How Can a Digital Security Camera Benefit You?
As we leave the days of analog systems behind us, it can only be expected that we experience an explosive growth in digital surveillance cameras and systems.
Digital CCTV cameras basically do the same job that their old analog counterparts did from the 1960s onwards. When placed in vulnerable locations, they enable the business or home owner to monitor areas of their property that would otherwise be targets for criminals and vandals.
The digital nature of these new cameras, however, makes is possible to do so much more than analog security camera systems could ever do. Digital CCTV cameras and systems offer much more advanced combinations of recording power as I explain below.
How Digital CCTV works
By installing a surveillance capture card in your computer, you turn your computer into a digital video recorder. This gives you the highest quality video compression as well as the lowest storage requirement. The video output from your digital security camera is digitized, making possible an impressive array of benefits.
Benefits of Digital Security Cameras
One of the most popular features is the ability to view live streaming images from a computer or cell phone anywhere in the world. You gain access to your cameras and recordings by logging into your system by a secure username and password over the internet.
Another powerful feature of your digital CCTV system is the ability to easily search your recorded video feed. Rather than rewinding and fast forwarding through videotape to find the time or event you want to view, you can navigate right to that point in the recording.
With computer software you can program your digital CCTV camera to include or exclude certain movement or images. For example, you can program it to stop recording when no movement is captured after a set period of time, or to excluded movement with part of a camera’s field of vision. When movement is detected you could program your system to send you an text or email. This would be great, for example, if a camera detects movement inside your garage or home when you are away.
With multi-camera systems, you can even program your digital security cameras so that one camera alerts another camera to pan over to its area for another view of some unusual activity that the first one has detected. And you can also control all these actions of your cameras manually, in real time, while viewing the video feed from your computer, as well.
Drawbacks of Digital Security Cameras
Digital surveillance systems, however, are not totally completely without drawbacks. The files generated by computer security cameras can fill up hard disk drive space very quickly. That, however, is where you’ll find the ability to program your cameras to stop recording in certain situations comes in handy (time-lapsed recording). By avoiding recording the vast majority of time (when there is nothing worth recording!), you’ll find that you save a huge amounts of hard disk space.
Is a digital surveillance camera system right for you?
Digital CCTV cameras certainly offer you much more flexibility than an analog system by including a great array or powerful features. And they offer these things with the convenience of being able to monitor your digital camera system from anywhere in the world. If you’re looking for a top-notch high tech system to protect your business or home, a digital CCTV system is definitely one that I would recommend.
