The latest 4K ultra-high-definition (UHD) cameras cover broader areas while retaining fine detail at high zoom levels. However, many video surveillance managers don’t realize how significantly 4K UHD

cameras and multiple video streams can tax workstation performance. Placing such extreme workloads on these workstations degrades video performance, impacting the ability to recognize, interpret, and respond to an incident.

This article looks at the increasing performance demands placed on surveillance workstations in security command centers. We discuss a collaboration between Intel and video management software (VMS) maker Milestone Systems to optimize decoding performance on workstations equipped with Intel® processors featuring Intel® Quick Sync Video technology. We look at test re-sults showing how the optimized solution can handle more UHD cameras and up to five times more HD video streams compared to the unoptimized solution. We end by exploring the potential to achieve even greater advances in performance through use of the latest generation of Intel® Core™ processors.

D i g i t a l S e c u r i t y a n d S u r v e i l l a n c e

Breakthrough Performancefor

SurveillanceWorkstations

Unique Collaboration Enables More Ultra-HD Video Streams Per System

By Reinier Tuinzing, Strategic Alliances Manager, Milestone Systems

62 | 2016 | 14 th Edi t ion | Embedded Innovator | inte l .com/embedded-innovator

High-quality Video Surveillance on the RiseMilestone XProtect* VMS is an open-archi-tecture, IP-based software suite. It comes in versions ranging from a business-ready, sin-gle-site solution to versions designed to han-dle tens of thousands of cameras across geo-graphically dispersed sites. The software and its add-on solutions are sold through system integrators and in use at more than 100,000 installations worldwide.

A new trend in the industry is the deployment of higher resolution cameras that deliver wid-er views and sharper, more detailed images (Figure 1). While a video might be viewed on a relatively small screen area within a grid of camera feeds, 4K UHD streams let an operator zoom in on a specific area of inter-est without sacrificing image quality on the display. Operators can read the license plate number of a speeding car or see what is in the hand of someone walking across the far reaches of a college campus.

As people discover the image quality capabilities of these new video surveillance systems, they frequently want to expand their camera deployment. Adding more 4K UHD cameras enables more extensive coverage of indoor and outdoor areas. It also facilitates using cameras for additional purposes, such as the video enable-ment of business processes.

The Impact of HD Video Streams on Workstation WorkloadsAdding more cameras with higher resolution video places higher demands on the surveillance workstations used by security person-nel. These workstations collect video streams and decode them for display on video walls. As systems integrators increase the number and resolution of H.264 video streams running on a workstation, performance can degrade.

Jerky video and compromised image quality affect the ability to discern activity and other changes in areas such as a building hall-way, airport terminal, freight yard, school campus, or retail sales floor. Poor image quality makes it hard to clearly determine wheth-

The future is here as modern video surveillance solutions deploy 4K UHD cameras to enable high detail in wider views and when zooming in on an area. (Image progression courtesy of Bosch.)

Figure 1.

The higher the camera resolution and number of video feeds, the greater the impact on workstation performance, capabilities, and cost.

Figure 2.

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er an event in progress requires immediate action and what is the most appropriate response. Degraded images also hurt the ability to provide authorities with the unimpeachable evidence they need for litigation.

In determining how many video feeds a workstation can handle, in-tegrators must take into account other functions and applications that run on the workstations. Besides managing decoding and dis-play, VMS workstations typically run applications ranging from of-fice software solutions to access management and other security solutions. The intensive decoding of multiple, high-resolution video streams can monopolize the workstation’s processor, adversely af-fecting the performance of these other applications and impairing worker productivity (Figure 2, page 63).

Solution OptionsAdding workstations is one solution for handling more high-resolu-tion video streams. However, this is an expensive proposition. Each new workstation results in additional upfront system and software costs, as well as long-term staffing and maintenance overhead. A better solution is to find ways to increase the performance within each workstation.

Seeking to increase the number of video streams and 4K UHD feeds handled by their workstation software on Intel® processor-based computers, Milestone began a multi-year joint engineering project with Intel® Quick Sync Video development engineers. While Milestone had initially considered other graphics technology providers, Intel’s flexibility and interest in expanding the capabilities of their technology

drove the collaboration.

The Role of the Surveillance Workstation SoftwareThe Milestone XProtect Smart Client is the primary user in-terface for XProtect VMS. A powerful, easy-to-use surveil-lance workstation application, XProtect Smart Client enables security personnel to handle the daily operations of Mile-stone XProtect VMS installations regardless of size.

XProtect Smart Client is an efficient working environment providing seamless integration of XProtect and other add-on products to handle a full range of operator tasks and require-ments. Interactive multi-layered maps, advanced investiga-tion tools, and easy-to-navigate video timelines enable se-curity personnel to examine incidents quickly and accurately. Integrations with leading access control and intrusion sys-tems enable a single point of control. Sophisticated export options, including a storyboard and evidence lock feature, enable consolidating relevant video evidence for a complete overview of incidents.

Operators can select video from different cameras to in-clude at any point in time in a mosaic on one or more large screens. Security personnel can zoom in and examine live video incidents quickly and accurately, and bookmark video for evidence.

In legacy installations, XProtect Smart Client takes a soft-ware-based approach to decoding camera video feeds for display. To handle the enormous variety of cameras avail-able, Milestone makes over 5,000 dedicated camera drivers for H.264, MJPEG, and MPEG codecs.

The Role of Intel® Quick Sync VideoIntegrated in all Intel® processors with Intel® Graphics Technology, Intel Quick Sync Video accelerates video de-coding and encoding. Using the dedicated media process-ing capabilities of Intel Graphics Technology, Intel Quick Sync Video frees up processor resources for completing other tasks.

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1 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 49 64

CPU AND FRAMES PER SECOND (FPS)H.264 HD 1280x720

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CPU Usage - XPortect Smart Client 2014 (9.0c) CPU Usage - XPortect Smart Client 2016 (10.0c)Smart Client 2016 FPS with Intel Quick Sync VideoSmart Client SP3 FPS (No Acceleration)

Test results show the benefits of Intel® Quick Sync Video in maintaining high frame rates for full HD and 4K UHD video streams while minimizing CPU utilization.

Figure 3.

D i g i t a l S e c u r i t y a n d S u r v e i l l a n c e

64 | 2016 | 14 th Edi t ion | Embedded Innovator | inte l .com/embedded-innovator

Intel Quick Sync Video offers a balanced solution com-pared to other solutions. Vid-eo decoding using traditional hardware-only fixed func-tion solutions provides high performance at low power consumption, but cannot be updated to handle the lat-est code. Software codecs, on the other hand, provide complete flexibility, but at the expense of power and performance. By using hardware for the codec functions that don’t change and software running on compute elements in the GPU for functions that do change, Intel Quick Sync Video delivers high performance at low power while maintaining the flexibility to im-prove the codec over time.

The Milestone-Intel SolutionEarly versions of the Optimized Media Library used by Intel Quick Sync Video supported fewer H.264 options. To fully take advantage of Intel Quick Sync Video while sup-porting the wide range of camer-as handled by Milestone XProtect VMS, more H.264 options were needed in the library. Working to-gether, Intel and Milestone expand-ed these options. Milestone engineers then optimized XProtect VMS and Smart Client for Intel Quick Sync Video using the Intel® Media Server Studio suite with its Intel® Media SDK.

Test SetupTo test the optimized XProtect Smart Client against a non-optimized version, the companies configured two test workstations identically. The test unit configurations used high-end Intel® Core™ i7-4790K processors, 16 GB RAM, rendering cards, and 1 Gbps Ethernet. Test engineers set display resolutions at full HD 1920x1080 pixels and 4K UHD 3840x2160 pixels.

The only differences in the workstations were their versions of the XProtect Smart Client. Throughout the rest of this article, we refer to the two test platforms by these different versions:

• XProtect Smart Client 2014 workstation – Non-optimized platform utilizing software-based decoding

• XProtect Smart Client 2016 workstation – Optimized platform utilizing Intel Quick Sync Video acceleration

The Dramatic ResultsThe XProtect Smart Client 2016 workstation fluidly displayed video with total image clarity at full HD – 1920x1080 pixels at 25/30 frames per second (fps) – from as many as 25 cameras at the same time. That’s equivalent to showing 25 Blu-ray* movies simultaneously on one or more monitors without dropping a single frame. The XProtect Smart Client 2016 workstation also smoothly supported the heavy load of multiple 4K UHD cameras, displaying fluid video at 25/30 fps. For complete results, see Figure 3.

The Milestone tests also revealed impressive results in reducing CPU utilization (Figure 4). The XProtect Smart Client 2014 setup quickly reached 95 percent CPU utilization running 10 full HD video streams. Under the same load, the XProtect Smart Client 2016 workstation ran at just 15 percent CPU utilization. Even with 25 full HD video streams running on this setup, CPU utilization was under 40 percent.

Ramping Up Performance with Newer ProcessorsAs impressive as these results were, the 6th generation Intel® Core™ i5/i7 processor product family offers an even more powerful solution

Workstations with Intel® Quick Sync Video saw much lower CPU utilization and performance under the same load.

Figure 4.

Cameras@25 fps

25, 720p 99 26

10, 1080p 95 15

1 4k UHD

Software Decode/XProtectSmart Client 2014 (9.0c)

23 with 10 out of 30frames dropped 15, no dropped frames

Hardware Decode/XProtectSmart Client 2016 (10.0a)

CPU LOAD (5)

The 6th generation Intel® Core™ i5/i7 processor product family offers an even more powerful solution for the simultaneous handling of multiple H.264 video streams at all resolutions.

Figure 5.

inte l .com/embedded-innovator | Embedded Innovator | 14 th Edi t ion | 2016 | 65

than the test processor for the simultaneous handling of multiple H.264 video streams at all resolutions (Figure 5, page 65). Manufactured on Intel 14 nm process technology, these processors provide dramatically higher CPU and graphics performance compared to the previous gen-eration. They include Intel’s new Gen9 graphics engine and all its im-provements for faster, smoother video playback and exceptional clarity.

The 6th generation Intel® Core™ i5/i7 processor product family introduces a special fixed-function mode (FF-Mode) for Intel Quick Sync Video. Optimized for real-time H.264, this new mode lowers la-tency and reduces power consumption when handling multiple video streams. The 6th generation Intel Core processors also include ac-celerated 4K hardware media codecs. These enhance high-density streaming applications like video surveillance.

New codec support includes High-Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), a re-cent video compression standard also known as H.265 that is seeing growing use in video surveillance solutions. The Multi-Format Transcod-er (MFX), a hardware-based fixed-function pipeline for decoding and encoding, now supports HEVC Main profile decode support (4Kp60 at up to 240 Mbps). Main 10 decoding can be done with GPU acceleration.

ConclusionThese results clearly show the advantages of software like Milestone XProtect Smart Client 2016 that takes full advantage of Intel Quick Sync

Video acceleration. Video surveillance integrators working with XProtect VMS can use this new optimized version of Smart Client to cost-effec-tively handle more UHD and HD cameras per workstation with greater video clarity and fluidity. In addition, these implementations provide more headroom, improving the performance of other workstation applications.

For information on Milestone XProtect video management software solutions – all of which include XProtect Smart Client – see intel.com/SD-milestone-xprotect.

For more on digital security and surveillance, visit intel.com/embedded-dss.

Contact Milestone Milestone Systems (intel.com/MR-milestone) is a global industry

leader in open platform IP video management software. Founded in 1998, and now operating as a stand-alone company in the Canon Group, Milestone’s technology is easy to manage, reliable, and proven in thousands of customer installations, providing flexible choices in network hardware and integrations with other systems. Sold through a community of partners in more than 100 countries, Milestone solutions help organizations manage risks, protect people and assets, optimize processes, and reduce costs.

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AICTEL: 909-895-8989sales@aicipc.comwww.aicipc.com

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