JPH1066061A - Image information recording device - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To record only an image in a period when an object event takes place with excellent capacity efficiency and with a simple configuration. SOLUTION: This image information recording device is provided with an MO driver 14 to record continuously and repetitively a video signal of a monitor image picked up by a camera and inputted at all times. In this case, a CPU 13 stores address information of a medium to an address storage section 12a of a memory 12 and manages a recording address of image information. Upon the receipt of a fault occurrence detection signal sensed by a sensor, in order to protect the image information before and after a prescribed time from that point of time, addresses on the medium on which corresponding image information is recorded are defined for a protect area being a write inhibit area. While address information is being refered, the image information picked up by the camera is sequentially recorded in write enable areas other than the protect area to store only the valid image before and after the occurrence of a fault event.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

The present invention relates to an image information recording apparatus for recording an image of a suspicious intruder in a store or the like.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art A large number of surveillance cameras for crime prevention have been installed in financial institutions such as stores and banks. In such a surveillance camera device, generally, an image obtained by constantly photographing a surveillance point is continuously recorded on a video tape recorder or the like, and when necessary, a suspicious intruder or other intended visitor can be detected. The photographed images are searched for and used for criminal arrangements and the like.

Such a conventional surveillance camera device requires a device capable of recording a long-time image such as a video tape recorder in order to continuously record an image which is always taken, and a digital image information recording device. It is difficult to realize in terms of recording capacity. Also, recording of image information is not efficient, and most of the recorded images are wasted, and it takes a lot of time to find necessary parts from the recorded images, which makes post-processing difficult. There is a problem that many man-hours are required.

Therefore, a monitoring image information recording device can capture effective images before and after a certain event such as the appearance of a suspicious intruder, and can easily record the recorded images later. If search is enabled, image information can be recorded with good capacity efficiency, and search processing after recording does not require much trouble, which is very useful.

[0005] An example of an apparatus for recording valid image information before and after the occurrence of a target event is disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 7-23144.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 8-77468 discloses a method in which motion information of an input image is detected and only image information having a motion is recorded.
One storage device is provided, and an image is recorded endlessly by the first storage device. When occurrence of an abnormal event is detected, the first storage device is returned to a predetermined time before the second storage as a reproduction state. A device in which a reproduced image is recorded by an apparatus has been proposed.

[0006]

As described above, the conventional surveillance camera requires a device capable of recording a large amount of image information over a long period of time, and the recording of image information is not efficient. However, there is a problem that most of the obtained images are wasted, and it is very troublesome to search for a necessary part later from the recorded images, and a large number of work steps are required for post-processing.

Further, in the configuration of Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. Hei 7-231442, the detection of motion information of an image is obtained by subtraction from the previous image data. Must be applied,
There are problems that it takes a long calculation time and that the circuit configuration of signal processing becomes complicated. In the configuration disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 8-77468, two storage devices are required, which complicates the configuration and operation of the device, and that an abnormal event occurs repeatedly when the first storage device is in the reproducing state. In this case, there is a problem that recording cannot be performed and the function cannot be performed.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made in view of these circumstances, and has a simple configuration and can efficiently record only an image in a period in which a target event has occurred, and can search for an image after recording. It is an object of the present invention to provide an image information recording apparatus capable of easily performing post-processing.

[0009]

According to the present invention, there is provided an image information recording apparatus comprising: an image recording means for continuously and repeatedly recording image information always input to a recording area of a disk-shaped recording medium; When an event detection signal is received, a recording area where image information is recorded for a certain period before and after the time when the event detection signal is input is set as a protection area to protect it from being overwritten, and the image information is recorded and saved. Image storage means.

[0010] With this configuration, only the image during the period in which the target event occurs is recorded with good capacity efficiency.

[0011]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. 1 to 6 relate to an embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a schematic configuration of an image information recording device, FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a main part of the image information recording device, and FIG. FIG. 4 is a block diagram showing the configuration of a recording device, FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram of a use state showing an example of installation of a monitoring camera for taking an image, FIG. 5 is an operational diagram showing a method of recording image information on a medium, and FIG. 6 is a flowchart illustrating an operation of the recording apparatus.

The image information recording apparatus according to the present embodiment is capable of recording an image of a suspicious intruder or the like taken by a camera installed at an entrance of a financial institution such as a store or a bank, or near a fence of a building site. Is recorded over the period.

As shown in FIG. 1, the image information recording apparatus comprises:
A camera 1 for photographing a monitoring target, a sensor 2 for detecting the occurrence of an abnormal event such as intrusion of a suspicious person, and an image of a certain period before and after the occurrence of the abnormal event, which is retroactive to the time of occurrence of the abnormal event detected by the sensor 2 (Hereinafter, also referred to as skip-back image recording), and a monitor 4 for displaying an image recorded on the recording device 3. Further, the recording device 3 is connected to an abnormality occurrence display means 5 for displaying the occurrence of an abnormal event and an alarm output means 6 for outputting an alarm.

In this configuration, the recording device 3 normally continuously records an image taken by the camera 1 while overwriting it on a medium such as a magneto-optical disk (MO), and when an abnormal event occurs, When an abnormality occurrence detection signal is received from the sensor 2, the image before and after a certain period of time from that point is overwritten and protected, and only the valid images before and after the occurrence of the abnormal event are recorded. At this time, the occurrence of an abnormal event can be displayed by the abnormality occurrence display means 5, and an alarm can be output to the outside by the alarm output means 6.

FIG. 2 shows the configuration of the main part of such an image information recording apparatus. An input / output unit (I / O [input / output]) 11 for receiving a video signal input from the camera 1 and a sensor input from the sensor 2 is provided in the recording device 3.
A memory 12 for storing an operation program, work data, address information on a medium, etc., a CPU 13 for controlling the operation of each unit, an MO drive device 14 for recording image information using a magneto-optical disk as a medium, And a SCSI interface 15 for exchanging commands and data with the MO drive device 14. The memory 12 has an address storage unit 12a for storing address information on the medium, and stores an address and writability information for each area obtained by dividing the user area track area of the medium into a plurality of blocks. Has become.

The CPU 13 receives a video signal input from the input / output unit 11 and sends the video signal to the MO drive device 14 via the SCSI interface 15. The CPU 13 transmits image information captured by the camera 1 to the MO drive device 14. Are recorded sequentially. Then, upon receiving the sensor input, in order to protect the image information around a certain time from that point,
An address on the medium on which the corresponding image information is recorded is set as a write-protected protected area, and the address information is stored in the address storage unit 12a of the memory 12. Thereafter, image information captured by the camera 1 is sequentially recorded in a writable area other than the protected area while referring to the address information. As a result, it is possible to record only valid images before and after the occurrence of the abnormal event.

FIG. 3 shows the configuration of the information recording / reproducing system of the recording device 3. The recording device 3 includes a signal separation unit 21 that separates each color signal component of a video signal output from the camera 1, and an A that converts an analog output of the signal separation unit 21 into a digital signal.
A / D converter 22, a frame memory 23 for storing digital output image data of the A / D converter 22, an image compression processor 24 for compressing image data stored in the frame memory 23, and an output from the image compression processor 24. Interface unit 25 for transferring the image data to be transmitted to the MO drive device 14, and the image compression processing unit 24 to the interface unit 2
Drive unit 14 for recording the image data sent via the interface unit 5, an interface unit 26 for transferring the image data reproduced and output from the MO drive unit 14 to the image decompression processing unit 27, and an interface unit 26 from the MO drive unit 14 Image expansion processing unit 27 for expanding the image data sent via
, A D / A converter 29 for converting the digital output of the frame memory 28 into an analog signal, and synthesizing each color signal component of the output of the D / A converter 29 to convert the video signal. The signal synthesizing unit 30 that generates the signal includes a control signal generation circuit 31 that controls the operation of each unit based on the sensor input from the sensor 2.

The control signal generating circuit 31 has a skip-back controller 31a for controlling each part for recording and storing image information for a certain period before and after the occurrence of the above-mentioned abnormal event. The control signal generation circuit 31 shown in FIG. 3 is constituted by the memory 12 and the CPU 13 shown in FIG. Also, the interface unit 2 shown in FIG.
5 and 26 are the SCSI interfaces 15 in FIG.
It consists of.

Next, the operation of the image information recording apparatus of this embodiment will be described.

FIG. 4 shows an example of installation of a surveillance camera for photographing an image, based on which an explanation will be given of operations for detecting an abnormal event and for photographing an image. The example shown in FIG. 4 shows a situation in which a sensor 2 is installed on a fence on the site of a building and a surveillance camera that captures an intruder from the fence with a camera 1. When the intruder 7 gets over the fence and invades the fence, and is detected by the sensor 2, an abnormality occurrence detection signal is input to the recording device 3, and a certain period of time after that point, for example, during a period when the intruder goes from 7a to 7b, Image information of the surrounding monitoring target captured by the camera 1 is recorded in the recording device 3.

At this time, it is also possible to provide a microphone in addition to the camera 1 and record audio information together with image information.

The video signal of the surveillance image captured by the camera 1 is input to the recording device 3, where it is subjected to signal processing such as image compression and recorded. The video signal is first input to a signal separation unit 21, where Y, RY, BY
Are separated into respective color signal components such as a luminance signal component and a color difference signal component. Then, after each color signal component is converted into a digital signal by the A / D converter 22, it is stored in the frame memory 23 as image data. The image data read from the frame memory 23 is subjected to data compression processing by the image compression processing unit 24, and then sent to the MO drive device 14 via the interface unit 25 and recorded.

When the control signal generating circuit 31 receives the abnormality detection signal from the sensor 2, it sends a control signal to the interface unit 25 and the MO drive device 14 by the skip-back controller 31a, and the control signal is generated for a certain period of time after the abnormality detection is detected. An address on the medium on which the image information is recorded is set as a write-protected protected area, and the address information is stored in the address storage unit 12a of the memory 12. Thereby, only the valid images before and after the occurrence of the abnormal event can be recorded in the protected area, and thereafter, the image information sequentially input to a writable area other than the protected area while referring to the address information can be recorded. Record.

When an abnormality occurrence detection signal is received from the sensor 2, the control signal generation circuit 31 sends an abnormality occurrence output to the abnormality occurrence display means 5 and the alarm output means 6 in FIG. Can be displayed, and an alarm can be output to a security company or the like.

Here, a method of recording image information on a medium in the MO drive device 14 will be described with reference to FIG.

First, in the initial state, as shown in FIG. 5A, the entire area of the usable user area track area on the medium is a recording area, and an image is taken by the camera 1 over the entire recording area. Image information is sequentially written and recorded endlessly while being repeatedly overwritten.

When an abnormality occurrence detection signal is input from the sensor 2, as shown in FIG. 5B, a fixed area before and after the address where the image information is recorded at the time t1 is set as a protected area. Skips this protected area and records the current image information captured by the camera 1 endlessly. As a result, the image information for a certain period before and after the occurrence of the abnormal event is detected and stored in the protected area.

Thereafter, as shown in FIG. 5C, when the occurrence of an abnormal event is detected a plurality of times, a plurality of protected areas corresponding to the times t1 to t4 are set, and the image information is recorded and stored. The current image information captured by the camera 1 in the recording area excluding the area is recorded endlessly.

When the entire area of the user area track area is filled with the protected area, the protected area is released from the oldest one (here, t1) as shown in FIG. The current image information captured by the camera 1 is recorded endlessly. Thereafter, every time an occurrence of an abnormal event is detected, the oldest protected area is sequentially released, and the current image information captured by the camera 1 is recorded endlessly in the released recording area.

FIG. 6 shows a flowchart relating to the image information recording operation of FIG. First, in step S1, initial values of each unit of the MO drive device 14 are set. Then, in step S2, the sector address for data recording (the address of the recording area for recording image information which is photographed by the camera 1 and sequentially input to the MO drive device 14) is updated. In step S3, the input of the abnormality detection signal is updated. The presence or absence of reading of the indicated sensor flag is determined.

If it is determined in step S3 that the abnormality detection signal has been input and the sensor flag has been read, the process proceeds to step S4.
To set a protected area in which writing is prohibited in a certain area before and after the current data recording sector address. On the other hand, if no abnormal event has occurred and the sensor flag has not been read in step S3, the process proceeds to step S3.
Skip to step S5 and proceed to step S5.

In step S5, it is determined whether or not the sector address for data recording is in the protected area. If the address is not in the protected area, for example, when step S4 is skipped, the flow advances to step S6 to perform data recording, that is, in step S6. The input image information is recorded.

On the other hand, if the sector address for data recording falls within the protected area in step S5, the flow advances to step S7 to determine whether or not there is another recording area.
If there is a recording area, the process returns to step S2 to update the sector address for data recording, and repeats the above processing. If there is no other recording area in step S7, the process proceeds to step S8, where the oldest protected area is released, and the image information input in step S6 is recorded.

The operations of steps S2 to S8 described above are repeated, and the image information which is shot endlessly by the camera 1 and sequentially input is recorded in the unprotected recording area as a protected area.

As the MO drive device 14, for example, 3.
When a device using a 5 inch 5 times dense magneto-optical disk is used, full-color image data is compressed at an image compression ratio of 1/3.
When compressed with 0, the size is about 24 kbytes per screen (frame), so a medium of 2048 bytes / sector requires a recording area of 10 sectors / frame. When recording at 5 frames / sec, the data amount is 50 sectors per second. If the recording time of one protected area is 2 minutes, the number of sectors in the protected area is 50 sectors × 6.
0 seconds × 2 = 6000 sectors. Therefore, if the total number of sectors of the medium is 314160 sectors, a protected area of 314160/6000１６０52 is formed per medium.

The information recording / reproducing device for recording image data is not limited to the MO drive device, but may be various optical disk devices, removable disk devices, or the like.

When reproducing the recorded image data, the MO
Image data in a predetermined protected area is read from the drive device 14, and the read image data is subjected to data expansion processing by an image expansion processing unit 27 via an interface unit 26, and then stored in a frame memory 28. Is done. Then, after the image data output from the frame memory 28 is converted into an analog signal by the D / A converter 29, it is input to the signal synthesizer 30, where each color signal component is synthesized and output as a video signal. By inputting the video signal output from the recording device 3 to the monitor 4 and displaying it on the screen, the user can observe the captured monitoring image at the time of occurrence of the abnormal event.

When searching for a target image from the monitoring image data at the time of occurrence of a plurality of abnormal events, if information such as recording date and time is added to the address information of the protected area and recorded, the address information is referred to. Thus, it is possible to easily search for the monitoring image data.

In a configuration in which only the image information after the occurrence of the abnormal event is detected, the image information before the occurrence of the incident is not recorded, so that the criminal cannot be specified or the crime scene cannot be recorded. However, the image information recording apparatus of the present embodiment can record the image information before and after the occurrence of the incident with a simple configuration by recording and storing the image information before and after a certain period of time from the time of occurrence of the abnormal event. Can be solved.

In addition, since image information to be monitored is not always recorded, only effective image information is set in a protected area and recorded and saved, so that unnecessary image information is not recorded. Even when a medium having a smaller recording capacity than a video tape such as a disk-shaped recording medium is used, effective image information can be recorded with sufficient capacity efficiency for a sufficiently long time. Also, since only valid image information before and after the occurrence of the abnormal event is recorded, the reproduction time and the search time can be shortened, and the time and labor for post-processing after image recording can be reduced. Furthermore, when a disk-shaped recording medium is used, access to data at a target address is fast,
Skipping of a protected area during recording of image information and reproduction and search after recording can be performed at high speed.

[0041]

As described above, according to the present invention, it is possible to efficiently record only an image during a period in which a target event has occurred with a simple configuration, and to perform a post-recording image search or the like. There is an effect that processing can be easily performed.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a schematic configuration of an image information recording apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration of a main part of the image information recording apparatus according to the embodiment;

FIG. 3 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration of a recording device in the image information recording device according to the embodiment;

FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram of a use state showing an example of installation of a monitoring camera that performs image capturing.

FIG. 5 is an operation explanatory diagram showing a method for recording image information on a medium according to the embodiment;

FIG. 6 is a flowchart illustrating the operation of the image information recording apparatus according to the embodiment;

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 ... Camera 2 ... Sensor 3 ... Recording device 4 ... Monitor 12 ... Memory 12a ... Address storage unit 13 ... CPU 14 ... MO drive device 31 ... Control signal generation circuit 31a ... Skip back controller

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. An image recording means for continuously and repeatedly recording image information input to a recording area of a disk-shaped recording medium, and an event detection signal received from an external device. Effective image storage means for setting a recording area in which image information has been recorded for a certain period before and after the time point as a protected area to protect it from being overwritten, and for recording and saving the image information. Image information recording device. 2. The image information recording apparatus according to claim 1, wherein said image recording means continuously and repeatedly records image information while avoiding said protected area when said protected area exists. 3. When the recording medium is filled with the protected area and there is no more recording area for new image information, the effective image storage means releases the protected areas in order from the oldest one. 2. The image information recording apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the continuous recording of the image information by the image recording means is continued in the recording area.