Analytics plugin integration

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Ivan Benovic

Hello,

We have facial recognition platform and we are planning to integrate with Nx witness server by analytics plugin. When exploring how could this be done, we came across multiple possible approaches:

  1. Sending raw frames from camera plugin into our remote analytics platform.
  2. Sending uncompressed frames from camera plugin into our remote analytics platform (we would need to implement custom decoding ?)
  3. Process same camera stream by our platform and synchronize timestamps when sending metadata to nx.

We are leaning towards approach 1, but we are afraid of network bandwidth issue, because each frame can have ~7MB. Do you guys have some preferable approach or can you tell how other integrators are doing it ?

Thank you for your answer.

Ivan.

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    Ivan Benovic

    We have discussed how we are planning to integrate and I think we found solution that would solve our issues.

    But it would be great to hear integration approaches from other successful integrations as well.

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    Evgeny Balashov

    Have you considered pulling RTSP stream from Nx Server, and then sending metadata back using the plugin?

    This approach might require less development and will create less overhead.

     

    We do not recommend moving forward with approaches 2 and 3: option 2 will be ineffective, and option 3 will be really hard to configure and scale.

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    Ivan Benovic

    Hi,

    we were no aware of that possibility. Can you please direct us to some documentation or something that describes integration via rtsp stream consumption from NX server ?

    If we are able to connect to rtsp stream from Nx, how do we synchronize frame timestamp ? Nx seems to require exact time stamp when metadata are sent back to index them properly.

    Thank you for quick response.

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    Evgeny Balashov

    You can look for onvif_replay parameter in RTSP streaming API documentation, this parameter enables global timestamp in the RTSP stream.

    You can also find some details in the "Timestamp Streaming" section in this article: https://support.networkoptix.com/hc/en-us/articles/360044549093-How-does-Nx-Server-RTSP-Streaming-Work-

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    Ivan Benovic

    When looking at 

    rtsp://<serverip>:<port>/<cameraid>?onvif_replay=1

    Which port number should i use ?

     

     

     

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    Evgeny Balashov

    By default, the server allocates the port 7001. You can check details if you right click in the server in the left tree, then choose 'open server web page' - it will open server web admin interface in the browser, and you will be able to see the port in the URL

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    Ivan Benovic
    • Edited

    I have camera created which is working in NX. port is 7001 as you said.

    Using this connection string:

    rtsp://prod-integ-1w:7001/468f0843-e242-7cfc-f4b0-e5c89cc2f860?onvif_replay=1

    I am trying to connect to stream via VLC, but when VLC is requesting username/password

    Even after setting correct credentials (using same credentials as for real IP camera rtsp stream) it can not connect. How does authorization works when consuming this NX rtsp stream ? Can I pass credentials into url somehow ? Or should I use different credentials ?

     

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    Ivan Benovic

    Ok, I got it. I needed to use credentials for nx instead of camera.

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    Ivan Benovic
    • Edited

    Do you think that consuming RTSP stream from Nx has such a low delay that we can manage to send metadata back to Nx under 2 seconds so overlayed bounding boxes will be displayed in real time ?

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    Maxim Podstrechny

    I think yes, should be fine.

    Anyway, you can always check how big the delay is in your particular case by simultaneosly opening a stream directly from a camera and a stream from Nx Server and calculating the delay.

     

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    Ivan Benovic

    When viewing Nx stream from VLC (with no caching) we observe roughly same live feed when viewing stream via Nx client. Therefore I think this kind of integration is not feasible when overlaying bounding boxes need to be rendered in real time. Am I right or do I miss something ?

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    Maxim Podstrechny

    Sorry, I did not get your point. Why is it an issue?

     

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    Ivan Benovic
    • Edited

    I do not know if this is issue yet, but I have big suspicion that it could be (according to  delay measurements of live preview between Nx client vs VLC that was joined of rtsp stream from Nx).

    Issue can be that rtsp stream from Nx will come to our system later or in ~ same time when is rendered in client. Therefore metadata related to frame_timestamp that we send to Nx will arrive after this frame was already rendered by Nx client.

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    Andrey Terentyev

    Hello Ivan,

    This thread is worth reading. It covers a situation similar to yours.

    https://support.networkoptix.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360038642973-HTTP-Generic-Event-timestamp-synchronization

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