Digital Video Recorder

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Verticals: Security and Serveillance
Technologies: Embedded Software,Object Detection & Recognition,Content Based Image Retrieval
Tags: Streaming, DirectX, Dynamic DNS, DHCP, Visual Studio, Multimedia, IP Camera, PTZ camera, Activity Detection, Windows, Mobile clients, Desktop clients, Web clients, DDNS.

CLIENT

One of the premier firms in security and surveillance domain in India.

 

OBJECTIVE

Design and develop a multimedia solution for onsite or remote access of online and offline media content.

 

PROJECT SCOPE

The multimedia software system comprises of a streaming and storage server and clients for multiple platforms. The server subsystem interfaces with multiple IP cameras and/or cameras physically connected through a frame grabber card. Multiple Direct X / non Direct X compliant cards are supported. Audio inputs are also supported, either through a frame grabber card or default system facility. The server captures multiple camera and audio feeds simultaneously. Each camera feed is displayed on screen and also compressed as per pre-configured settings. Compression settings may differ for recording and streaming. On receiving a streaming request, the in memory compressed data or offline recorded media file is streamed to the respective client.

Depending on the configuration settings, the in memory compressed data is also written to disk. The streaming server supports streaming clients for multiple platforms. It is capable of streaming over both LAN and WAN environments with minimal lag and loss of synchronization between audio and video. It supports streaming over RTSP and HTTP protocols. It is also capable of streaming in unicast and multicast modes.

The client subsystem comprises of client applications for desktop, browser and mobile platforms. Each version of the client is able to communicate with the streaming server and request for either online camera feeds or offline recorded videos. Desktop based client receives stream over RTSP. Browser and mobile clients receive stream over HTTP. The desktop and browser based clients are portable. Mobile client has been tested on several commonly available GPRS handsets.

Miscellaneous features like Dynamic DNS support, user management etc were also supported to allow deployment and usage in the most general environment.

 

Digital Video Recorder

KRITIKAL'S ROLE

After capturing clients requirements, KritiKal followed top-down approach to come up with the design. The implementation was then performed in a bottom-up fashion. All modules were developed in C++. Operating system specific APIs or libraries were used wherever necessary.

The system comprises of various components:

  • Multimedia Server : The server subsystem interfaces with multiple video and audio devices, records online feeds to disk, intelligently archives old media files, features a viewer module for viewing live/recorded videos. It also provides extensive GUI support for configuring the various system specific/device specific/ application specific parameters

 

  • Desktop Client : The desktop based client provides extensive remote access facility. In addition to viewing of individual camera feeds or offline videos, it also allows recording of the received video feed on the remote machine. It allows users to modify the configurations at the server. The extent to which server can be configured by desktop based client depends on the privileges available to the particular user.

 

  • Browser Client : The browser client allows a remote user to access the online and offline video feeds throug a web browser. Similar to the Desktop based client, the browser client permits modification of server side configuration settings, recording of received video stream to local disk etc.

 

  • Mobile Client : The mobile client allows a remote user to access the online feeds through a mobile handset. Since, a mobile based application should be light weight, more advanced features like modification of configuration settings and searching through recorded videos are not available.

 

  • Dynamic DNS Server : The DDNS sub system provides name to IP mapping for the various multimedia servers and other components of the system under DHCP based address assignment scenario. Clients can query the DDNS for a particular server by name and obtain information about the current IP address of the entity under consideration.

 

APPLICATION AREAS

The multimedia solution designed and developed by KritiKal can find applications in the domains of:
  • Video conferencing
  • Security and Surveillance
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