Zoran Releases COACH 12VS for IP Video Surveillance Applications

Zoran Releases COACH 12VS for IP Video Surveillance Applications

The demand for IP video surveillance cameras is expected to boom in the next few years, potentially reaching 10 million units by 2013.

To understand this forthcoming demand, simply visit an airport, a shopping mall, or a government building. You will count dozens if not hundreds of surveillance cameras in use, many of which are relying on older technology and begging to be upgraded.

To satisfy surveillance camera consumers, IP security cameras will require CMOS image sensors with excellent low-light sensitivity, wide-dynamic range, and incredible temperature tolerances, but that is not all. IP security cameras will need a complex image processing pipeline capable not only of improving the image displayed on the screen, but also able to track motion or changes in the frame, overlay other data, or even alert operators when something interesting is happening.

Last week, Zoran, which is perhaps the best known supplier of system-on-chip solutions for digital cameras, released a version of its popular COACH platform for video surveillance applications.

The COACH 12VS features H.264 compression at up to 1080 progressive scan at 30 frames per second; an imaging pipeline optimized for wide-dynamic range compression and noise reduction; motion compensated temporal filters to further reduce image noise and improve low-light performance; and dual-core MIPs architecture which should enable additional image processing to accommodate motion tracking, scene scanning, and operator notification.

The COACH 12VS will also help to compensate for other common surveillance video challenges like lens distortion, making it possible to use wide-angle, fish-eye, or, frankly, lower quality (less costly) lenses as need in the design.

As demand for IP surveillance cameras increases, the design and development engineers creating them will need to be able to differentiate their designs from the competition and bring new products to market quickly. The newly released COACH 12VS should help them accomplish both.

Armando Roggio