Faster Frame Rates on GigE with Compression Beyond

Does the bandwidth of Gigabit Ethernet limit the performance of your system?

Benefit from more efficient bandwidth usage with Basler's new in-camera feature Compression Beyond (available from Q4 / 2019 on ace 2 Pro).

Maximum GigE with minimum effort: Compression Beyond

Gigabit Ethernet for Machine Vision (GigE Vision) Gigabit Ethernet for Machine Vision (GigE Vision) offers many advantages in the field of professional image processing. For example, multi-camera systems can be optimally implemented and distances of up to 100 meters can be bridged with cost-effective network cables. The data rate of 100 MB/s is perfectly sufficient for many image processing applications.

Nevertheless, the current trend towards higher resolutions and faster frame rates is increasingly leading to the desire for higher data rates. However, the leap to ten times the data rate made possible by new interface technologies such as CoaXPress 2.0 and 10GigE is often not necessary for these applications and would be associated with significantly higher costs.

The solution: a more efficient use of bandwidth. By compressing data directly in the camera frame rates in the range of two to three times become reality - depending on the respective image content.

How does Compression Beyond work?

The image data is compressed directly in the camera using a powerful FPGA.

The basic principle of lossless compression of image data is based on the use of redundancies. Similar to the previously widespread Morse codes, the compression of image data also involves so-called coding. This means that codes are assigned to individual messages or data blocks. More frequently occurring bit patterns receive shorter codes, less frequently occurring bit patterns receive longer codes. On average, the amount of data can be optimized by this redundancy reduction.

As a result, images that contain many redundancies are more compressible. The actual performance of the compression depends on the respective image content.

Encoding via Basler Codebook

These encodings of the data information are carried out using codebooks. The Compression Beyond feature is based on a codebook developed by Basler and optimized for Machine Vision applications and is therefore unique in the market. The principle of entropy coding enables lossless compression of image data. The image quality is therefore maintained in full, even though the amount of data is considerably reduced at the same time.

In addition, the image data can also be saved in compressed format. This saves storage capacity and consequently costs.

Compression Beyond is available on the following camera models (from Q4 / 2019):