PICOLO U4 H.264 PCI-104 Overview
Picolo U4 H.264 PCI-104 is a ruggedized video capture board featuring real-time H.264 on-board compression for 4 video channels along with high-quality audio capabilities. Thanks to a high resistance to extreme temperatures, shocks, vibrations and humidity, Picolo U4 H.264 PCI-104 is particularly well suited for embedded security systems for rail and road transportation, police vehicles equipment or any mobile or outdoor video-surveillance application. The ruggedized characteristics of the board are also appropriate for video-surveillance systems installed in extreme industrial environments.
The on-board decoders and processor perform on-the-fly data processing: scaling, fixed cropping, contrast, brightness, saturation, color conversion, mask or caption insertion, decimation and storage format. The acquired streams, one compressed and one uncompressed, with different configurations, can be sent from the frame grabber memory to two different memory locations, such as the computer main memory for storage, and the graphic board memory for preview and display.
The following lists the main features of the board.
System
- Ruggedized cards supporting EN50155, EN50155:2007 for Class 3 and EN61373 standards
- Temperature range from -25°C to +85°C (-13°F to +185°F)
- Sustained vibration and shocks
- High humidity levels
- Interface
- PCI-104 compliant add-in module
- Connectors
- 1 VIDEO 7 x 2-pins 0.1" pitch right-angled header
- 1 AUDIO 5 x 2-pins 0.1" pitch right-angled header
- 1 I/O 10 x 2-pins 0.1" pitch right-angled header
- 1 PCI-104 4 x 30-pins 2-mm pitch stackable connector
- Temperature monitor
Video Capture
Video decoder/formatter - analog video decoding
- Multi-standard PAL-B/D/G/H/I, or NTSC-M
- 4 independent video acquisition channels
- Independently programmable frame rate and acquisition parameters for each video acquisition channels
- Image size:
- 4CIF: 704x576 (PAL) or 704x480 (NTSC)
- 2CIF: 704x288 (PAL) or 704x240 (NTSC)
- CIF: 352x288 (PAL) or 352x240 (NTSC)
- QCIF: 176x144 (PAL) or 176x112 (NTSC)
- Contrast, brightness and saturation controls available
- Video presence and video standard detection, overlay caption text, privacy masking regions
- Image size:
On-Board Compression
Video encoder
- H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10) Baseline profile (Level 3)
- 2 simultaneous and independently configurable output streams for each video channel
- One independently configurable H.264 encoded streams
- Full resolution and full frame rate possible up to 2.0 Mbps (average) per video acquisition channel
- Resolution settings: 4CIF, 2CIF, CIF, QCIF
- Configurable reduction of the frame rate
- Configurable bit rate control: CPQ, CBR, VBR
- One raw uncompressed stream - subject to PCI bus available bandwidth
- Resolution settings: 4CIF, 2CIF, CIF, QCIF
- Configurable reduction of the frame rate
- Image storage formats available: YUV420PL (native format) and Y8
- Other formats possible: YUV422PL, YUV422, RGB15, RGB16, RGB24 and RGB32
- Full resolution and full frame rate possible up to 2.0 Mbps (average) per video acquisition channel
- Data transfer
- High-performance DMA transfer
- Scattered transfer
Audio Capture
- 4 independent and high-quality audio acquisition channels
- Line-level analog audio input signals
- Selectable audio formats:
- 64 kbps G.711 µ-law, 64 kbps G.711 A-law
- Linear PCM @ 8, 16, 22.05, 44.1 and 48 kHz
- Audio-video synchronization supported by accurate time stamping of audio and video data
Video Pass-Through Selector
Any of 4 video inputs, or the cascade video input, can be routed to video output.
I/O sub-system
- 4 solid-state relay outputs
- 4 contact-closure inputs
- 1 WATCHDOG output