Discover the Advantages of IP Video Surveillance
IP video surveillance solution is the smart way to protect your employees and equipment.
Video surveillance has been around for decades, providing an invaluable tool for protecting facilities, equipment, stock and people. The latest generation of the technology—IP video surveillance—however, has significant advantages over previous iterations, both in performance and efficiency.
Image Quality
IP video doesn’t just involve connecting a last-gen analog camera to an IP network. IP video cameras have superior resolution. For example, a 1.3-megapixel camera, the lowest IP camera resolution, is about four times greater than the analog standard. Higher resolution means greater definition of images, including facial features, clothing details, and numbers on license plates.
IP video cameras can also include technology that helps optimize images in less-than-ideal conditions, such as daylight/nighttime capabilities and wide dynamic range (WDR), a technology that some IP video cameras (e.g., Axis) employ to enhance images taken in areas with both very dark and very light areas, such as inside a parking garage entrance. Better images enable your security staff to make quicker decisions as they monitor video, and, when needed, video provides more conclusive evidence to authorities.
Installation and Scaling
An IP video surveillance network is generally easier to install than an analog system. Analog cameras must be wired to a DVR. This can limit where cameras can be located and how many cameras can be installed before your business needs to add DVRs or upgrade equipment.
With IP video surveillance, however, there’s no limit to the number of devices on the network. The cameras use Power over Ethernet (PoE), which delivers power to the camera through the same cable on which data travels. They don’t have to be wired directly to a network video recorder (NVR)—just to the nearest network switch.
Options for a Variety of Applications
IP video surveillance cameras are available in a variety of styles, such as box cameras that point in one direction and dome and bullet style cameras that can be aimed in different directions. Many IP video cameras offer a pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) feature that enables security staff to remotely control the camera to see exactly what they need in detail.
Additionally, IP video surveillance cameras are available in rugged, tamper-proof, outdoor designs that are resistant to damage from water, dust or dirt.
Image Storage and Archiving
IP video surveillance solutions save images to NVRs that often use RAID technology to store data on multiple hard drives for redundancy and better performance. The images aren’t converted in the storage process to lower resolution and they’re more easily retrieved than images from analog cameras stored on a DVR.
In addition, if a business has several locations, cameras from all facilities can use the same NVR via the internet, which is more cost effective than maintaining a server at each location. The ability to connect with the NVR through the internet also provides managers with real-time access to video, with proper authorization, wherever they are.
Integration with other Systems and Analytics
The IP video surveillance system you install today can include access control, connection with building systems and alarms, integration with a point-of-sale system—or it can scale to include those integrations in the future. Additionally, IP video surveillance systems can include “distributed intelligence” or analytics that identify motion, sound, tampering and other triggers and can automatically record or send alarms to your staff. This greatly reduces the time required for an employee to monitor or review video.
Many businesses deploy IP video surveillance for security, but find its value extends beyond that application. With the system configured to record specific events based on triggers, it can also provide insights—for example, into where operations on a loading dock could be more efficient or how retail traffic moves through a department store.
Whether you’re upgrading or deploying your business’ first video surveillance solution, IP video surveillance delivers the image quality, cost efficiency and data storage that offer the most value to your organization. It also gives you options older systems can’t provide for scaling and using data to make fact-based business decisions, helping you to future-proof your investment in a surveillance system. An IP video surveillance solution simply is the intelligent choice.
Adam Davis, CEO, Next Dimension Inc