Project Awesome released!

We are proud to release “Project Awesome” today.   Project Awesome is a huge shift from how video has been transmitted to the client in the past.  Since the first beta of Version 2, the video has been sent via MJPEG (Multi-Part JPEG).  While this worked, it was bandwidth intensive to send, and CPU intensive to decode and display.

All along we wanted to switch to RTP streaming for the client, but it kept being pushed back to after 2.0 was released.  However since some IP cameras can not dual stream RTSP and MJPEG, and some customers are experiencing feed duplication from the MJPEG encoders on the Bluecherry H.264|MPEG-4 cards, we opted to take the time and implement this properly prior to the 2.0 release.

This is the first release of this new RTP code, so there may still be bugs that need to be worked out.  However, the image quality on analog cards will be greatly improved, and CPU usage should drop noticeably.  Bandwidth usage will also be greatly reduced, and there is a option for low bandwidth mode that sends one frame every second.

This release now uses port 7002 to send the video to the client.  This port is also a fully functional RTSP service, which extends the API for Version 2 even further.  It is now possible to obtain a RTSP feed from any analog or IP camera connected to Bluecherry with this sub-path: /live/<deviceid>.  This allows you to watch remote video feeds from mobile devices (using apps that support RTSP), and other applications (media players).

Note:

Currently we are aware that some Arecont Vision cameras may display the video incorrectly.  This is a problem with the RTSP feed we obtain from these cameras, which affects live view and recording.  If you notice any other live view problems, please report those to the forums immediately