Question — answer — solution.
— What to do with small video surveillance facilities (shops, office buildings, bank branches) that are located in remote regions and cannot afford to build new broadband networks to organize, for example, just two workstations (generally, a security guard at the entrance and the head of the enterprise)? Is there a solution to this problem?
Dmitry STRELTSOV, Mitsubishi Electric EVS regional manager for Russia and the CIS, answers this question.
This question was often asked at the seminars that Mitsubishi Electric held this spring in the largest cities of Russia. Let us recall the topic of the seminar series «DX-PC200 software and methods for building a distributed video surveillance system based on this software and Mitsubishi Electric digital recorders.»
The simplest solution to this problem, which does not require additional costs for creating a new infrastructure, are the Mitsubishi Electric DX-TL5000E, DX-TL4516E and DX-TL4509E video recorders.
The flagship of the line – DX-TL5000E has exceptional image quality due to the use of additional gradation of compression quality, the recording speed is 200 pps, has the ability to cascade connection to combine up to 16 recorders (256 cameras) into a single system with the ability to cascade up to 4 audio channels and much more.
The 9-channel DX-TL4509E and 16-channel DX-TL4516E are essentially a lightweight version of the DX-TL5000E recorder. These models were created specifically for medium-sized video surveillance facilities and, therefore, being in the price niche of video recorders for this type of facilities, have many distinctive features of their older brother: JPEG2000 compression format, the ability to record both fields and full frames, triplex function, S-ATA hard drives, dual multiplexer video output.
The last characteristic is an exclusive feature of the DX-TL4509E, DX-TL4516E, DX-TL5000E video recorders and serves as an answer to the question posed above.
The dual multiplexer allows two independent monitors to be connected to the recorder, creating a powerful monitoring system with the ability to split cameras twice, thus organizing two independent operator workstations. Each image from any camera is displayed on both monitors at a rate of 50 fields per second, providing natural «live» video without interruptions and without losing an alarm event.
Using the triplex function allows you to simultaneously display a «live» image on both monitors, events recorded earlier, recording images from cameras to a hard drive. Therefore, there is no need to interrupt recording or viewing a «live» image just to check a previously made recording. At the same time, you can archive and implement network functions. By selecting any part of the split screen for playback, you can use the jog-shuttle for control and search.
Two DX-KB5UE keyboards can be connected to the video recorder and configured so that the first one will control video output A, and the second one will control output B. A password system is provided for separating powers.
The functionality built into the video recorder allows recording images from 16 cameras connected to the video recorder with a total speed of 100 fields per second and maximum quality. Which, in turn, requires a large capacity of disk space. DX-TL4516E offers unique capabilities in terms of archive depth and recording time due to the use of hard drives of the new industrial S-ATA standard. Two hard drives are connected inside the recorder via a high-speed serial ATA port and additionally up to 14 DX-ZD6UE expansion units with two disks in each are connected to the recorder via a serial port. Thus, up to 15 TB (theoretical maximum 34 terabytes) provides sufficient storage space for the most extensive video surveillance system. The DX-ZD6UE expansion unit can be connected to a regular computer and view the image recorded by the recorder without additional time spent on conversion.
Summarizing the above, we can answer the question in the title that, using the DX-TL4516E video recorder, two monitors connected to video outputs A and B, two DX-KB5UE keyboards, we can build a video surveillance system with two completely independent operator workstations using the power of one recorder.
At the same time, the DX-TL4516E provides unique capabilities in terms of the depth of archival recording, ensures convenient copying and archiving of recorded information and, most importantly, has exceptional quality of the recorded image.