Why is the camera resolution so poor on bank surveillance camera ?
July 31, 2009 by admin
Filed under Surveillance Camera
I cannot figure out for the life of me why everytime I see a picture of someone in a bank robbery the resolution is so poor ! One would think that if ever you needed a great picture from a camera it would be at a bank. Can someone please tell me what the problem could be that these people would install such poor equitment?
First of all, the video’s you see on those stupid shows are old. Second, they only need it to be able to identify whoever is robbing the bank, the eqipment they use is industrial quality which means they can leave it running 24/7. If they were to get ‘better quality’ pictures, it would cost more to run and maintain, and not really improve the security that much anyways. You can identify a person just as well in black and white than in high defenition colour.
Those black and white surveillance cameras are proven, with the technology available today, the shops would have replaced them if they werent so good.
It’s a matter of storage. To record 24/7 in high resolution would require a massive amount of storage. Perhaps we are getting there as far as that is concerned and banks have not updated yet. I can’t say for sure. But for those grainy, choppy recordings you see…cameras typically record at a much slower fps (frames per second) and the resolution is quite low. I’m sure in the future recording quality will improve dramatically. Oh and to complicate the matter, banks typically have dozens of cameras, increasing the storage requirements exponentially.
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First of all, the video’s you see on those stupid shows are old. Second, they only need it to be able to identify whoever is robbing the bank, the eqipment they use is industrial quality which means they can leave it running 24/7. If they were to get ‘better quality’ pictures, it would cost more to run and maintain, and not really improve the security that much anyways. You can identify a person just as well in black and white than in high defenition colour.
Those black and white surveillance cameras are proven, with the technology available today, the shops would have replaced them if they werent so good.
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Lower resolution means poor quality but smaller file size. In banks where they have to record day and night that is a deciding factor. However today there are numerous compression technique that allow better quality without increasing the size of the file. Due to new technology in memory there is an increase of quality too. For example last year in Germany where the World Soccer Championship took place they used 5 times cheaper storage devices which means 5 times more space. They tried to new security systems which automatically and real time identifies faces. This called for a better quality and more space.
A japanese scientist invented a product made out of paper much similar to an ordinary CD but storing to 100GB of memory. It’s ecological, cheaper, and better. The reason it is still kept out of the maket is simply because it will destroy the whole CD and DVD production. That wouldn’t be good for any economy.
I have also heard rumors of an invention that uses crystals for storying information. The codes are transmitted through the reflections. This would make any information immortal. As we know all the known storage devices die too young. But that sounds rather sci-fi.
So in conclusion in future we might get good to high quality surveillance footage.
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I agree. Banks should hire Academy Award-winning cinematographers to man the surveillance cameras.
Thanks for bringing this up.
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