Axis broadens Surveillance Horizons

Axis Communications announced the availability of Axis' Corridor Format in its surveillance solution offering. It allows increased surveillance capabilities to situations and specific applications that require a vertical field of view, like staircases, hallways, aisles, roads, runways and tunnels.

"There is a demand for cameras to monitor vertically orientated areas, with maximum image quality and limited wasted pixels in the image. Axis' Corridor Format provides a unique, ready-made and cost effective solution to an industry wide surveillance challenge," says Erik Frännlid, Director, Product Management, Axis Communications.

Perfect for narrow corridors and aisles

Axis' Corridor Format with a 9:16 aspect ratio, perfect for narrow corridors and aisles. In corridors, hallways and other narrow areas, the traditional landscape format is not the most appropriate solution as it creates video streams whereby a large part of the field of view - specifically the sides of the image - is redundant. In turn this means that the image quality is not maximized and the full area and resolution of the camera's image sensor is not utilized. On top of providing the end-user with surplus images from areas that do not require monitoring, this also results in wasted bandwidth and storage.

Axis' Corridor Format gives a vertically oriented video stream from the camera, perfectly adapted to a narrow monitored area, which maximizes image quality while eliminating typical bandwidth and storage waste of landscape formats. The Corridor Format is useful with modern HDTV network cameras that deliver a 16:9 aspect ratio since the resulting image will have a 9:16 aspect ratio - perfect for narrow hallways, platforms, tunnels or aisles. "This new 9:16 view of the Axis Corridor Format will allow for a high-quality video image of a complete aisle using just a single network camera, even in high racking environments," said Claude Verville, Vice President, Loss Prevention, Safety & Hazmat, Lowe's Companies, Inc.

Axis' Corridor Format is made possible through a combination of two innovative features. First, either the entire Axis camera is installed sideways, or the unique 3-axis lens found in an Axis fixed dome camera is rotated 90 degrees during mounting. Second, the video image is rotated back 90 degrees using the camera's configuration interface - a feature that requires superior processing power and is unique to Axis' network cameras - so that the operator can view image as it was meant to be seen.

Axis' Corridor Format is also supported by the majority of Axis' fixed network cameras, which are enabled through the superior rotation capabilities in Axis' own image processing chips. Axis Corridor Format is supported by industry leading video management software platforms from Axis Application Development Partners, such as Genetec, Milestone Systems, On-Net Surveillance Systems and Exacq Technologies as well as in the next version of AXIS Camera Station, 3.40.