Which video compression do you use?

[SIW Editor]

Charlie Pierce, our columnist on CCTV, and a guy who's been around about every block there is when it comes to designing, installing and using video surveillance, recently published a look at the top digital compression schemes, like H.263, MPEG, JPEG, JPEG 2000, plus the new proprietary text-based ones and others.

His article is at http://www.securityinfowatch.com/article/article.jsp?siteSection=430&id=6731

Now, just out of curiosity, for anyone who's either using these compression methods at their facilities, or for those of you on the integration side who are recommending products of a certain method, why have you gone to a particular compression format? Tell us about what you're using. Are you having problems with image quality and if so, what are the problems you're facing?

[NetworkCameraReviews.com]

I personally choose MPEG-4.

The reason is the smaller filesize. Most of my clients are using IP Cameras remotely and record remotely. When you have a slow Internet connection or you are recording multiple cameras remotely you need a smaller frame filesize. MPEG-4 is better than MJPEG for filesize because the compression is better and MPEG-4 only updates motion in the video frame and not the whole video frame.

I want to research more into H.264 as I hear it is a new compression method and is better than MPEG-4. Don't quote me on that, it's just what I heard ;). I'm going to research H.264 to find out the truth.