New Shows, Same Story

Better installation and preventive maintenance are essential keys to effective security video, especially with the growth of video use. Security cameras have gone from a luxury for most businesses to one of the most common security measures. Whether it is a large corporation or the local convenience store, the majority of businesses now seem to have surveillance cameras installed and recording. Law enforcement now has cameras in vehicles to observe and record traffic stops, arrests and pursuits. Cameras now record ATM machines and gas pumps to protect both patrons and businesses. Video equipment also has come a long way, with the ability of providing high-quality images. Backlight compensation and digital signal processing can ensure the best image quality even in adverse conditions. Yet the video that always seems to make the evening news or the “Worlds Most” TV shows are the blurry, poor resolution images that give security video its undeserved bad reputation. Granted not every video is of such poor quality; but all too often the suspect in an incident is indistinguishable and the incident occurring can barely be seen. In other cases it seems that the camera has a very poor angle to capture activity and it is often obvious that not much thought was put into the system installation. There are many excellent technicians out there who would not allow one of their systems to produce such poor video quality; still all too often the system is put in and forgotten about until it is needed. This abundance of bad video and plethora of poor quality should make two things clear: there’s a need for better installation training and an abundance of customers in need of a good preventive maintenance contract.