Re: Info on H.264

bharath_r wrote:
Hi,

I am looking for this answer for a past few days. I am trying to
develop a CCTV surveillance application. I would like to know whether
H.264 is a compression technique or a video encoding technique or is
it both? I have a DVR card that supports H.264 video compression. The
problem is that it saves the recorded videos in some proprietary
format(.vgz). Although the card came with a player i want to watch the
videos on windows media player. I wanted to know if i can read each
frame from the card and then encode and save it in a format that can
be understood by the windows media player like wmv or asf. Any help
will be highly appretiated.

Thanks
Bharath

I would question why you'd do your "development" this way in the
first place, but it's your project.

The purpose of capturing in the VGZ, could be for two purposes.
One would be to escape from some kind of licensing fees. The
second might be, on the assumption they were offering the absolute
best compression while capturing.

If you are starting a "CCTV surveillance application", you start
by making a list of requirements. What do you want to do with the
information ? Store it on disk ? View it in real time ? What percentage
of the time are you doing those activities ? How much processing
power do you have ? Can the GPU on the video card in the computer,
be used to accelerate playback ? Could the hardware solution purchased,
offer simultaneous playback as part of its function (i.e. dump to
frame buffer via DMA). Could GraphEdit and the appropriate CODECs
be used to build a playback solution ?

It might make more sense, to use a $20 capture chip, with uncompressed
capture. By using a standard driver for the capture card, many programs
could be used to view the results, or share the data. The job of the
software, when storing to disk, would then be to select the area of
interest, and write it out to disk in an economical (compressed) format.
The format could be lossless (for best usage later), or lossy (for least
storage usage). As a software developer, your "value added" would be
finding new ways to only capture what a client wishes. The hardware
used in this case, would emphasize "capture" versus "DVR".

Selecting a capture device, that does extreme compression, but uses a
non-standard format, only makes sense if the content is only to be
handled within the tools provided by the manufacturer. You haven't
made clear in your post, exactly how this choice of capture device,
is making your project easier. Presumably the usage of a custom
DSP approach with low product volumes, leads to a high price for the
CCTV capture card.

Paul
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Info on H.264
    ... I have a DVR card that supports H.264 video compression. ... It might make more sense, to use a $20 capture chip, with uncompressed ... and write it out to disk in an economical format. ...
    (rec.video.desktop)
  • Re: "Analog Copy Protection??", Part 2
    ... if dv stands for being able to capture video then ... Your analogy with sound card and capture card is not quite right, ... Macrovision thing, gave me something else for the searches. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.moviemaker)
  • Re: I found an HDMI Video Capture Card for the PC....
    ... why would one need a TV Tuner card anyway? ... > Add the incredible quality of HDMI to your computer. ... > televisions and video projectors, or capture uncompressed quality from> HDV ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.mediacenter)
  • Re: Info on H.264
    ... I have a DVR card that supports H.264 video compression. ... It might make more sense, to use a $20 capture chip, with uncompressed ... and write it out to disk in an economical format. ...
    (rec.video.desktop)
  • Re: I found an HDMI Video Capture Card for the PC....
    ... Therefore this card is not an effective solution for MCE. ... Add the incredible quality of HDMI to your computer. ... televisions and video projectors, or capture uncompressed quality from HDV ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.mediacenter)