User manual

Feature Article – Moving
your closed-circuit TV
surveillance to IP technology
22/05/2010 06:03
WARNING THESE PREMISES ARE PROTECTED BY
VIDEO-SURVEILLANCE
The typical video-surveillance system
You have established avideo-surveillance system in your
business premises and have had it going well for many years. It
would be based on four to nine analogue cameras located
through the business premises and all of these cameras are
connected to amultiplexer, commonly known as a “quad”. This
device, which presents video images from the cameras in
asequence and /or as amatrix of four images on the one screen,
is then connected to aVHS time-lapse video recorder that is
recording whatever is going on in the premises. You are able to
see the output of the cameras through one or two monitors,
whether dedicated video monitors or aspare TV that is pressed
in to service as amonitor.
If you are lucky enough to do so, you may have used adedicated
digital video recorder instead of the VHS time-lapse video
recorder as the system’s video recorder. These units would have
abuilt-in hard disk and may copy images or video segments that
are needed for reference to aDVD using an integrated DVD
burner. There is also an increased likelihood of these units being
able to work with multiple cameras without the need to use a
“quad”.
But now you have heard talk from people in the IT or security
industry, such as your system’s installer, about the concept of
network-based video surveillance and perhaps seen other
businesses and government sites being equipped with this
technology. What with the ability to have the increased
expandability and flexibility that it provides at all points of the
equation.
What benefits does the new IP technology provide?
For example, you could have the recording functionality located
away from the premises so employees can’t handle the recording
media or to permit security firms to offer offsite video monitoring
as another service. In some cases, an IP-based video-surveillance
system can make it easier for business partner groups such as
police officers or your landlord’s security team to easily “patch
in” to your cameras as needed and upon you agreeing without
upsetting your existing system’s setup.As well, you may want to
benefit from advanced handling of the video feed which can lead
to functions like video motion detection, automatic vehicle
number-plate (license-plate) recognition or people-counting
being part of your system, whether integrated in to the cameras
or as part of extra software in other system devices. These
systems may also offer the ability to use high-resolution cameras
which may appeal to you in certain security scenarios like fraud
detection.
The technology is becoming available at acost that most small
business users can afford. One of the reasons is because most of
the infrastructure may already exist due to the data network
being laid down for Internet access and computer networking.
Similarly, you may benefit from your network-attached storage
device or business server being able to work as aDVR device
simply by you adding cheap or free software to that device. On
the other hand, there are some DVR devices that work with
network cameras and offer alot more video-surveillance
functionality and integration in the long run, with some of them
offering aWeb-based system dashboard available over the
network. As well, your regular desktop or laptop PCs can work as
cost-effective system-control and monitoring terminals through
the addition of cheap or free software or the computers’ Web
browsers being pointed to the cameras’ Web sites. This may then
make you think that your closed-circuit TV system is simply “too
old” for today’s requirements. How should you go about moving
towards the technology?
The IP network infrastructure
The network infrastructure that is part of your IP-based video
surveillance system should be based on Cat5 Ethernet cable,
which can be used as your business’s wired data network. This
can provide for areliable system and permit you to move towards
“Power Over Ethernet”, which allows asingle Cat5 Ethernet
cable to carry power to the cameras as well as the data back
from the cameras. This is infact ascenario you should look
towards deploying, with amulti-port “power midspan” or
“powered switch” providing the power-supply needs for the
cameras and obtaining its power via agood-quality
uninterruptible power supply that has adequate power capacity.
You could use other network media like Wi-Fi or HomePlug
powerline for supplementary camera installations such as
additional event-specific cameras or test-run cameras that you
may use as part of building out your system.
Standards and setup issues
When you choose your equipment, make sure that your
equipment works to common standards such as video codecs that
are commonly in use or Internet-standard protocols. You may
also want to make sure that each camera is accessible by either
aknown IP address or host name through the logical network at
all times so as to make it easy to set up or revise your system.
If you are thinking of remote access, it may be worth using
adynamic-DNS service or fixed IP service; and establish port
mapping so you can navigate to the cameras from outside of the
network. This is to allow you to use aknown IP address or
fully-qualified domain name to refer to your system from outside.
The main objective with aproper IP upgrade is that you don’t
lose any functionality that your existing system has provided you.
Rather, you gain more in the way of functionality, expandability
and security from the new setup because of the new features that
the IP-based equipment and software will provide.
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