About Videosoft
Description
Videosoft provides efficient and adaptive video compression solutions and bespoke real-time transmission protocols ensuring the most reliable and low latency delivery of streams, even across low bitrate and unreliable networks such as mobile and satellite. Enabling high-quality, real-time remote surveillance & operations in Aviation, Drones, Energy, Government, Maritime & Military arenas worldwide.
Simplicity is at the heart of the Videosoft philosophy. Even though powerful, the setup and operation of the Ultra-low Bandwidth video products is easy, saving time, effort, and resources, enabling you to focus on the operation in hand rather than struggle with technology.
Videosoft’s Ultra-low Bandwidth Video products come in a variety of options…
Hardware based:
- Fully integrated deployable cameras
- Standalone hardware encoders
- External weatherproof kits
Software based:
- Software only encoders for Linux, Android and IOS
- Server side management and viewing software
- Third party VMS integration
- OEM components for third party products
Services:
- SaaS – Hosted services
- Airtime packages
- Support and maintenance programmes
- Bespoke software integrations and developments
Why do I need it?
If you want to utilize live video streaming as part of your operations, then you will face multiple challenges.
How to connect to cameras remotely? What network to use? How will the performance be? What’s the cost of transmission? How about security?
We have a team of highly experienced programmers with extensive backgrounds in developing transmission solutions. Because of our in-depth knowledge and years of experience in this field, Videosoft understands all these challenges. We have built-in features for all our products which gives you the best possible answer solution to each issue. These features have been designed to be ultra simple to use, even for the non technical.
There is a massive gap between getting something ‘up and running’ for proof of concept and a reliable, rugged, secure, industrial-grade solution… Videosoft’s Ultra-low Bandwidth Video range is just that. Serving real-time remote surveillance & operations in Aviation, Drones, Energy, Government, Maritime & Military arenas around the globe, don’t waste time and effort trying – just let the experts help.
Main benefits of using Videosoft:
- Less data usage and more effective transmission
- High-efficiency video compression technology
- Simple, easy to use technology
- Easy configuration
- Plug and play operation
- Cost effective
- Delivers high value at lowest cost
- Less downtime and low maintenance
- Reliable and robust communications
- Increased usability and responsiveness
- Low latency transmission
- Multi data streams and priorities
- Audio, video, and data transmission
- Reduced man-hours with Remote operation, self-healing architecture
- No human intervention needed to maintain service
- Off the shelf integration into third-party platforms
- Flexible and open architecture
- Adaptable & configurable
- Bespoke integrations to back end systems or edge services
- One stop shop
- Everything included from a single supplier
- Responsiveness
- Great customer support from Videosoft
How does it work?
You choose which product is right for you, from fully complete deployable cameras, standalone hardware encoders, or software only encoders.
Each product contains one or more ‘gateways’. You connect one or more cameras or network video streams to the gateway, or in the case of the fully complete kits, the camera is already included and connected for you.
The gateway will then automatically use the required bandwidth and encoding parameters to encode, record and on-demand transmit live real-time video, utilizing the highly optimized and efficient techniques, specifically designed for low bandwith.
Other devices such as audio, GPS antennae, alarm systems, IoT devices and remote-control systems etc can also be connected to a gateway, with the source data being recorded and transmitted live on demand.
All streams and data from each product can be viewed and managed remotely by Videosoft apps running on Windows, Android and IOS or additionally they can be passed to a third-party VMSs for example to be incorporated as part of a wider system.
From Aviation, Drones and Energy to Government, Maritime & Military, each product enables users to connect to streams over local networks as well as other wide area networks such as 3G/4G/5G, Wireless, Satellite. The adaptive bandwidth features of the system ensure efficient and reliable streams in any conditions.
The Videosoft solution is made up of several parts.
- VS Gateway – The VS gateway comes in a variety of forms, it can be software only or software and hardware combined. The gateway is where you connect your video cameras, IoT devices, microphones, I/Os etc. The gateway contains everything necessary to connect and communicate with the device, receive and record data, transmit live to the network and provide real-time viewing and control to and from the remote user for whatever device type is being used. For example, transmitting live video from a CCTV camera to a remote user over the cellular network. We even have ready to use, fully integrated deployable camera systems if you just want to plug and go…
- Videosoft Control Center Service (CCS) – When powered on, each gateway makes a network connection to the Videosoft CCS which is software installed either in the cloud on the Videosoft hosted platform or in the customers own private network. The role of CCS is to communicate with all installed gateways and route the data and video from them to the users who may be using Videosoft clients or third party operations platforms. The CCS efficiently handles aspects such as user authentication, security, licensing, connection management and integrations with third-party solutions, providing a seamless interface from users to the gateways in the field.
- Viewing Platforms – The VS Viewers are apps that run on Windows, Android or IOS. They provide a basic level of functionality as a stand-alone system, presenting real-time live video and video controls, audio, GPS and mapping data, alarms and alerts, remote relay control and environmental properties of the gateways.
The VS Bridge can also provide an interface via MJPEG, JPEG, Onvif or RTSP for integration into third party viewing systems or VMS.
In addition, bespoke integration of other third-party platforms is possible by arrangement.
Apart from video what else can I transmit?
Many device types can be connected to the gateway, not just video, and the list is potentially endless.
The most common devices connected are video and CCTV cameras, audio microphones, GPS tracking antennae and I/O devices.
Serving a range of complex industries, including Aviation, Drones, Energy, Government, Maritime and Military arenas, as well as these standard device types, we can write bespoke interfaces for practically anything you need to connect.
More information about common device types:
Video Device Type
You can connect IP cameras and analogue cameras to the gateway and multiple cameras can be connected at the same time. The gateway can live stream in full high resolution quality and for the ultimate in low bitrate, low latency, real-time video streaming there is the option to transcode the video on the fly. This leads to more reliable and cost-efficient video transmission for any given network situation. Multiple simultaneous streams can be sent from a single gateway and at all times full, high quality video is being recorded locally for later retrieval.
Audio Device Type
Microphones or cameras with microphones connected to the gateway will be recorded locally and transmitted live on demand. This provides one-way or two-way communications, effectively providing listening, audio challenge or two-way conversation capabilities.
GPS
The addition of a GPS antenna or GPS device and the gateway will record the localization data and stream real-time location data to the CCS. The viewing client can then see a map of where the gateway is in real time, moving or static.
Alarm Type
Add alarm inputs to the gateway to record bookmarks of events and send live alarms to the control center for processing. Each alarm input will result in a bookmark or event being recorded to allow easy review and retrieval at a later time.
IOT Sensor Type
Plug in any environmental sensor type or data capture device, and the gateway will record data and a bookmark of events and stream live sensor data back to the control center.
Analytics Type
Utilizing data or video analytics at the edge provides a compelling capability. The gateway records events and data generated by the analytics, streams data and alerts to the control center for processing.
Remote Control Service Type
If you want to remotely control a remote system with low latency and with good responsiveness and reliability, then the gateway provides this link, with audio and/or video. This can be serial I/O or IP I/O communications or a mix of both.
Additional bespoke interfaces can be added – contact us for more information if you have a service type you would like to add.
What is ultra-low bandwidth streaming?
The streaming of live video can consume massive amounts of bandwidth and whilst this can be fine when using a conventional wired ‘broadband connection’, when it comes to streaming video over satellite or cellular networks the story can be very different.
Bandwidth over satellite or cellular networks is often very limited but even when it is available it can be very expensive. This is where Videosoft solutions can help.
At Videosoft, we use the term ultra-low bandwidth to differentiate ourselves from other streaming technologies where low bandwidth might be considered 2 to 3 megabits per second, and, although we can stream at these bitrates (and anything above) our expertise means that we can stream ultra-low bandwidth that we define as between 1kbps to 500kbps.
As a result, our technology has opened opportunities to stream live video for many customers who previously thought it was either too expensive or just not achievable – including complex Aviation, Energy, Government, Maritime, Military and Drone operations worldwide.
See what ultra-low bandwidth video streaming can do for you…