Network video recorder cluster and method of operation
View Patent ↗A video recorder cluster for use in a video surveillance system includes multiple recorder nodes that can each participate in processing of user-specified operations such as playback, recording, and analysis of the video streams. The video recorder cluster determines the required resources for processing the video data of streams, determines the available resources on each of the recorder nodes, and forwards the video data of the streams to recorder nodes that either include the required resources or include a preferred set of available resources in accordance with the required resources. The video recorder cluster presents a single cluster address for client user devices to access the resources of the video recorder cluster, thereby enabling the video recorder cluster to appear as a single virtual network video recorder to clients.
1. A video surveillance system, comprising:
at least one surveillance camera that captures video data and transmits streams including the video data over a network;
a user device sending a request message, where the request message includes a descriptor of a video stream and specifies an operation to be performed on the video stream and a transcode resolution of the stream; and
a video recorder cluster receiving the streams and the request message and including:
recorder nodes;
a cluster controller determining which recorder node includes the video stream within its internal storage resource, and designating that recorder node as a source recorder node for the request message and remaining recorder nodes as remote recorder nodes;
wherein the source recorder node determines resources required to execute the operations upon the video stream based on characteristics of the video stream and the requested transcode resolution, the source recorder node sends an internal resource request message to the remote recorder nodes of the cluster to determine resources within each of the remote recorder nodes, the source recorder forwards the request message to one of the remote recorder nodes and establishes an internal video stream for sending the video data stream to that remote recorder node, and the remote recorder node executing the operations on the video data stream.
2. The video surveillance system as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the user device includes a video management application that sends the request message including references to one or more streams and one or more operations to execute upon the streams.
3. The video surveillance system of claim 1 , wherein the cluster controller is a software process running on one of the recorder nodes.
4. The video surveillance system of claim 1 , wherein the cluster controller has an assigned cluster address, and wherein user devices send messages to the cluster address.
5. A method, comprising:
at least one surveillance camera capturing video data and transmitting streams including the video data over a network;
receiving the streams from at least one surveillance camera at a video recorder cluster;
a user device sending a request message to the cluster, where the message includes a descriptor of a video stream and specifies an operation to be performed on the video stream and a transcode resolution of the stream;
a cluster controller receiving the message and determining which recorder node includes the video stream within its internal storage resource, and designating the recorder node as a source recorder node for the request message and remaining recorder nodes as remote recorder nodes;
the source recorder node determining resources required to execute the operations upon the video stream, based on characteristics of the video stream, and the requested transcode resolution;
the source recorder node sending an internal resource request message to the remote recorder nodes of the cluster to determine resources within each of the remote recorder nodes;
the source recorder node forwarding the request message to one of the remote recorder nodes and establishing an internal video stream for sending the video data stream to that remote recorder node; and
the remote recorder node executing the operations on the video data stream.
6. The video surveillance system as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the video recorder cluster distributes playback and recording operations among the recorder nodes to be performed on the streams.
7. The video surveillance system as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the video recorder cluster distributes analysis operations among the recorder nodes to be performed on the streams in which the video data of the stream is analyzed on an analytics system.
8. The video surveillance system as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the video recorder cluster distributes transcode operations among the recorder nodes to be performed on the streams in which the streams are transcoded to a specified transcode resolution.
9. The method as claimed in claim 5 , wherein the video recorder cluster distributes playback and recording operations among the recorder nodes to be performed on the streams.
10. The method as claimed in claim 5 , wherein the video recorder cluster distributes analysis operations among the recorder nodes to be performed on the streams in which the video data of the stream is analyzed on an analytics system.
11. The method as claimed in claim 5 , wherein the video recorder cluster distributes transcode operations among the recorder nodes to be performed on the streams in which the streams are transcoded to a specified transcode resolution.
12. The method as claimed in claim 5 , further comprising a video management application of the user device sending the request message including references to one or more streams and one or more operations to execute upon the streams.
13. The method as claimed in claim 5 , further comprising the cluster controller being a software process running on one of the recorder nodes.
14. The method as claimed in claim 5 , further comprising the remote recorder node sending one or more response streams including the video data to the user device.