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CCTV compared with CCDP

(1) Closed Circuit Television (CCTV)

Images from CCTV systems are often of poor quality, as anyone who has ever watched TV programs like America's Most Wanted knows. When one considers that man has already gone to the Moon and is almost on the verge of visiting Mars, why do we have to view bad quality surveillance images when it is vital to detect and apprehend perpetrators of crime as quickly as possible?

An early arrest can save months of painstaking and time-consuming detective work. It also means our communities can feel a lot safer when the crooks are taken off the streets and put where they belong - in the clink.

When we take a camcorder on holiday the recordings can look great, so why do CCTV cameras have to be so bad? See this link for a live demo of video quality which is typical of all cctv video cameras.

DV quality recordings (720 x 480 pixels at 30 frames per second) which can be captured using camcorders can only be made for a short period such as one or two hours before one encounters file storage problems. Video files are massive! Whereas a DV tape might be useful for recording holiday adventures, you cannot keep changing a camcorder's mini-tape for CCTV purposes, and therefore video must be stored on a pc/digital video recorder that is connected to the camera to enable continuous surveillance. This is where the problem begins!

1 hour of DV quality video = 12.3 gigabytes!

In order to record continuously 7 x 24 hours, you would therefore need a storage capacity of 2,066 gigabytes per week! Most people other than Bill Gates cannot afford to maintain a bank of file servers to store this amount of data.  In order to overcome this file storage problem, video files are compressed when stored on a computer.  This compression leads to the "dog's dinner" look of video quality.

An analogue camera cannot compress video, and hence the analogue signal must be converted to digital and compresed by a video capture card that plugs into the back of the pc. A digital camera can compress video, and is able to transfer the digital recording directly to the computer. A Digital Video Recorder (DVR) can be used to save video recordings rather than a PC, but in all cases the compression and the video camera technology produces low quality video clips.

DV quality is no longer recognisable when it has been through these processes!

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(2) Closed Circuit Digital Photography (CCDP™)

CCDP image.

CCDP image

CCDP image

CCDP surveillance does not run into the same problems as CCTV. Digital snapshots of a camera scene (1,600 x 1,200 pixels at 1MB image per second) can be taken for an indefinite period, because the file storage issue is not a problem.

1 hour of  CCDP™ (3,600 images) = 3.6 Gigabytes!

In order to take snapshots continuously 7 x 24 hours, you would therefore need a storage capacity of only 604 gigabytes per week. This amount of data is quite easy to store on an external USB drive, such as those sold by www.lacie.com/uk

In practice  it is not necessary to take photographs around the clock, but only on motion detection, when some movement appears in the camera scene. In a situation such as a large retail outlet, a photo would be taken whenever anybody moves, and photographs will stop being taken when movement ceases. This  reduces further the file storage requirements of the CCDP™ system.

Images can be backed up automatically to a remote server over the internet as and when photographs are taken, and clients can log in over the internet to view the live camera feed, and to download and save images to any computer in the world!

CCDP™ Megapixel security cameras also have a fantastic zoom capability to enable surveillance recordings to be made from a distance as wide as Oxford Circus. Check out the Zoom function! Most CCDP cameras are about the size of a cigarette packet, and therefore they have a minimal impact on the environment.

So both in terms of quality and file storage requirements, CCDP™ scores a knockout against CCTV! PROTECTION and PROSECUTION are in your grasp!

CCTV Package Costs

Picture Perfect CCTV, 241 Baker Street, London NW16XE Tel: 0207-935-4430