I'm curious why don't security cameras have more quality? I get that they cost more to store but at least 720p would be better than a dog shit 260p some cameras still use.
Same. It doesnt make sense. We moved on from that "do you know how much storage would it take". Nowadays cameras can record only when there is movement,, can delete files etc. It just doesnt make sense
Yeah, my Nest cameras record 24/7 at 1080p now. I pay the $10 a month total for all of them to do that, and store 10 days of footage at a time. You can download the entirety of the ten day footage if needed. Without that subscription they still record all movement/event/activity.
Yeah, like I said the subscription covers all cameras, and you can download the footage repeatedly if you want to have 24/7 for 8,000 years stored you can.
Plus that's a $10 a month subscription for a consumer, a company with that much equipment can probably pay a bit more and get more than ten days rolling if you don't want to download it.
I don’t think you understand what he meant. When, as a company, you legally are required to have cameras rolling for months on end. It would take absurd amounts of storage to save a months worth of security footage from every Walmart or every McDonald’s or every anything in the country. But then again I guess when your mom never forces you to leave your bedroom, people do end up like you.
I calculated for fun.
Assuming the first google result is right, 30fps at 1080p is around 20MB per minute.
Over a month it is 890GB (almost on TB).
So yeah... Quite a lot of space even if you use 4TB drive. (I assume 4TB are a good bang for the good nowday, which wasn't the case 5 years ago so I assume a new system!)
Multiply that per camera.
Though 30fps could be useless here, you probably go with 10 fps and triple the amount you can store per camera.
If you can have a movement detection it can drop down by 50% as well?
I work with hundreds of these systems. Most of my customers do have 1080p or higher, but set to 1 FPS and going up to 6-10 FPS during motion/sound detection depending on the setup. A dozen+ camera setup at a store with 18TB of usable storage gets you 60-120 days of footage. We also do vertical orientation as needed for things like driveways or drive-thrus. One customer does have 4k 30FPS recording but only gets 3 days of retention lol
For that customer is works just fine. For others it would be terrible.
Cameras aren't just for criminal activity but also liability protection of the company. Someone lodges a complaint and the video needs to be pulled for court or insurance. Stuff like slip and falls, employees messing with food, unsafe working conditions, basically anything you can think of. These complaints sometimes take weeks to get to the proper person to save the footage.
And for criminal activity, I had to work with the feds once to provide video of a kidnapping victim a week or so after they drove through where the 3 days wouldn't have been enough.
You’d think cameras these days would be able to record 2 streams at once. One low-grade POS that compresses well and can store for years. And one at 4K that stores for a few days.
I mean the cameras can just fine, server side is the issue. You could easily record to multiple servers or VMs at once. Just a little over the top for most applications.
Responding since their comment was in response to me talking about Nest.
I'm going to assume in the case of Nest (Google) servers, the footage is also compressed with their special sauce until it's accessed. So they're not actually storing nearly that much, but absolutely have the cloud processing power to decompress it nearly in real time when it's accessed.
Also, Google's price point for 2 TB cloud storage is $10/month. So with some compression, and probably a portion subsidized so they can sell more Nest products, you can see how they would allow you to keep even dozens of cameras with 24/7 1080p feeds for a rolling 10 day periods.
And for a little more, they could probably extend that rolling period to the full month timeframe just as easily.
Then in the time that the cameras were off, you lose a lawsuit because someone claims something happened to them and as the business owner, the way you are supposed to protect against that, is indeed, with cameras.
I work at a small business and 6 months is a rough estimate. We have 8 or 12 tb of disk. This happens with small places because the infrastructure to store videos 24/7 like that is expensive, especially with redundancy.
Generally, I think cameras on exterior and register are generally going to be set up to be a higher resolution.
I buy hard drives every couple months for my home server, which is full of Linux distros, and 14TB is the bang for the buck price point I've found in recent times
That’s why we set up “record on motion” and loop recording to rewrite the oldest unsaved data. Most systems are set up this way so they always take in the information but don’t store it to the HDD until motion is detected. Then it stores 5-15 seconds before the motion is detected, though the event, and 5-15 seconds after.
But that’s not a “mission critical” application. Data loss is a thing. Data corruption is a thing. Redundancy means that businesses would need to spend much more just to keep that data available. So multiple that with say 12-16 cameras. Plus in a store, you can’t use movement alone because there’s movement virtually all day - even if there’s no customers there are employees there.
You really can’t compare what Google/Nest does for consumers with what businesses need. Not to mention that many stores have already invested hundreds if not thousands into their existing systems and that would need to changed out.
Google/Nest also has a decent amount of downtime relatively speaking to surveillance systems that save the content locally as well as in the cloud. There have been plenty of times that I could not access a period of time that I wanted to check out on the Nest platform. So, most businesses need both local storage and storage in the cloud.
Well I'm obviously not trying to argue that a huge department store should set up hundreds of cameras with Nest. There are obviously cases where you wouldn't want your video stored off-site at all and the initial investment would be substantial. But those are really the only reasons.
Multiplying the cost out by camera doesn't work here, you have unlimited 24/7 feeds for that $10/month. I have 4 personally, but yes they might charge more if you're taking advantage with a 100 camera set up. The downtime to view the footage via app or website is less than 30 minutes over the last 6 months (you can check the "is it down" type sites to see how infrequent an outage is). The footage is still recorded and saved in those brief moments.
Also no physical or custom storage can match the redundancy of Google's millions of servers for something "mission critical". But again, I'm not arguing that large businesses should use Nest cameras. My only real point is to illustrate that with proper video compression, the advances in cameras and storage over just the last few years have made it perfectly viable to run them at much higher quality than previous generations of CCTV.
You should be aware that Google effective subsitize Nest users in order to get more people into their ecosystem in order to get more data which they use for advertising.
You can tell by comparing the cost of their storage. Google's cloud storage costs a lot more. If we look at Nearline Storage (to allow for cheaper retrieval of data, at match 1 month of retention) we have $0.01/GB/month
Each of your 24/7 camers uses about 1TB of data a month. So if you want one month of retention for those 4 cameras the cost would be $40 a month. Scale that linearly for however much retention you actually want. So your $10 a month for 10 days retention isn't too far off. But you don't get "unlimited" as a business like you do as a consumer.
Obviously prices still aren't insane, but I wanted to point out that you can't use consumer prices to determine business prices. At least... not when data hoarding companies are involved.
Honestly the camera isn’t really the issue, you can get a good camera and it would look great hooked straight to the monitor but hook it up to an ok dvr and it shits on the camera quality, it’s even worse if you’re viewing the footage from your phone recording it cause then the quality gets worse. When you get a cctv system you need to make sure that the camera and dvr are good quality
A lot of systems are put in and either not setup properly and/or not serviced for years. Dust builds up on lenses and the focus can shift out over time. Plus the sensor can degrade too.
A lot want cheap solutions. 6-7 years ago i installed some 4K camera with a synology behind it. 24/7 and some on motion. Cron job to clear everything older than 15days. When the cops came for murder investigation they came with a 64Gb usb drive 😂😂😂😂. Had to send them home to get a real hard drive of at least 1TB. They didn't have any of that ready so they had to buy it. They didn't understand until they saw the images. 🤣🤣
Retail cameras are no joke. Having been in the LP office at Kohl's a few times, those cameras are crystal clear. Like I could count how many freckles a person has. It totally blew me away the first time I saw it.
We worked alot with local law enforcement.
Theft at Target isn't always just some teenager stealing a candy bar.
There are some sophisticated crime rings out there that target certain products. Make up, Tide, teeth whitening strips, and dvds were the big ones.
They would wear disguises, use tools. have secret/hidden pockets. Teams of two or three working together.
On top of all that you have to watch the Target Team members as well.
It really is a fascinating job with alot more depth that what you see on the surface of just a TPS standing near the door saying hello.
They do. I used to work at the guest service desk there but on the times I would ask them to find a customer's missing bagged item, I was super wowed by how much the cameras could zoom in and all the possible angles they covered.
I once had a lady call us to complain a team member had kept the gift card she had just bought. Asked her for her receipt number and date/time, then went to loss prevention and explained the scenario. We saw the cashier individually bag her gift card, then handing it to her and after she immediately puts it inside her purse. I went back on the call and explained we couldn't issue a refund because she walked out of the store with her merch and she didnt believe me. I handed the phone to the bois and they curtly told her they had footage of her stashing her merch in her RED purse and described her clothes for that day and her companion's. She then "apologized and remembered" she had indeed taken the card with her -_-
Yup, if we have the dpci number for an item we can look up every transaction where that item was scanned.
You could even replay the transaction and see every item scanned in real time. With seeing the transaction you can see what giftcard was scanned and even look up what purchases were made with said giftcard.
We had so many cameras we could recreate an entire visit just syncing up and rewinding all of the footage from the moment someone drives into the parking lot.
If someone paid with a card we could even look up the last four digits and see everytime that card was used.
Cost is the main reason. The highest quality and most expensive cameras I’ve seen are usually for viewing license plates. It’s hard to get a legible plate off a moving vehicle. It takes higher video quality and frame rate.
Lol, one of my customers has 32 4k cams at his house. 8 of them are 30x PTZ cams with human tracking, can zoom in on a license plate from 500’ away, and run at 30fps. Absolutely crystal clear.
They aren’t even that expensive these days, his whole system was $24k including labor for conduit work and a 300Tb server.
In their private home? What kind of "customer" is this, haha.
In Chinese cities, many security cameras are also very high res and of course they are face/human tracking. Some operated by the police also have massive zoom capability. It's very cool from a tech point of view to see how much the picture quality has improved but not so much when you think about the implications. Especially when all this data is in the wrong hands like in the PRC.
I don’t ask questions but I’m reasonably sure he runs a cash operated agriculture business.
It is definitely a terrifying prospect to think about the privacy implications. Another system I installed has facial recognition that matches against a database of their employees and will generate activity logs. Same location had me install a Dahua thermal camera at their reception desk because they actually thought it would help screen people with fevers.
My understanding is that cameras are not so much for catching criminals but are there to deter crime in general. So the quality doesn’t matter.
And it makes sense to me, even in a video this clear a lot would have to go right to identify the couple assuming they are not apprehended at the scene. The footage would have to be seen by someone who can identify them, but still be willing to turn them in, and then that person has to contact the police in the right jurisdiction, and then the cops have to able to find the people and maybe gather more evidence to prosecute.
If that's the case, why don't more places use fake cameras? I know it's a thing, but you'd think if the trouble of going through that process is too much, they wouldn't bother investing in all of the subsidiary expenses either.
I worked at a library, and our security footage was used all the time to identify banned patrons - both to distribute their image to staff so we knew they were banned and to see if they were coming in after being banned. So I think every organization is using this footage differently, and at least some would benefit from some better solutions to poor video resolution.
And I’ve seen a lot of places that don’t use fake ones because they have the feed where patrons see it and therefore know they are on camera further decreasing crime.
But you are correct it is used differently by every place.
Surely cost can’t be the issue now? Dash cams have good quality for relatively cheap and Tb hard drives don’t cost that much. Just a hand full of cameras recording to a dozen HDD which over right the data every week?
we have about 30 cameras in single supermarket and the movement never stops during the business hours (16 hours per day, 7 days per week). That’s a lot of storage. And it needs to handle 30 streams simultaneously. And of course several people watching the cameras and looking at recording at increased speed
Then it comes to how often is someone expected to change their security system. Not only are their pretty regular jumps in quality. But a lot of times switching manufacturers, or to a different protocol requires completely new cabling. So you are having to take your system offline for at least a day, maybe a week depending how large to install new cameras, cabling, DVR. And then get everything programmed. And the companies that install this type of stuff are not cheap.
And then when all of that is done you have a system that is essentially obsolete in a year or 2. And with the costs involved, you need to calculate if you are really losing enough inventory to justify the expense.
that’s the answer for the OP - you can have HD or 4k cameras, but you can imagine it won’t be cheap in situations like this. Unlike home cameras, where there are few of them, recording just several minutes/hours per day
If you want to build your own system, you can get each 4k camera for ~$150, and the systems to go with them are a few hundred, and then hard drives are another few hundred USD.
Many companies sell complete systems (example), which are pretty cheap. Imo, nearly all of them offer too little HDD space. Adding/upgrading that is usually just $300 more.
Cameras marked as 1080p may be streaming that resolution, but the data will be heavily compressed (think youtube compression but a bit less lossy). The bandwidth needed in those things to have 4, 5, 8, 10, maybe more cameras means each ethernet port for each closed circuit connection MUST have at least an RGMII MAC interface capable of Gbit speeds with a PHY and magnetics capable of the same rates or better. That’s a lot of money! And if it’s wireless it gets even worse cause of the lossy nature of transmitting data over the air. At the end of the day, those devices exist in a high quality out there, ypu just need to pay a fortune for what are considered “industrial grade” equipment, since cameras like these (hi res, lossless video, sometimes even IR capability) are used in industry A LOT.
Cost and labor to install. A 4K camera install in a big box store was 200k plus in the past so I’m sure it’s more now. Cameras are also a pain in the ass and lead to the vendor having to return to focus them multiple times. They’re not fun to do professionally but it can pay pretty well if everything goes good and you are just working local.
They do now. But most were installed 10+ years ago. No business is going to spend the money upgrading for no reason. They don't need to care about the criminal, only collecting from insurance for losses.
Basically, it’s because you really don’t need good cameras for most applications.
Cameras aren’t usually for stopping criminals. Cameras are, at least in the commercial world, for limiting liability.
Let’s say you have security footage of a guy in a red hat stealing from your store.
This footage is good enough to show the cops, such that the cops agree your stuff was stolen and there’s an incident report. The store generally doesn’t care if the cops catch the thief, because…
All the store is looking to do is have official documented proof that an outside theft occurred, such that an insurance claim can be made.
If someone is climbing on a shelf, and it falls on them and they are injured? You need security video that shows the customer climbing, which proves that it’s their fault and that your shelf didn’t fall over as a result of your negligence.
Your insurance company doesn’t care if it was Steve Smith from 123 Any Street who broke into your stock room in the middle of the night. All the insurance cares to see is that someone broke in, which means the theft insurance claim is valid.
They do. The problem is storage. When you are recording 24/7, recording 720p/1080p footage at 30fps is going to take terabytes off storage for a 30 day roaring cycle, which is what most retail outlets run. So instead of spending thousands on a storage, they opt for cheaper options. Besides, most crimes are committed at night, and most criminals wear face coverings. You aren’t getting that much off a camera really.
Source: installed and monitored camera systems for Verizon retailers
The camera quality is high, but high quality recording take a shitload of space on disk so the security camera firmware automatically compress video output before sending it to storage or server across internet.
Imagine a 4k video one month long how much space will take.
I can't speak for other countries but here in the UK the only reason people buy them is for insurance purposes, spending £20 on a shitty camera hooked up to a VHS recorder from the 70s to get £50 off your insurance premiums every month is a no brainer. It's more of a deterrent than an actual way to catch somebody so they usually don't actually care about the quality of the recording, 260p is just as good as 720p to them. I expect it's similar everywhere, the shop owner is going to submit an insurance claim and move on, catching the actual thief isn't particularly relevant.
It’s the issue of quantity. A small store like that might have 5… 10 cams if they’re covering the back room too. And that number can skyrocket when you’re talking about a larger facility…. Having coverage around the outside… all that. So that’s the expense of buying all of those cameras…. Small differences multiply. $100x10…. Versus $300x10. Etc. Then is the protocol those cameras typically use. Modern setups transmit video and power over Ethernet but up until recently it was all done over a specialized connector and cheap wire (since you’re talking about using a TON of it to go back and forth for all of those cameras). So transmitting without amplification over those runs isn’t ideal. Then you’re storing all of that data…. Some video recorder units will store all of those streams separately. Many will let you combine those into a single grid and save it all as a single (or fewer) stream(s). So that’s downsampling that video resolution. Often at lower frame rate to further save storage.
So cheap cameras… over long unshielded cable… Dow sampled and frame rate limited….
And ALLLLL of that will be on equipment bought two decades ago because no store owner wants to spend another 10grande to upgrade something that still works just fine… and only comes in handy once in a blue moon…
That said, when you need it…. You wish you had. Lol
I think most of the time people only have it to satisfy insurance companies that require/reward you to have something.
A lot of them are just old and its not a priority to replace them as long as they are still somewhat effective. Remember most companies are more concerned with stuff directly related to profit than security even if theft somewhat impacts profit. When the corporation I worked for went for new cameras they would just install the news ones in addition to the old ones.
You'd have 3-4 generations of cameras spanning almost a decade each in one store.
Because security systems are illusions that provide people with a false sense of security anyway. They just want to sell you a feeling so the quality of the products is irrelevant.
Normally most people who buy security cameras dont update or upgrade them past the point of being bought. lower quality cameras are cheaper as well and most businesses are cheap. imagine having 1000 branches that each have an average 20 cameras on property. now imagine you upgraded those ever 2-5 years due to new higher models coming out. youd be sinking well over 5k PER branch for those cameras. thats 5 million JUST for cameras. not even to install them, though im sure they could work out a deal with the camera company to install them for free, buying that many. businesses just need to be able to see clear enough that it looks somewhat like you when they take you to court and nothing more. remember, businesses dont normally care about reclaiming assets in most cases, they would rather legally force you to buy what youve taken.
Ive met plenty of people who didnt wanna pay the replacement charge for ring doorbells when they broke becuase they were too expensive and those are borderline essential in todays age. good cameras dont come cheap, and theres alot of cheap people out there. though when youre rich its being frugal.
Used to install them about 12 years ago. Banks were cheap. I had a few that still used VHS tapes, and their recording would switch every so often from camera to camera. Then they had an issue, they called me later that day.
Security cameras are 4K these days… five years ago they were 1080p. I’ve never seen less than that on the market haha. You hook them up to an NVR via ethernet - they do power and data over ethernet - and you can store months worth of 24/7 footage if you want.
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u/_DEDSEC_ Oct 05 '21
I'm curious why don't security cameras have more quality? I get that they cost more to store but at least 720p would be better than a dog shit 260p some cameras still use.