Welcome to the
"Technical Section"
of
Doktor Jons
Guide to Closed Circuit TV (CCTV)

So you want to know more about Digital,
the predicted future for CCTV ....?

Network considerations - is it all plain sailing? - continued
 

At a more fundamental level, it is imperative that where an IP surveillance system is being set up, in practice it really should be on it's own dedicated network. Now guess what, security asks the IT department how to go about developing a new security surveillance system, IT reports shed loads of available capacity on the existing network, and before you know it, the shiny new CCTV system is being bolted onto the corporate network, with a less than perfect outcome. Whenever a network is being used as a shared resource, there are immediate concerns regarding bandwidth limitations, systems 'going down' often simply for routine maintenance, and of course that old favourite, network security. After all, it's not that difficult to place excessive demands on any network, and bring it almost to a grinding halt.

The amazing thing about IP / Network surveillance is yes it can offer some quite fantastic technical improvements over standard analogue, but one should only ignore the operational implications at their own peril.
Just because you can use technology in a particular way, doesn't automatically mean that you should.

Another obvious example of the wonderful benefits of digital recording, consider what happens if a suspect is believed to have 'cased the joint' at some period in the last few weeks. Now in the past, the investigators would pick up a pile of videocassettes, take them away and then spend the next few days doing their bit to boost the share price of Coca Cola. Who ever said reviewing CCTV was a smart career move?.

Anyhow, as almost all digital recorders save their data to hard disc drives, this can create a different set of problems. Only a relatively limited number presently offer the facility of removing the hard disc for review 'off site'. Whilst many provide either CD or DVD backup options for copying small segments of recorded material, this technique would be hopelessly impractical for backing up the entire contents of a large disc drive ( a limited number of manufacturers are starting to include far more useful Blu Ray 50Gb drives in their DVR / NVR products).

Now admittedly, a very small number of DVR's and NVR's do offer advanced search and video analytic facilities, which can very effectively reduce the amount of time spent reviewing weeks of recorded material.; but in the worst case scenario, where a significant event requires the police to review many thousands of hours of recorded material, it is quite possible that the machine will be seized and retained for review, under current legislation.

No doubt in time, many of the current technical limitations will be overcome as the cost of technology reduces, but at present, it would not be considered prudent to adopt new systems without at least acknowledging their limitations, and going some way towards designing out known technical and legal issues.

Computer Applications for CCTV Monitoring >>>

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