Estimate IP camera bandwidth online
IP network cameras are becoming more and more popular, no longer for waiting several years, the IP surveillance system will replace the CCTV system. We know IP cameras using the internet for video streaming, thus it's better to know how much bandwidth does an IP camera consume is very important when plan the IP surveillance system. In summary, IP camera consumes bandwidth varies from four factors;
- Number of Cameras
- Quality of video streaming
- Video Compression (Codec)
- Frame per second (fps)
Number of Cameras
This is very simple, the more cameras hook on internet, the more bandwidth will be consumed by cameras.
Video Compression (Codec)
IP camera does the video compression before it outputs video streaming. There are three different compression technologies are deployed in IP cameras; H.264, MPEG-4, MJPEG. Compared to other compression codec, H.264 is the latest video compression algorithm. It can convey high quality images with small file size, thus video streaming with H.264 codec take less bandwidth.
Image Quality
IP camera output images at low quality images like VGA resolution will occupy less bandwidth for video streaming. High resolution images means big file size and certainly it will occupy more internet bandwidth for video transmission.
Frame per second (fps)
Frame per second means how much images will play in one second. For real time video streaming or recording, playback, the frame per second rate in NTSC is 30fps. More frames mean more pictures and more data, thus it occupy more bandwidth for video streaming, recording.