What is ONVIF?
To put it simply, ONVIF will create a communication standard between video surveillance devices and other physical security areas. The goal is to achieve interoperability between network video products, even if they are manufa ctured by different companies. The standardized interfaces that ONVIF creates will promote effective interoperability of IP-based physical security products that are conformant to ONVIF standards.
ONVIF has different versions of compatibility that dictate which features can be integrated into the system. In some cases, a camera can have basic video compatibility but lack the ability to do more advanced features such as motion detection. All of our IP products are 100% ONVIF compliant with Profile S for IP security cameras.
- Cameras for the new Mx6 platform are completely ONVIF-capable and already fulfill many basic functions of the global open interface standard. A firmware update scheduled for upcoming release will aim for complete ONVIF compatibility (www.onvif.org).
- ONVIF was founded in 2008 by a collaborative effort between Axis Communications, Bosch Security Systems, and Sony Corporation. It is a standardized protocol for different network devices to transmit data to one another. The ONVIF specification ensures compatibility between IP-based security products. Why the ONVIF specification matter?
ONVIF as an organization was started by Axis Communication, Bosch Security Systems and Sony. ONVIF membership is open to manufacturers, software developers, consultants, system integrators, and all end users and other interest groups that wish to participate in this forum. So far ONVIF has 480 active members, including prominent companies such as ASSA ABLOY AB, Canon Inc. , Huawei Technologies Co., Panasonic Corporation etc.
How does ONVIF relate to physical security?
Essentially, ONVIF enables the users to choose their ideal surveillance device without worrying about it being incompatible with video management softwares. When users make decisions regarding security devices, they are not no longer locked in to a specific brand, since ONVIF CCTV and ONVIF IP cameras are conformant to a unified standard. Take a realistic example to see how ONVIF can be applied in real life scenarios:
When the police department of a city is trying to determine which surveillance cameras to purchase and install, it faces a dilemma: cameras with different functions and features are needed to ensure the comprehensive surveillance of the city. Various features such as strength, accuracy, and angles are required, and they are provided by different vendors. The cost might be prohibited and the process of analyzing and integrating those video data are potentially complex as well.
With ONVIF standards, however, the police department can choose the devices freely among different manufacturers and vendors as long as they are ONVIF conformant. Products from different manufacturers can be used under the same system since they ‘'speak the same language''. Devices such as ONVIF IP camera and ONVIF CCTV are totally compatible to one universal standard, so there will be no issue for such devices to communicate with each other. In this way, the police department has a wide range of vendors and manufacturers to choose from, without spending extra money and human resources on the software part of video management process.
How is ONVIF used in practice?
ONVIF is used widely in practice covering various areas of the video product and network interface fields:
● IP configuration ● Device discovery ● Device management ● Media configuration ● Real time viewing ● Event handling ● PTZ camera control ● Video analytics ● Security
How can I find ONVIF compatible devices?
If you are looking for ONVIF compatible devices in general , simply go to https://www.ONVIF.org/conformant-products/ , and in the Application Type drop-down menu, select Device , the start the Search , a full list of conformant devices are presented. Notice that the ONVIF Conformant Product List is the authoritative source for determining whether a product is ONVIF Conformant.
If you are looking for ONVIF camera list specifically, simply type Camera in the Product Name column, and start the Search . In the ONVIF camera list, the names, profiles, approved dates, as well as the manufacturers of the cameras are listed.
Below is an image of two ONVIF conformant cameras, models Axis dome cameras 212PTZ and M3005-V respectively.
Based on HIS Markit research and investigation, over 66 million network cameras will be shipped globally, greatly outpace the shipment of HD CCTV cameras (28 million). Although the growth becomes slower than past years due to the global gloomy economy and the aggressive price competition, the market research company forecasts that the world market for video surveillance will grow by over 7% in 2016.
Apparently, the maturing network camera standard and protocols make a great contribution to the fast development and market growth of IP surveillance products. PSIA and ONVIF are two major standards/protocols that universally adopted by IP surveillance products. On one hand, these standards has reduced the cost and complexity of IP video surveillance, also solved the interoperatability between different network devices.
Back to 2009, Ajit Dubey, senior project manager of the Embedded System Group wrote that Interoperability was a key challenge for security professionals managing PTZ, network configuration and legacy compatibility. While IP provided the benefits of connectivity, wider uptake faced a number of challenges. Manufacturers had a selection of video coding standards, which each had different profiles. There was more fragmentation in streaming protocols, storage formats and video analytics. Configuring PTZ functionality was also difficult between third-party video devices.
1#. What's PSIA?
PSIA, its full name is Physical Security Interoperability Alliance, it was formed in 2008 with mission to create standards-based interfaces for physical security hardware and software platforms. The alliance pursue the goal of bringing interoperability to network based security systems. This alliance has more than 50 physical security manufacturers and system integrator such as Honywell, Tyco, United Technologies, Milestone, Allegion etc.
2#. What's ONVIF?
ONVIF also founed in 2008, ONVIF is the abbreviation of open network video interface forum, it's an open organization led by Sony, Axis, Bosch. After 8 years development, the ONVIF becomes the universal standard intending to solve the connection and interopratebility problems between different IP based security products. The organization currently has Profile S, Profile C, Profile G, Profile Q etc different specifications dedicated to different applications. More than 1000 manufacturers joined the ONVIF membership.
As we previously mentioned, PSIA and ONVIF are main standards being used by different IP security products. However, ONVIF owns the largest group of manufacturers, there are millions products are compliant with ONVIF products, among them about 5000 products are certified by ONVIF. It seems PSIA will be phased out because lacking the support by manufacturers. However, some companies such as Hikvision providing the products are compliant with both ONVIF and PSIA standards.
3#. What's difference between PSIA and ONVIF?
Since both standards share the same mission and goal. Not only manufacturers and integrator seem to be suffering from indecision, many users don't know the difference between them.
According to the article written by Ajit Dubey, PSIA had defined specifications which were more general for the broader physical security market including access control, storage and more. While the ONVIF seems to concentrate on IP video streaming, particularly network cameras and video analytics. So, the ONVIF made the specification intending to solve the interface problem of video stream transceiver. The specification criteria includes device discovery, device configuration, events, PTZ control, video analytics, push notification and video streaming etc functions.
Ajit Dubey also listed the technology differences between ONVIF and PSIA, which may drive the adoption of standards in the IP surveillance market.
1. PSIA uses the representational state transfer (REST) architecture. On the other side, the ONVIF specification is built upon open platform web service standards such as XML (for data description syntax), Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP, SOAP 1.2) to transfer message and WSDL to describe the services. Almost all Web services are using REST today, it's simple to use compared to SOAP and only requires less overhead than SOAP.
What Is Onvif Compatible Device
2. ONVIF can provide 100-percent interoperability between compliant products as far as device discovery is concerned, this dues to using the Microsoft-centric technology (WS Discovery) for its device discovery mechanism. This means all ONVIF compliant network devices must adopt the WS Discovery method.
PSIA offers several different mechanisms for device discovery, including Bonjour, uPnP, Zeroconf . While PSIA provides more flexibility to adopt mechanisms for device discovery, However, this also leads to complexity in interoperability for connecting PSIA-compliant products. E.g, a PSIA-compliant camera supporting Bonjour cannot be connected with a PSIA-compliant video management system supporting UPnP, despite both the camera and video management system being PSIA-compliant.
3. PSIA can not provide 100 percent interoperability for PSIA specifications compared to ONVIF specifications. The reason is PSIA uses generalized message format for event and notifications, while the ONVIF's event notification is based on the WS-Notify framework.
4. PSIA provides an easy interface for analytics integration compared to rigid ONVIF specifications.
5. Due to its REST-based architecture, PSIA's implementation is lightweight compared to ONVIF's SOAP-based architecture implementation.
4#. What's CGI and ISAPI?
Onvif Compatible Cameras
Except above mentioned two main standards, some manufacturers produce the IP cameras support CGI and ISAPI. Both CGI and ISAPI are used for web development. CGI, that's common gateway interface typically runs on Linux OS, it's a script running on server to interact with client's HTML webpage. CGI is the one of important WWW technologies, it performs as a bridge to link the application program (CGI program) and web server. It's also a specification to transfer messages between program and web server. By contrast, ISAPI is an N-tier API of Internet Information Services (IIS) runs on Windows OS. The ISAPI is the abbreviation of Internet Server Application Programming Interface.
When using the CGI protocol, the users can type the commands: http://{ipaddress}:{port)/snapshot.cgi?user=admin&pwd=password to config the snapshot setting. Typically, the IP camera manufacturers will provide users a document to list all the CGI commands that the IP camera can support. Other network cameras may support the ISAPI, users can use the commands such as http://{ipaddress}:{port)/snapshoot.exe?user=admin&pwd=password or http://{ipaddress}:{port)/snapshoot.dll?user=admin&pwd=password to access the camera's snapshot setting.
Obviously, by using the CGI and ISAPI, the camera can provide much more flexibility to users, especially when they want to achieve certain function based on their exclusive requirement or integrate the camera to different security systems.
5#. What's GB/T28181 standard?
Chinese government (Ministry of Public Security) released the GB/T28181 standard to the video surveillance market with purpose to solve the monopoly of ONVIF. GB/T28181 is the code name for the , it's released dated back to 2012. Many Chinese network video surveillance products support GB/T28181 standard along with ONVIF. Since it's a national standard to Chinese products, unlikely this standard will be adopted globally.
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