With new capabilities and lower costs, the CCTV system of 2003 will look and act dramatically different, it is claimed.
"VHS is a nightmare," reports Bob Wachowski, Director of Public Safety at DePaul University in Chicago. "The old time-lapse recorders, with their low picture quality, are hard to watch and difficult to maintain. Universities need a more user-friendly replacement that records and stores images digitally with low maintenance. Playback with the DVMRe (digital video multiplexer/recorder) is much easier to find and watch. By eliminating tape management duties, we monitor our facilities with only one person in each of our two 24/7 control rooms."
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Useful tool
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"Digital archiving is a useful tool that eliminates the headaches and personnel costs associated with tape management," explains Gene Prorwicz of Rex Electric, Inc. & Technologies, Chicago area installer. "It saves countless hours of video storage and maintenance for DePaul." As part of a major surveillance upgrade, the City of Minneapolis Municipal Parking System is in the process of moving to a digital CCTV system. Currently, there are 19 facilities in the Municipal Parking System with a total of 22,000 spaces, comprising one-third of all downtown Minneapolis parking. In the midst of a big expansion, 15 to 18 facilities will be added by 2006, adding 15,000 more spaces. All alarms are recorded digitally. Cameras are located at elevator lobbies, stairwells, entries and exits and in the general parking areas. They are focused on the CFA stations, where there is two-way communication and a security guard nearby. Virtually, an entire facility can be viewed. "Since digital recording is more affordable and easier to use, we expect its contribution to our cost savings to exceed $1m a year once the project is completed," explains Michael Sachi, Minneapolis Parking Facilities Project Engineer."The City was very interested in the increased efficiencies they would get by digitally archiving incidents and events," emphasizes Electronic Design sales consultant Jeff Feldstein, the local dealer (Shorewood, Minn.). "Parking staff can undertake remote searches and playbacks as well as download to another media. Images can be recorded locally, yet available for review at the Command Center." Digital CCTV is providing similar results ‘ and more ‘ for shopping centers, financial institutions, school districts, municipal organizations, mass transit systems, the military, government and hundreds of companies, both large and small. However, these systems are only the beginning. Digital CCTV is exponentially increasing ways to protect people and assets. And digital CCTV users are starting to leverage the technology’s increased attributes. Although compact combination digital video multiplexers/recorders (DVMRs) operate similarly to traditional multiplexers and VCRs, they display live video and record high-resolution pictures on a hard drive. Immediately, new capabilities abound. Locally or at central monitoring stations, these DVMRs provide instant access to critical recordings by using on-screen menus and simple keystrokes to find images or events by alarm, time, date, camera number and other identifiers. But, that’s not all.
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New cameras on the frontline
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In the past five years, the price of quality CCTV cameras has dropped dramatically. Color cameras of today cost less than their black-and-white peers of three years ago. Today, because of their low cost, most users can specify and select color.From high on a rooftop, these cameras zoom in and get a clear image of a license plate way across the parking lot A new breed of day/night camera provides 24/7 monitoring without the need for both a day and a night camera. They switch automatically between a color mode for daytime and a more light sensitive monochrome for nighttime, providing 24-hour coverage in all light conditions. These two-in-one cameras not only cut the number of cameras needed, but also divide the number of domes needed for the system in half. They also reduce the costs of other hardware and installation labor as well as future maintenance expenditures. By being able to produce clear images in low light, organizations additionally save the expense of installing additional lighting. Outdoors, a typical implementation employs high speed, high resolution, pan-tilt-zoom cameras encased in a weather-resistant dome. Each camera follows a pre-programmed guard tour, moving continuously from one pre-set position to another. Operators can zoom in on objects or areas at will. Indoors, most buildings have mixed pan-tilt-zoom cameras with fixed position cameras. However, that is changing. Equipped with a high-resolution, variable speed pan/tilt color camera housed in a compact 4.9 inch (12.4 cm) heavy-duty, tamper resistant aluminum housing, the GE Interlogix CyberScout affordably replaces limited fixed position cameras and provides the increased benefits of a pan/tilt/zoom built-in receiver. With it, users can remotely control digital zoom and other programmable options for increased surveillance options. Such a miniature system provides installers and users with greatly increased flexibilities.
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Switching from analog to digital
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To aid the analog customer along the pathway to digital, many start their journeys with a simple unplug-plug-and-play switch of their VCRs to single channel digital video recorders that look, feel and operate just like the VCR but record crisp digital images on a hard disk. Once comfortable, they quickly migrate to compact combination DVMRs that operate like traditional multiplexers and digital recorders but display live video and likewise record high-resolution pictures on a hard drive. When integrated into the company’s computer network through standard IP addresses, it’s easy to make remote monitoring and recordings available to authorized personnel anywhere in the organization via their PCs. Either locally or from a PC on the company’s network, these DVMRs provide instant access to critical recordings. On LAN-based systems, operators can watch live or recorded video from any DVMR in the network. No longer do security personnel need to go to the VCR itself ‘ often way across town ‘ to check what’s been recorded. Authorised personnel can even control pan-tilt-zoom cameras from their PCs, manually focus the camera, select a camera pre-set and do almost anything desired as if working directly from the system’s keypad controllers.
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With this new breed of DVMR, users no longer miss important events because they were reviewing others. With the GE Interlogix Triplex, they can even watch live and recorded images on one monitor while the DVMR continues to record. With digital CCTV, users can select what, when and how much to record as well as the number of pictures per second (pps) or seconds per picture (spp). They quickly see that digital is ideal for time-lapse recording, event recording, including activity/motion and ATM/POS transactions, and alarm recording. Finding a desired recording is simple. On-screen menus let users search by alarm, time, date, camera number and ATM or ASCII cash register text. This latter feature is not to be taken lightly. With the Triplex, financial institutions have a new weapon for solving cases of suspected ATM fraud or Reg. E claims. The investigator simply searches for the transaction sequence number or other text that appears on the customer receipt and pulls up the corresponding image. Searches can be undertaken directly from the DVMR or remotely so that disputes and irregularities can be investigated and resolved quickly. Retail store investigators can determine their sources of product shrinkage or cash register cash shortages by quickly searching through recorded video using receipt text such as "no sale," "void," "Pepsi" or "Coke." Through such searches, they can confidently match an imaged action with the POS transaction text in seconds, determining if a clerk entered the code of an inexpensive purchase in lieu of the more expensive item seen in the recording. For smaller retailers, such as convenience stores and independent shops, digital recording technology provides an alternative to the above-described network and/or PC connection mode. They can employ a special 4-channel digital video recorder that features an auxiliary read/write CD unit that provides recorded CDs on demand. When an incident occurs, the user presses the "CD record" button and enters the start time at which the CD unit should begin writing recorded images from the video recorder’s hard disk. Having an immediate visual record to share with law enforcement, the insurance company and other regulators and authorities allows these smaller retailers to get their problems solved faster too. Law enforcement can instantly check the CD quickly to issue an all-points bulletin, insurance agents can start filing the claim faster, and other regulators and authorities have an immediate visual record of the event in question. <br><br>
The district attorney’s office and others can simply slip the CD into their computers, open and review the recorded images at once without having to load any additional software onto their computers. With units such as the Triplex, one can even pinpoint the time when an object moved and find out who moved it. A user simply defines a target area or "hot spot" in a camera’s view and initiates a search. The DVMR hunts the entire hard drive for video clips with motion in the target area and comes up with the desired images in seconds. When it comes to storage, digital CCTV is very flexible, especially when contrasted with having to constantly change tapes or lose images. Digital CCTV provides hard drive storage options from 40 GB to 3 Terabytes. Users can store days, weeks and even months of recorded images.
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Interfacing with alarm systems
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In addition to being integrated with the data network, digital CCTV systems also interface with alarm systems, alarm sensors and/or access control systems. If the sensor detects unwanted activity, the DVMR can be programmed to capture more images of the incident.
Once an alarm is triggered, the DVMR can display images from up to four cameras associated with the alarm area and send a message to pre-selected email addresses. No matter where those needing to be alerted might be, the DVMR sends them a message via their PC, laptop, PDA, cellphone or pager, notifying them of the type of alarm and where it is located. Security guards, managers, administrators, business owners and even law enforcement can be notified. Without having to physically verify what is happening on their CCTV surveillance system, they can immediately respond to the alarm and take immediate action. They don’t need to waste time by first checking the CCTV system. <br>
Alarms can be emailed in response to alarm situations or external alarms. For instance, during set-up, the user can program the DVMR with conditions that count as alarms, based on object size and object location within a scene. Then, the surveillance system employs video motion detection to look through the camera, detect any changes within the scene and recognize them as alarm conditions. Users can additionally set detection sensitivity and false-alarm-rejection levels. Hardwired alarms such as door open or window open can also activate such email messages.
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Digital CCTV beyond security surveillance
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Digital CCTV systems allow companies to amortize their video systems well beyond the security department. Store managers now have a training tool to review employee practices, showing clerks how to better provide shoppers with increased assistance. Marketing staff can watch live or recorded images to detect how new ideas in displays are capturing customer attention. Maintenance staff can be reviewed to ensure cleaning and upkeep is being performed as desired. Once a digital CCTV system is implemented for security and safety purposes, its use migrates, amortizing costs way beyond what conventional tape-based systems were able to offer.
