Pre-alarm Video Buffer for Complete Image Sequences
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Solution Overview
Problem
In video surveillance systems, pre-alarm video sequences often start with differential image frames, which lack sufficient information for a complete image representation, leading to inefficient memory usage and variable sequence lengths due to compression schemes like MPEG-4, where full image frames are not always present at the beginning.
Innovation Solution
A method involving a pre-alarm buffer that stores and combines full image frames with differential image frames to generate a viewable video sequence, ensuring that the initial frames are full image frames, thereby minimizing the impact of initial differential frames and allowing for more accurate prediction of sequence length and efficient buffer usage.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Quantity of substance
If differential image frames are used to compress video sequences, then data storage and transmission efficiency is improved, but the initial frames of pre-alarm video sequences become unusable for complete image representation
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary decompression of differential image frames to full image frames and stores them in advance in a buffer. When a pre-alarm video sequence is requested, the buffer already contains the necessary full image frames, eliminating the information loss problem while maintaining compression efficiency during normal operation.
Solution Approach 2:
A buffer acts as an intermediary between the compressed video stream and the pre-alarm video sequence output. This buffer stores decompressed full image frames temporarily, allowing the system to provide complete image information for pre-alarm sequences without sacrificing the compression benefits for regular video storage and transmission.
2Loss of information
If the buffer stores extra frames to ensure complete image representation, then image information completeness is improved, but memory usage increases
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of buffering all possible frames indefinitely, the system buffers only the necessary number of frames required to ensure complete image representation for the maximum expected pre-alarm sequence length. This partial buffering approach provides sufficient information completeness without excessive memory consumption.
Solution Approach 2:
The buffer dynamically adjusts its contents based on the compression scheme being used. When the compression rate changes or when different types of differential frames are encountered, the buffer adapts by storing the appropriate number of full image frames needed, optimizing memory usage according to actual requirements rather than using a fixed large allocation.
3Loss of information
If the pre-alarm video sequence length is extended to include enough frames for complete decompression, then image information completeness is improved, but the variability of sequence length increases
Solution Approach 1:
By pre-decompressing and buffering full image frames before they are needed, the system eliminates the variability in sequence length. The buffer ensures that regardless of how many differential frames precede a full frame in the compressed stream, the necessary full image frames are already available, allowing consistent pre-alarm sequence lengths to be generated.
Data Source
AI summary
A method for buffering an alarm video sequence includes receiving input image frames from an input video stream comprising full image frames and differential image frames, storing the received input image frames, and generating an output alarm video sequence by combining at least one full image frame with the input image frames stored in the buffer. The full image frame may be inserted as a first image frame in the output alarm video sequence.