Satellite Dish Internet Camera Installation- Remote Area

[btos]

I have a request to install a surveillance camera in a remote region of Hawaii - (maybe just two cameras) satellite- which I've not done before. The dish, a Starband isp provider, has two levels of service that they call broadband. Residential service is126 Kb upload & 500 Kb download. Business is about twice as this speed, according to the dish installer. Is this enough bandwidth to handle a couple of surveillance camera? The whole reason for the dish installation will be for the cameras. Being so remotely located, this seems to be the only service available. Will the bandwidth be sufficient to get a reasonable frame rate and resolution via Internet? Will there be problems installing the cameras on a satellite network?
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Action combined with knowledge is real power

[Mr Sots]

You might just about get two audio streams over it but no way for a reasonable framerate at a reasonable quality.

Even running MPEG-4 at CIF you'll struggle to achieve 4fps with two cameras... There's a handy bandwidth/storage calculator on the Milestone website http://www.milestonesys.com/?cid=1004 take a look for yourself.

[btos]

If I tweaked the camera video to 64Kbs and eliminated sound, and turn the frame rate down to 1 fps, wouldn't that work? I don't need audio, just video (no ideas formed from that Milestone calculator). I know that to control bandwidth there's several factors to consider: frame rate can be cut down, image size can be cut down and compression can be increased. With all these adjustments, shouldn't there be a reasonable compromise?
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Action combined with knowledge is real power

[Mr Sots]

Like you say a compromise will be required, I'd demonstrate the solution to your client at that bandwidth and framerate to see if they are prepared to go that far or if they would prefer to look at an alternative solution as that's going to be one awful image!!!

[btos]

Storage will be done on the LAN so that's not going to be a bottleneck. Remote playback can be done by logging into the LAN and selecting the time line. Storage will not interfere with streaming if it is done on the LAN.

The available bandwidth for streaming would seem to be enough to handle two cameras- I have two bandwidth selection options...business and residential. Business service advertises twice the bandwidth as residential but I don't know if it actually delivers as advertised... If the residential bandwidth that is advertised turns out to be half of what it can actually perform, that will be a problem with two cameras. One may work ok. If you get a camera that has adjustable frame rates and compression ratios in the MPEG4 range, then the video should be ok.

I'm waiting to hear my inquiry from Starband on video delivery issues. SUPPORT is very important in any new surveillance scenario...to me and the client.

Experimentation isn't an option since the dish would be purchased for the sole purpose of surveillance.
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Action combined with knowledge is real power

[SGnET]

The problem is that no one (manufacturer) will accurately share the "math" with you. And even then, there is no guarantee that your customer will be "happy" and won't muck with what you set up.....

Most IP cameras have four settings:
Bit rate: which could be adjusted between 16Kbps and 8Mbps depending on the codec used. these settings can also be effected if you set the encoder/ip camera to VBR-variable bit rate, CBR-constant bit rate, or CFR-constant frame rate.
Key Frame-most common in IP cameras/encoders using MPEG2,4, or H.264 use this. It's basically a MJPEG "snapshot" to give a control to the codec. These can be set from 1-20 seconds depending on the encoder.
Resolution: CIF, 2CIF/2CIF-H, VGA, 4CIF, D1, xMP, etc.
and a fourth no one seems to mention....... Image quality or % compression. Adjusting that last number could really screw things up. Several of the calculators out there gamble that your customer will not find out that they can log into the camera or the software and adjust that number...... Moving it to the left leaves you room for frames in that small bandwidth allocation you have, but really crappy video may be possible. Sliding to the right will make the whole system throw up as you overload it.

There are several newer systems out there that use a "gateway" that will re-encode or transcode streaming video into "push" video. If you are recording locally as you mentioned. My bet would be to go with one of these. Your customer would only be able to see 1 frame every second or two per camera, based only on available bandwidth whatever that is.......but if you are recording locally, when they export the video for "evidence" they will get whatever they set the recording frame rate for-i.e. 4CIF, 30 FPS at 100% image quality. This would be important because I would bet that your network provider cannot promised "sustained" bandwidth at the speeds you are mentioning.