Video Surveillance sector is witnessing a new trend and that is increased interest in adopting 4K video technology. But do you think that 4K video technology will help an enterprise to watch for intruders, monitor the premises, and even assist with court cases where a theft or a break-in has occurred?

?Yes, for sure! Covering a large warehouse or busy hallways would be easier with the added resolution. More pixels when added to an image will allow users to zoom-in more deeply and that too without compromising on image quality?, said Mo Tahmasebi, CEO and President of DNF Security.

Ari Zoldan, who is a technology analyst, says that there are several options for creating a 4K video surveillance network. He added that Bosch Security will add a new camera in this arena which is Dinion IP Ultra 8000 MP camera for corporate security use. Keeping the price factor aside, this camera can be used for tracking the location of intruders and make facial recognition scans using simple with the use of high resolution images of 1080p HD video.

Axis Communication, a leader in offering Security Surveillance cameras is also adopting this technology to add a new network camera to its portfolio. Axis P1428-E camera which streams HD quality to a central server but can record in 4K resolution is another addition to the trend of 4K footage.

?The widespread deployment of 4K HD technology video surveillance cameras for large enterprise users not only provides increased opportunities for improved investigation, but also business intelligence. For example, staff and customers paths can be accurately analyzed with this resolution as it often supports multiple content analysis opportunities like people counting and vehicle plate recognition,? says Steve Surfaro, a spokesperson for Axis Communications.

Surfaro adds that there are several pieces of puzzle to be lined up to build a security solution. The security camera should support 4K video and should have an on-board storage and the transmission from the camera should be direct to the on-board storage and then to the web and not directly to the web. The second is that the NAS solution serving these environments should be scalable and highly redundant. Companies will also need to have a server which is capable of transmitting the 4K video content and must be capable of decoding and analyzing the footage. Lastly, a 4K monitor is required to view the feed from the camera or the storage appliance.

So, here the challenge will be to get the desktop monitor which supports full 4K video run at 3840?2160 resolutions. The issue is compounded by the fact that a building might use multiple 4K security cameras for monitoring and this will increase storage and network needs to a great extent.

Moreover, the company which plans to induce 4K into their surveillance environments should be well prepared to have at least four times more capacity in their network while maintaining data integrity, flexibility and performance.

So, the duty of an enterprise IT head will be to go for increased network capacity, such as adding additional 10Gbps network connection or laying out even higher performance connections such as 40Gbps Ethernet.

For considering 4K resolution surveillance videos in court, the video footage must be stored on the medium which is easily transportable. But the fact here is that the video will require high storage capacity, as the image is crisper and was recorded at higher frame rate. It has to be remembered that a video source capable of supporting the identification of a person or vehicle of interest depends not only on resolution, but on image, image processing, lens, illumination and compression efficiency. Therefore, with all parameters being equal, 4K provides four times the resolution of 1080p HDTV video sources.

Finally, it can be concluded that the technology is still so new to broadcast networks in UK and US that they aren?t ready to offer channels in 4K resolution. So, as usual, the process of adoption is too slow, as it has to follow the regular cycle of innovation, slow deployment in consumer market, widespread adoption with consumers, and then trickle down its effect into large companies. The same thing happened in the case of HDTV 1080p video adoption?isn?t it?

Now for early adopters of increased resolution like in law firms, banks, credit card processors or pharma companies, the timing might be just right. 4K surveillance provides the right increase in resolution to make a video security system even more valuable in near future.