Surveillance

When is comes to security we have many useful, user friendly options.  We have many different types of CCTV cameras, IP cameras, and NVR network surveillance camera.   All these options are also great for your small business office, or warehouse.

 CCTV cameras

CCTV cameras are, Closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras  that can produce images or recordings for surveillance purposes, and can be either video cameras, or digital stills cameras.  Video cameras are either analogue or digital, which means that they work on the basis of sending analogue or digital signals to a storage device such as a video tape recorder or desktop computer or laptop computer.

Analogue:

Analogue produces signals that record to tape, the tape must run at a very slow speed in order to operate continuously. This is because in order to allow a three hour tape to run for 24 hours, it must be set to run on a time lapse basis which is usually about four frames a second. In one second, the camera scene can change dramatically.  Analogue signals can also be converted into a digital signal to enable the recordings to be stored on a PC as digital recordings. In that case the analogue video camera must be plugged directly into a video capture card in the computer, and the card then converts the analogue signal to digital. Then the video recordings to be saved on a continuous basis.

Another way to store recordings on a non-analogue media is through the use of a digital video recorder (DVR). Such a device is similar in functionality to a PC with a capture card and appropriate video recording software.   Some DVRs also allow digital broadcasting of the video signal, thus acting like a network camera.  These devices effectively turn any analogue camera (or any analogue video signal) into a network TV.

Digital:

These cameras do not require a video capture card because they work using a digital signal which can be saved directly to a computer. The signal is compressed and is adjustable for the amount of space to be taken up versus the quality of picture needed or desired.  Saving uncompressed digital recordings takes up an enormous amount of hard drive space, and a few hours of uncompressed video could quickly fill up a hard drive. Holiday uncompressed recordings may look fine but one could not run uncompressed quality recordings on a continuous basis. Motion detection is therefore sometimes used as a work around solution to record in uncompressed quality.  That said, multi-megapixel IP-CCTV cameras are coming on the market.  They can capture video images at resolutions of 1, 2, 3, 5 and even up to 11 Mpix. Unlike with analogue cameras, details such as number plates are easily readable. At 11 Mpix, forensic quality images are made where each hand on a person can be distinguished. Because of the much higher resolutions available with these types of cameras, they can be set up to cover a wide area where normally several analogue cameras would have been needed.

 

IP Cameras

An IP camera is short for Internet protocol camera, or IP camera, is a type of digital video camera commonly employed for surveillance, and which unlike analog closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras can send and receive data via a computer network and the Internet. Although most cameras that do this are webcams, the term “IP camera” or “netcam” is usually applied only to those used for surveillance.

There are two kinds of IP cameras:

  • Centralized IP cameras, which require a central Network Video Recorder(NVR) to handle the recording, video and alarm management.

  • Decentralized IP cameras, which do not require a central Network Video Recorder(NVR), as the cameras have recording function built-in and can thus record directly to local storage media, such as flash drives and hard disk drives or to standard network attached storage.

NVR network surveillance cameras