Introducing the C-08
Dilen Thakrar, Director of Product
In August 2020, we launched our brand-new C-Series with the introduction of our first model, a 12MP fisheye camera the C-12. Today we are really excited to unveil the newest member of the C-series range, the 8MP fisheye C-08. This series of cameras represent the culmination of all the customer, market and product knowledge that Oncam has accumulated over the past 15 years, resulting in significant breakthroughs in 360-degree video security and performance. Everything, from product conception, design, component selection, testing, and firmware development, all the way through to the end-to-end user experience has seen a tremendous amount of effort invested from the team, driven by the clear goal of building a product series that customers will instantly connect with.
During development, we wanted to ensure users had access to the fundamentals: a powerful camera with a feature set that really addressed their needs, driven by cutting-edge technology and easy to use tools to get the most from it. The powerful multi-core CPU delivers several things: first of all, high frame rates, for smooth and detail-rich video. It also harnesses a range of imaging and processing technologies to deliver outstanding image quality that users can easily tailor in the intuitive Camera Web Interface to best serve their installation environment.
The C-08, 8MP fisheye camera provides a complete 360-degree overview or detailed coverage of small areas, indoors or outdoors. Offering up to 60fps at 4.7MP full resolution, it has the power and capability to address the majority of customer 360-degree video use cases.
The C-08 is a powerful solution that captures an area without blind spots, providing a range of views and multiple use cases not possible with traditional narrow field-of-view cameras. The C-08 incorporates the same clean, modular design and physical form as the C-12 and therefore comes in both a compact Indoor and robust Outdoor Plus form factor.
Designed for quick, simple and intuitive installation the C-08 is compatible with the C-Series range of accessories to support a variety of installation needs, making it extremely versatile. As a ceiling mounted camera, users will experience the best in 360-degree fisheye views and based on use case, can also simultaneously stream 2 and 3-way Corridor, and VCam views. When wall mounted, the C-Series is transformed into a 180-degree camera to deliver stunning natural dewarped Panoramic+ views.
The C-08 and C-12 share the same user interface and platform ensuring easy setup and configuration. They also share the same firmware and can be upgraded with new features as customers’ needs evolve. The C-Series cameras are also fully NDAA compliant.
In this blog, we take a closer look at some key technologies such as high frame rates, how to benefit from them, and how you can keep bandwidth and storage under control with smart compression technologies.
High Speed Frame Rates
The real-world difference in surveillance footage can often be in what is missed. Picture a video feed from a newly installed surveillance system that’s being used to review an incident. If these cameras support a high resolution, but low frame rate, it can be difficult to pinpoint important elements in the scene when it matters. Especially when the video is paused to review the incident frame by frame, at this point any single frame could be vital to reveal something specific. Security teams often find themselves in this situation, which is why we decided to capitalize on the knowledge of our technology experts and build upon our existing 360-degree camera technology to deliver high speed frame rates of 60fps at full resolution with the 8MP C-08 cameras.
Depending on customer needs, running multiple streams at the same time from the camera may be more important than running at the highest frame rate. Often, however, the compromise made is a significant drop in frame rate performance for all streams. Maintaining a useable frame rate when multi-streaming is a key requirement for many of our customers, and so it became an integral feature for our camera development. We’re really pleased to be able to offer customers the ability to maintain 30 fps on the primary stream with up to 3 other streams running at the same time. In this way, users can experience the benefits of full-frame, clear video when multi-streaming without having to compromise.
StreamLite Compression
The Oncam C-08 cameras are built with a 8MP high speed sensor that allows it to deliver detail-rich video. Effectively compressing all this data is key to keeping bandwidth and storage levels under control, but it becomes meaningful only when you can maintain the integrity of your image quality. Our StreamLite compression technology does just that. It is an advanced, real-time adaptive video encoding technology that is applied to both H.264 and H.265. Its impact on images? Considerable, since it can lower video bandwidth and storage needs by an average of 50% or more. In scenes with low motion, enabling the Dynamic FPS (Frames per Second) feature can reduce the bitrate of the encoded stream by over 90%, minimizing the amount of data encoded and transmitted with minimal effect on the final image quality compared to standard compression.
StreamLite compression uses smart dynamic object & motion-based algorithms to analyze the video stream on the fly and identify what is really important. The full image quality is then applied to the areas that matter while less important areas can be compressed to deliver significant bandwidth savings. StreamLite also offers advanced users an industry leading level of control to tune the compression and analytics it uses for their specific environment. Three key techniques drive this; Dynamic Regions of Interest (RoI), Dynamic Group of Pictures (GoP) and Dynamic Frames Per Second (FPS) to determine the image quality to apply to each area of the scene, which type of frame to create and how many frames to send per second. These techniques combine to reduce the overall transmission and storage of data without compromising on the image quality of the details that matter.
Streamlite+ (ColorMap) Compression
What happens to traditional compression technologies when there is a lot of motion in the scene? Their effectiveness is significantly reduced; this is where our ColorMap Compression comes into play. ColorMap only acts on unperceivable colors in the scene — colors that are not visible to the human eye — and offers an additional 20% saving of bandwidth storage on top of what StreamLite Compression has already achieved. What’s best about this is that the compression saving is independent of movement in the scene, so users can achieve significant results in all scene types. ColorMap enhances StreamLite to become StreamLite +, delivering additional bandwidth and storage savings when viewed on a supported VMS platform. ColorMap is available VMS partner solutions that are fully integrated with this technology.
The C-08 is the Future of Compact 360-Degree Camera Technology
Engineered and designed by Oncam and powered by the leading Qualcomm® Vision Intelligence Platform, the C-08 achieves complete situational awareness, at up to 60 fps. As with all C-Series cameras, it leverages additional cutting edge technologies, including TrueDetail HDR, and Advanced Light Management to deliver Oncam's leading image quality in challenging light conditions. Oncam’s Multi-Mode technology allows users to stream up to four different views, whilst maintaining an impressive 30 fps on the primary stream while running three other streams.
To learn more about Oncam’s technologies click here.