What is the real advantage I can get from H.265 IP camera?

"Should I choose the IP camera with H.265 compression?" "Can I add a new H.265 IP camera to my h.264 system?" We have been running some tests and found out this answer.

The test system includes 4 units IP cameras (4-megapixel each), one NVR plus one 10/100mbps PoE switch. Each IP camera delivers two independent video stream - main stream and sub stream. The NVR was getting both streams to maximize the total bandwidth loading. It is important to install hard drive in the NVR, otherwise, the NVR only can receive single stream from each camera which reduces lots of bandwidth. The total bandwidth is like 4 persons use your network watching ultra high resolution movie at the same time. The data peak is always the challenge. If there is suddenly significant change on the scene, the data peak could impact the network transmission. We didn't see any delay or frame loss in the test.

The second test is we streamed two units 4-megapixel IP camera to the NVR. the first camera used h.265; the second camera used h.264. Shooting at the same place, enable continuous recording on the NVR. We try to find out how much hard disk space saving from h.265 camera. This test also tells us we can simple add h.265 IP camera to h.264 system, but we need to select h.264 compression, making h.265 IP camera working at h.264 compression.

The h.265 technology can save your space and keep more footage in the same hard driver. The scalable video compression is able to divide a single image to 64x64 blocks, instead of 16x16 blocks in h.264. Your existed network infrastructure can even feel the bandwidth increasing with H.265 IP camera. You just need to replace a new NVR which supports H.265 compression.

We find out it has one issue working with H.265 technology today. You will experience the issue when you watch the h.265 video on your PC or mobile. The PC industry still doesn't support hardware decoding h.265 yet. It means displaying H.265 video is going to eat a lot of CPU recourse. Fortunately, most of IP camera can deliver two independent video streams at the same time. You can select main stream in H.265 for recording in NVR, and select sub stream in H.264 for PC or mobile display. This solution compromises the remote monitoring a little bit, low down to 720p or D1. However, when you watch multi channel in the same monitor, it doesn't tell much different. More important, you have your footage recordings with best details. Intel has plans to release next generation CPU with h.265 support. After then, you can watch high resolution h.265 video in computer. The powerful CPU is always required to display multiple channel High definition video, like what we need for H.264 today.

H.265 technology is the trend. I remember my roommate showed me a piece of h.264 video clip demo 10 years ago in the university. In that time, the mainstream technology was MPEG. i was impressed by the image quality over the files size, only 8MB around, similar size as two song in MP3. Today, I think the tip point could be moving faster, because the h.265 technology is ready in IP camera before the PC industry.