World Class Performance

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With Ethiris 8.0 we take some giant steps in performance. The new Player in Ethiris Client is up to 100 times faster compared to previous versions and now supports up to 64 simultaneous cameras. The basic components in the Ethiris suite (Ethiris Server, Ethiris Client and Ethiris Admin) are now all 64-bit applications, which give several advantages. The maximum number of connected cameras on license level Premium has been doubled to 200. The client configurations are now handled by Ethiris Server. Ethiris’ authorization system has been extended with Ethiris’ users and user groups. Our work with camera support continues, now Ethiris has support for ONVIF events and we have simplified the use of the UDP protocol. We have introduced further enhancements in Ethiris Script with several new possibilities.

Enhanced performance

Ethiris has always been exceptionally good at storing large amounts of video in a fast and secure way. Recently, we optimized export of video from Ethiris, where the new export feature in certain cases is 1 000 times faster compared to previous versions.

Now, the last piece of the puzzle falls into place when we have optimized the Player in Ethiris Client. The result is that playback and retrieval of video from Ethiris Server is up to 100 times faster compared to previous versions of Ethiris. Apart from a better user experience, the new optimization also has let us increase the number of simultaneous cameras in the Player from 16 to 64.

With Ethiris 8.0, all three steps: store video, get/playback video and export video are optimized and have extremely good performance.

64-bit applications

Ethiris Server, Ethiris Admin and Ethiris Client are now 64-bit applications. The biggest advantage with this is that the applications can access large amounts of memory. Thus Ethiris can utilize a computer with much internal memory. The memory can for example be used for prealarm bufferts in Ethiris Server to increase the prealarm time or for buffering of recorded video in the Player to be able to watch more cameras simultaneously.

Ethiris Admin and Ethiris Client are still available in 32-bit versions for running on 32-bit operating systems. Ethiris Server on the other hand, is only available as a 64-bit application and thus can only run on a 64-bit operating system. Our assessment is that the absolute majority of our users today use 64-bit operating systems.
 

More connected cameras
Along with the possibility to use more memory for prealarm buffers, we have doubled the maximum number of connected cameras to each Ethiris Server, from 100 to 200, for license level Premium. The maximum numbers of connected cameras for the lower license levels are unchanged, i.e. 20 for Basic, 40 for Extended and 60 for Advanced. 
 
Client configurations in Ethiris Server
From version 8 of Ethiris, all client configurations are handled by Ethiris Server. Before, each client configuration has been stored in a separate file without any overall order of the files.

The new system means that all client configurations are located in one or several Ethiris Servers. Each Ethiris Client can browse the network for available Ethiris Servers and list current client configurations in each server. You can define required user groups for client configurations, which means that a user has to log on to get access to the configuration.

If you run an Ethiris Cluster, the client configurations are automatically distributed between the server members in the cluster. A client can load its configuration from any member.

In Ethiris Admin there are new functions for handling client configurations, such as for example import of earlier versions of client configurations or to copy client configurations to other servers.


Native Ethiris users and groups
The authorization system is an important part of a VMS that often handles sensitive information that should not come into the wrong hands. Ethiris has for a long time been using Windows’ authorization system to protect information in Ethiris.
 
Now, we have added Ethiris native users and user groups to, above all in an Ethiris Cluster, make things easier. In Ethiris Cluster, the native Ethiris users and user groups are automatically synchronized within the cluster.
 
Each Ethiris user can be added to one or several groups. Just as before, a group can be associated with various user operations to control who has access to what in Ethiris. Now you can select both Windows’ user groups and Ethiris’ native user groups to connect with user operations.


ONVIF Events
Kentima is investing heavily in ONVIF and now we have added further functionality. Cameras with support for ONVIF can send notifications about various events using so called ONVIF events. It is typically different types of analytic information, such as for example LPR (License Plate Recognition) where the license plate number can be sent to Ethiris via ONVIF events.

It is a very generic system where Ethiris don’t need to know in advance what types of events the camera can send notifications about. In Ethiris Script each camera object and also the collection object ‘Cameras’ has got an event called ‘onEvent’. This event is called whenever a camera sends notifications via ONVIF events to Ethiris together with information about the actual event. This information can be used for taking action in Ethiris, such as for example starting recording or steering a PTZ camera to a certain position.


Easier use of UDP
Before, you had to manually open ports in a fire wall when you use the UDP protocol for a camera in Ethiris to allow incoming UDP traffic from the camera. Now, Ethiris tries to solve this automatically by using so called “hole punching”. This makes things easier in several ways; You don’t have to manually open the ports in a fire wall and you don’t have to keep track of which ports are being used for the different cameras.


Script enhancements
Apart from ’onEvent’ there are several other news in Ethiris Script.
 
A new function, ’SaveImage’, exists for each camera object. It is used for saving the latest image that has been sent to Ethiris on disk.
 
A completely new ’Date’ object has been added. The new Date object facilitates various handling of dates, such as adding/removing a certain number of years/months/days/hours/minutes/seconds and/or milliseconds to/from a date. The object also contains functions for formatting a date and handling of UTC.
 
A new event, ’onDataChange’, has been added to global variables. The event is called each time the value of the variable is changed.


Other news
Ethiris 8.0 contains a completely new camera simulator that can be used for test and demo. The new simulator can handle MJPEG, MPEG-4 and H.264. You can easily create your own simulated video clips by exporting video in Ethiris’ own export format.