameras and encoders solve this problem. They stream hardware-encoded streams to Unreal Media Server; therefore, no encoding computers are needed and no software encoding process is involved. Viewers receive original hardware-encoded audio/video; service providers achieve dramatic cost savings for deploying multi-camera IP surveillance systems.

Our MPEG-4 IP cameras and encoders operate in two modes at the same time:

Traditional IP camera mode, in which Internet viewers can connect to the camera directly and view on a web page.

"UMedia" mode, in which the camera/encoder works essentially as Unreal Live Server - it serves as a live source for the Unreal Media Server. A device can represent a dynamic or static live source (or both), connecting to Media Server and/or receiving connections from Media Server. Therefore, a device can reside behind NAT firewalls.

Our MPEG-4 IP cameras and encoders are indispensable devices for surveillance integrators providing multi-camera IP monitoring systems.

UM100 MPEG-4 IP network
camera UM200 MPEG-4 IP network
encoder

Specifications:
Image sensor: 1/3" Sony color CCD.
Resolution: 420, 480, 520 line.
Lens mount: Standard C/CS.
Video compression: MPEG-4 ASP.
Encoding bitrates: 32kbps - 3mbps.
Image Resolution: D1 and CIF:
PAL 720x576, 352x288;
NTSC 640x480, 320x240.
Frame rate: 30 fps.
Built-in microphone & audio line-in.
Audio compression: ADPCM 32kbps. Specifications:
Video interface: 1.0V p-p composite video input at 75 ohm.
Video compression: MPEG-4 ASP.
Encoding bitrates: 32kbps - 3mbps.
Image Resolution: D1 and CIF:
PAL 720x576, 352x288;
NTSC 640x480, 320x240.
Frame rate: 30 fps.
Built-in microphone & audio line-in.
Audio compression: ADPCM 32kbps.

PDF document Full Specs Purchase Full Specs Purchase

Contents of the CD that comes with the Camera & Encoder: