По мере развития видеонаблюдения и сосуществования аналоговых и цифровых камер перехода к цифровым системам видеонаблюдения, существует еще один аспект: хранение, извлечение изображений и управление изображениями.

Хранение требует вложений и играет все большую роль
to play in evolving systems. There are different uses and purposes of stored video, various locations where images can be stored, a myriad of storage types and business and operations issues to consider.

Once again, we’ll share the thoughts and experiences of CSO Terry Jones and Helena Smith, his second-in-command, who work for a mid-sized enterprise. They now face the options of storage for their current security video solutions, as well as anticipation of future technological changes and management needs.

By the way, the first paper in this white paper series examined in an overview way the coexistence strategy at the heart of a cost-effective move from analog to digital security video. That white paper also overviewed the impact on infrastructure including sharing the enterprise data network, bandwidth and compression/decompression schemes. A second white paper explored cameras – analog to IP-based as well as megapixel and high definition. The third white paper examined benefits and ways that fiber optics enhances the operation and business bottom line of surveillance solutions. These previous white papers are available for download at www.infinova.com.

Terry’s memory of security video storage goes back years to a Las Vegas trip at a major industry conference. With other colleagues, he toured a casino security operation and was shown their videotape room, filled with what seemed like thousands of tapes labeled by date and camera location and managed by a dozen or so employees who rotated the tapes constantly. The cost of doing business is what the casino security manager told the assembled group.

Terry and Helena both know storage and video solutions have come a long way. They also know that their current storage needs and especially future IP video developments, using megapixel cameras, have purchase, maintenance and operations costs, too.

In many ways it is a matter of capacity, when it comes to storage.

That’s what it is all about. In the world of computers, where digital security video resides, there are three types of memory: video, storage and RAM. Storage memory is on your hard drive and is used to store everything that's software or virtual on your computer, such as programs, files, settings, etc. There are bits, kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes and petabytes. A bit is the smallest increment of data on a computer. A bit can hold only one of two values: 0 or 1, corresponding to the electrical values of off or on, respectively. Bits are usually assembled into a group of eight to form a byte. A byte contains enough information to store a single character, like "m." A kilobyte is 1,024 bytes, not one thousand bytes as might be expected, because computers use a binary (base two) math, instead of a decimal (base ten) system.

A medium-sized novel contains about 1 megabyte of information or 1,024 kilobytes, or 1,048,576 (1024x1024) bytes, not one million bytes. Similarly, one 1 gigabyte is 1,024 megabytes, or 1,073,741,824 (1024x1024x1024) bytes. A terabyte is 1,024 gigabytes; 1 terabyte is about the same amount of information as all of the books in a large library, or roughly 1,610 CDs worth of audio or video data. A petabyte is 1,024 terabytes. Google, for example, processes about 24 petabytes of data per day, much of it video through YouTube.