This is an author's version of the paper. Original version: Proceedings of AFRICON 2013, Pointe-Aux-Piments, Mauritius, IEEE, 2013, pp. 1-6 The final publication is available at ieeexplore.ieee.org: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/AFRCON.2013.6757671 Some Remarks on Choosing Video Stream Encoding for Remote Video Verification on Android Mobile Devices Dariusz Mrozek, Bartlomiej Buk Institute of Informatics Silesian University of Technology Gliwice, Poland Dariusz.Mrozek@polsl.pl Bożena Malysiak-Mrozek Institute of Informatics, IBM Competence Center Silesian University of Technology Gliwice, Poland Bozena.Malysiak-Mrozek@polsl.pl Abstract— Video verification on mobile devices, such as cell phones and tablet PCs, allows users to remotely check what is happening in a particular place without the need to constantly monitor the site and record video from the camera. This requires appropriate stream encoding to be applied. Unfortunately, existing encoding standards, widely used in video monitoring, have several drawbacks. In the paper, we show some remarks on choosing video stream encoding for video verification on Android-based mobile devices. Results of performed tests on bandwidth usage have shown that encoding based on passing static frames in JPEG format translates very well into an environment where the camera’s resolution is often higher than the mobile device screen. Keywords—video monitoring, video surveillance, video verifica- tion, mobile devices, mobile phones, video stream encoding, Android I. INTRODUCTION In CCTV (Closed-Circuit Television) the concept of video verification is that of a mechanism that allows security personnel to verify, whether an alarm signal is a false positive. Most commonly this means that a burglar alarm has some cameras installed, the cameras observe the areas protected by the alarm system’s sensors, and whenever there is an alarm the security staff is notified. But instead of rushing to the sensor that was triggered, they first log into the cameras to check whether or not they can see any reason for the alarm. Only after this process of verification, and provided there is a reason for the alarm, the security group heads for the target area. This is video verification defined in terms of Closed-Circuit Television. Quite a simple idea, that when viewed as a more general approach gets even simpler. Broadly speaking video verification is a process in which a person can log into a workstation that will provide some video footage. By viewing that footage this person is then able to verify or check some fact or place. The need to verify the place can be triggered by an external signal, e.g. an alarm, or may be just done on a whim. Video verification triggered by a signal usually provides some sort of recording from the time of the trigger, while video verification without a trigger has to provide only the current image. In the scope of this paper only the video verification without trigger, and therefore without recording capabilities will be discussed. Remote video verification simply denotes that the mechanism for video verification is accessible not only from a designated workstation, but there is a mechanism provided that allows the user to log into the system, e.g. using a mobile phone, in almost any situation. It is also essential to distinguish the concepts of video verification and video monitoring. Video monitoring usually provides a live image and ability to record everything. And actually, there is nothing a video verification system can do that a properly designed video monitoring sys- tem could not. However, setting up a whole monitoring system in some cases may be a bit excessive. The complexity of a properly designed video monitoring system is several orders of magnitude more complex than that of a video verification system; in some cases it is an unnecessary complexity. Several papers, such as those mentioned below, discuss the problem of building simple or complex remote-accessible surveillance systems, and transmitting video stream for mobile devices through the Internet or GSM network. In [1] Abu- Lebdeh et al. present the system architecture dedicated for mobile video surveillance applications applying the 3GPP 4G Evolved Packet Core (EPC) allowing development and mana- gement of QoS-enabled mobile video surveillance applications. In [2] Chen et al. propose a real time video surveillance system consisting of many low cost sensors and a few wireless video cameras in order to reduce the number of cameras needed in monitoring the target area. In [3] Marais and Hancke show a low cost video monitor store and forward device with motion detection and remote control capabilities using low cost CMOS cameras and transmission over the GSM/GPRS network. The HASec system described in [4] uses mobile devices to operate and control motion detectors and video cameras, stream live video, record it for future playback, and manage operations on home appliances. A simple client-server architecture for mobile phone based surveillance system is also presented in [5]. In [6] Raty et al. present their research on decrementing the amount of video information transmitted to the end-user equipped with a mobile device. The prototype system described in [7] enables remote high-quality video monitoring from mobile phones by controlling a HDTV-quality video camera using PUCC proto- col. Several issues related to the transmission, analysis, storage This work was supported by the European Union from the European Social Fund (grant agreement number: UDA-POKL.04.01.01-00-106/09).