Google has launched a new wiki service known as Knol, I have posted an article there:

Megapixel IP Security Cameras – The Future of CCTV

I tried hard to stick to just one theme, and to explain (pass knowledge – knol) to people that analogue CCTV cameras have reached their performance peak in terms of image resolution, and for this reason (more than any other) Megapixel IP security cameras will become the standard for CCTV applications in the future.

Sure, there are many other factors that we can debate; bandwidth, storage, cost, compression standards, etc. But for article one, let us just consider that the analogue versus IP debate should fizzle-out soon simply because analogue CCTV cameras cannot improve significantly on 540TVL resolution; which in turn means that each camera should only view a scene width of 4.3m or 14ft (to deliver images adequate to recognise a known individual).

End-users have greater expectations now, they can do so much with cheap digital stills cameras and their PCs (not to mention what they see via the internet). They are often disappointed with analogue CCTV performance; currently conscientious surveyors, consultants and installers have to take time to brief their clients properly and spend most of that time explaining the limitations of CCTV, what it won’t do, setting realistic expectations, explaining why a camera can only cover a small scene width effectively ….

To use a consumer market analogy, there is no way that the public was ever going to persist with VHS VCRs once DVD players became affordable, and in time we will all move on to blu-ray and HDTV, it’s just a matter of price performance ratio.

I believe that the time is now right, and that IP CCTV has reached that ‘tipping point’.

To invest in new analogue CCTV now is to limit yourself to a narrow view of the future – maximum 14 feet wide, narrower would be more effective ……

Read my Knol article now and I hope that you will readily understand why there is simply not going to be a better analogue CCTV camera produced any time soon, so why, in 2008, would you commit to co-axial cables and BNC connectors???

I follow John Naughton’s Memex 1.1 Blog, John has a real nack of finding and promoting new technology, he’s just written a blog article on the GigaPan motorised robot pan device.

Which leads to this article in the New York Times Technology section.

It’s been developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, in the States. You simply attach your standard digital camera and set it to pan across and take sectional images of a panoramic scene which can then be combined into a single Giga pixel image!

Take a look at some of those gigapixel results at gigapan.org. The results (from basic digital cameras) are amazing, and great controls on that website allow you to drag the image around and zoom-in to reveal fascinating details that you would not have believed were within the image.

One of the demo shots that I just checked-out shows a panoramic side view of Bath Abbey, it then zooms-in to the shop window at the very right edge of the panorama and shows the detail of a pattern on a mug in the shop window – real WOW technology!!

They hope to be able to make the Giga Pan device available for less than $500.

Can anybody see any surveillance applications for this????

Take a look at this example shot in a baseball stadium!

Just spotted this over at Technology Review:

Kodak have launched a 50 mega pixel CCD sensor.

Fifty million pixels in a 8,176 X 6,132 array!!!

Smaller pixels than ever before, with the promise of better colour rendition from improved pigments, just as sensitive as previous larger pixels, using less power than before AND processed faster than previous CCD camera sensors!

Other modifications and improvements to this sensor have improved the signal-to-noise ratio and increased the read rate – enabling the potential to read one frame per second at 50 megapixels!

Just one snag – the sensor alone will cost $3,500.

Right, now I’ve got your attention:

I see a lot of CCTV systems, can anybody tell me why so many cameras show so much of the sky??

Are they really expecting the above headline?

Did the system owner really ask the installer to monitor the sky?

The challenge for CCTV cameras is to capture useful evidence; as the size of the scene increases, the size of people within that scene decreases, and the usefulness of their images decreases too (bear in mind that Home Office guidelines for CCTV images to be admissible for ‘recognition of a known individual’ require us to capture their image at 50% of screen height).

So why waste valuable field of view on the sky?

To make matters even worse, the sky is often bright – to cope with the brightness of the sky the camera & lens combination will close the lens iris – this then results in what is on the ground being put completely into dim shade, and becoming a virtually useless image.

Tilt the camera down a bit.

Use a vari-focal lens and zoom-in a little; take the sky out of the scene, and fill the field of view with a useful scene.

For goodness sake – think about the image; less is more; just cover an agreed scene and deliver useful images!

John Honovich of IP Video Market Info has written a great book covering all the topics associated with IP video surveillance. It runs to about 130 pages, is targeted at helping end-users and Security Managers understand their options in this fast-developing sector AND it is FREE to download and keep.

John has a great deal of experience in the security market in the USA, his website monitors all the developments and News from all the major players in the IP CCTV sector.

Due to our already vast installed base of analogue CCTV systems in the UK we tend to lag behind the USA, and other countries who are newer to widespread CCTV coverage, that tend to be taking-up IP Video solutions as their first choice solution.

Visit this page to download The Book – Security Manager’s Guide to Video Surveillance