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Megapixel in banking

The Absa Group is one of South Africa’s largest financial services groups, offering a complete range of banking and wealth management products and services. Absa Bank’s business is primarily in South Africa, and the group has equity holdings in banks in Mozambique and Tanzania. Absa is a subsidiary of Barclays Bank.

Absa Bank’s objective was to streamline its processes and reduce costs while maintaining a clear focus on the individual customer’s experience. Its decision to deploy megapixel network cameras in a proof-of-concept video surveillance installation was based on leveraging the greater system efficiencies, functionality and superior image quality of megapixel technology.

The security surveillance system employs Arecont Vision’s 2- and 3-megapixel cameras positioned behind teller stations to closely monitor transactions between bank employees and clients. In addition, Arecont Vision’s 8-megapixel, 180-degree and 360-degree panoramic cameras watch over customer queues, automated teller machines (ATMs) and the general banking hall.

Each Arecont Vision camera at the Absa installation is connected to a power-over-Ethernet network switch that serves as the network video connection and also as the power source to the camera. Cameras are recorded on Luxriot network video recorders. The system is monitored locally by authorised management personnel.

Arecont Vision’s AV3105 3-megapixel camera uses a 0,5-inch CMOS sensor to provide 2048 x 1536 pixel progressive scan images at up to 15 frames per second (fps). The camera is built with Arecont Vision’s massively-parallel MegaVideo technology, providing image processing at billions of operations per second. It can output multiple image formats of larger areas to allow simultaneous viewing of the full resolution field of view and regions of interest. The AV2105 2-megapixel camera provides 1600 x 1200 pixel video at up to 24 fps, with light sensitivity of 0,1 lux at F1.4. Features include forensic zooming on archived video, region-of-interest views, as well as image cropping and motion detection.

The panoramic view cameras used in the Absa proof-of-concept installation are the 180-degree Arecont Vision AV8185 and 360-degree Arecont Vision AV8365 8-megapixel cameras.

The proof-of-concept at Absa Bank has demonstrated that megapixel cameras are suitable for applications in the banking environment and represent a significant upgrade in system functionality compared to standard-resolution cameras. In addition to lower bandwidth and storage requirements, megapixel cameras can dramatically decrease costs related to other elements of a system, such as fewer software licences, less cabling, fewer lenses, and a decrease in man-hours.

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