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About LinkBacksBeen asked to price up new cctv for outside doors just wondering if ip cameras is way to go if anyone has any thoughts on this . Will need to record 24 hours. We had a system but its broken but i think the recorder still is ok.
Been asked to price up new cctv for outside doors just wondering if ip cameras is way to go if anyone has any thoughts on this . Will need to record 24 hours. We had a system but its broken but i think the recorder still is ok.
Most CCTV specialists I've spoken to have always advised against IP cameras unless there's no choice. 1 or 2 on a network is ok, but large numbers of them will start sucking up your bandwidth. Apparently the picture quality from 'hard wired' cameras is also superior.
Mike
We currently have 14 IP cameras on our network, recording from 7AM to 6PM no VLANS setup, and we have experienced no problems with bandwith. Each camera is recording around 1.5GB of data per day. We keep footage for 5 days before recycling.
Cameras are Axis 216FD, all internal. Although you can get fans/heaters and external housing for outside cameras. Depends on how vandal proof you want them I suppose.
But here, we use our own software to record to mpeg4, and stream it back out to clients. CPU usage is around 15% on a AMD x64 4400 for 14 cameras/streams.
imiddleton25 (8th October 2008), mrtechsystems (13th October 2008)
The future of CCTV is definitely IP.
A traditional analogue CCTV camera, with the best resolution specification that money can buy will deliver 540TVL (TeleVision Lines) of image resolution. This resolution capability is effectively a ceiling for that technology. To illustrate this, Sanyo set the peak performance at 520TVL about 5 years ago - there has been very little improvement over that period of time.
540TVL equates to 0.4 megapixels.
IP CCTV cameras delivering 1.3 megapixels are now common place. That is three times the image resolution of traditional CCTV. You can plainly see this image improvement if you compare the two.
Whereas 0.4MP is the ceiling for analogue CCTV. 1.3MP is just the start point for IP CCTV; 2,3,5,9,11 & 16MP IP CCTV cameras are already available.
IP CCTV is very cost-effective, especially for applications where there is a pre-existing network, computers/servers and storage.
You do not have to pay a lot of money for a 1.3MP indoor network camera.
Outdoor vandal resistant cameras are readily available at 1.3MP too.
The manufacturer of those cameras provides free CCTV video recording software.
You can view sample recorded HD CCTV video clips from those cameras online.
If you have ever reviewed footage from traditional CCTV, you will immediately recognise the improvement.
Please feel free to ask me for any more information or explanation ...
Oops_my_bad (18th October 2008)
We have a lot of IP CCTV cameras here - and they do eat up the bandwidth - they sit on a VLAN - but that dosen't reduce the amount of constant traffic that has to flow around. It doesn't seem to affect the network too adversely at the moment, but it surely doesn't help.Originally Posted by klawd
If you were to use QoS you could prevent them from using too much of your bandwidth. It is also possible to tweak the camera settings so that less traffic is generated - smaller images, etc.
I had 6 IP cameras put in over the summer and they are great and i cant notice any bandwidth problems. The cameras are poe so it doesnt need a power source at each camera location. Also the cameras can go back to any switch in the school and the software finds them.
Company that did the install was Astro Communications. Very pleased with the install and the engineers were top notch with advice as to where the cameras should be placed to catch everything that is going on.
Yeah - you can crunch them down, which is great until you want to see the pictures - they're not a great image to start with.
One thing to consider would be what format are you recording to?
Originally we were recording to MJPEG and this was using around a constant 20MB/s.
We changed recording format to MPEG4 and now bandwith is back to under 5MB/S.
Often all you need is one good image for confession / conviction.
I have seen systems where people have gone completely the wrong way to reduce the bandwidth usage e.g. they have decided that it is important to achieve smooth video playback, so they have set small images in MPEG4 and a high number of images per second so that it plays back without any jerkiness.
If you cannot see what you need to see within the image then smooth playback is worth nothing!!
You should try to keep as much of the camera resolution as possible i.e. save the JPEG or MPEG files at the largest size/resolution available from the camera, but set a low frame rate, maybe just one or two images per second.
Megapixel IP cameras give you the best opportunity to view detail within the recorded images - 1.3MP cameras deliver three times the image detail available from standard analogue (co-ax) CCTV cameras.
It is quite typical for CCTV installers to fit the cameras and attempt to cover too wide an area; to achieve images which comply with the Home Office Guidlines for recognition of a known person (person being 50% of screen height), the camera would cover an area approximately the width of one car. It's not unusual to find cameras in schools covering the width of one playground!!
Plainly, a 1.3MP IP camera can cover three times the width to the same level of image resolution, or same width to three times greater resolution.
We have 50+ IP cameras and the network hit isn't too bad.
One thing to bear in mind is that with motion detection the cameras can monitor 24/7 but recording only takes place when movement is detected. So traffic is reduced and the amount of data recorded is reduced so storage can be longer or you can use smaller storage devices.
All our cameras are Vivitek and these come with software that monitors/records upto 16 cameras.
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