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IP Video System Design Tool

Easy video surveillance design software for professional proposals and projects

IP Video System Design Tool Software

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Version 2024 for Windows 11, 10, 8 and 7 SP1 is available for early access [January 2024, What's new? | Upgrade | Download | Mac OS users].

With the IP Video System Design Tool you can:

  • Increase efficiency of security systems while lowering costs and finding the best camera locations.
  • Calculate precise camera lens and sensors requirements easily to achieve desired pixel density (PPM/PPF).
  • Visually show identification, recognition, observation, detection and monitoring zones of each camera on a site plan.
  • Import floor plans in JPEG, PNG, PDF, TIFF or AutoCAD DWG drawings (Pro) to jump start your designs.
  • Database of 10,000+ camera models, with pre-configured parameters for easy designing.
  • Estimate network bandwidth and storage needs for video archive configuration.
  • Plan cable paths and calculate cable lengths.
  • Export designs to include with proposals or work orders.

This software offers CAD-like design functionality without a steep learning curve. The Design Tool allows for anything from simple overhead views, to complex 3D models to help explore exactly what the system will capture once installed. Designers consistently tell us how this tool helps them better educate users of the system and set proper expectations for performance, as well as reduce callbacks or move/add/change orders from frustrated customers.


 

This software helps planning security camera placement. IP Video System Design Tool includes CCTV storage, bandwidth and field of view calculators, lens focal length and pixel density calculator and many other CCTV tools, so users can design a video surveillance system quickly, easily and professionally.

How does it work?

Part 1: Camera installation drawing, field of view, lens focal length and pixel density

Part 2: Pixel density, camera zones, identification, recognition, detection and EN 62676-4: 2015

Part3: Working with site plan, adding obstacles and 3D models

Part4: 3D View Simulation, DVR View

    • See screen shots:

    Camera Zone Coverage Calculation

    CCTV Floor plan modeling and camera Zone Coverage<br /> Calculation

    Camera Installation Plan

    Network Bandwidth and Storage Space Requrements Calculation

    Realistic 3D models help create visually attractive proposals and video surveillance projects that truly stand out.

    CCTV Camera Design - 3D Mockups

    User 3D models import function (Pro version) allows the import of free 3D models from Sketchup 3D Warehouse as well as other 3D software that supports open Collada or OBJ formats.

     

    What people say about this software?

    JVSG recommended by "Digital Video Surveillance and Security," book

    -”If you Google “lens calculator”, a number will come up for you to use or you can choose the IP Video System Design Tool, a small undiscovered gem.

    Pages 234, 235, “Digital Video Surveillance & Security” book, Second Edition, ISBN-10: 0124200427  by Anthony C. Caputo, 2014

     

    - “JVSG’s IP Video System Design Tool is a must have for any system designer. There is no need for guesswork anymore. Using this excellent feature-rich software, you can design a detailed and accurate system from the comfort of your office. No more blind spots or miscalculated lens sizes. It truly is a must have!‘

    Stephen Cronshaw Stephen Cronshaw's profile on LinkedIn , Sales Engineer at Axis Communications

     

    - “I have been using the JVSG IP CCTV designing software since 2010. Buying this software has been the best business investment! The software is not complicated to use and is very user-friendly. Besides the calculators, the 3D picture is my favorite software feature. I believe the JVSG IP CCTV software is the best design tool on the market and I highly recommend this product to video system designers.”

    Dario Dzinic  Dario Dzinic's profile on LinkedIn, BA, CAS, NCSO, P.GSC, Interior Safety Network Limited, Canada

    - “I started to design video surveillance systems relatively recently. Shortly after, I realized that I needed something to better evaluate the planned design. Vendors and the web give plenty of tools, but I was surprised no one could show you what you would really get on the operator screen and an estimation of the effectiveness of the camera placement. JVSG’s IP Design Tool does all these things in a very intuitive way.

    Marco Desiati Marco Desiati's profile on LinkedIn, Sales & Design Engineer at Axians, Italy

    - “I love IP Video System Design Tool. It allows me to provide a sophisticated CCTV camera layout to prospective customers for many applications such as Video Analytics, General Surveillance, LPR and more. The fact that I can calculate pixels per foot, the object percentage of FOV, height, angle, object distance and other parameters is amazing.”

    Greg Skarvelis Greg Skarvelis's profile on LinkedIn, Director of Sales Enablement
    Verint Video Intelligence Systems, www.verint.com, US


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    PDF PresentationCCTV Design Tool: IP Video System Design Tool

    White Paper: From CCTV Pre-visualization of Design to Fruition – by Jay C. McCormick Jay Chuck McCormick's profile on LinkedIn PSP, CAHSO, ESCO Communications

    Case Study: LENSEC uses IP Video System Design Tool by JVSG to easily design large scale surveillance systems and mutually understand client requirements in a better way through 3D visual models - Jamie Bradford Jamie Bradford's profile on LinkedIn , Director of Solutions, LENSEC

     

    Who uses our software?

    Over 8,000 companies design video surveillance systems with the help of IP Video System Design Tool.

    ADT, AECOM, ARUP, Anixter, ABUS, Arecont Vision, AXIS, Bosch, Dahua, Dallmeier, Fuji, G4S, Hanwha Wisenet, Hikvision, Honeywell, Lensec, Mott MacDonald, Panasonic, Securiton, Shell, Siemens, Sony, Stantec, STV Inc, Verint, ViS Security Solutions, WSP Group, Thales, Tyco, NEC, Nice, Nucor Steel, Deutsche Bahn Kommunikationstechnik, Berlin Airport, Budapest Airport, Frankfurt Airport, Munich Airport, Vienna Airport, Malta Airport, BASF, Moxa and more than 8,000 other companies.

     

    How to download 30 day trial version?

    To download version 2024, the latest version [Windows 11, 10, 8, 7 SP1]  or version 2022 please click here.

    Some 3D models for the Pro version can be downloaded here.

    Instructions for Mac OS users.

    This version includes English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Swedish, Czech, Dutch, Greek, Chinese, Korean, Thai, Japanese, Russian, Polish, Bulgarian, Turkish, Romanian and Vietnamese localizations.

    System Requirements

    Processor: Intel Core i3 9300F or better.

    Operational system: Microsoft Windows 11/10/8 or Windows 7 Service Pack 1.

    Graphics card: NVidia GeForce 3050/2060/1660/1070/980, Radeon RX 6600, 5600, RX 580, A2000, A1000 or comparable graphics card are recommended.

    Intel graphics cards are NOT recommended for large or medium projects.

    Nvidia Quadro/NVS cards are not recommended because of poor OpenGL drivers compatibility.

    Memory: 16 GB of RAM for medium/large video surveillance projects.

    Screen resolution: 1920×1080 (Recommended) or higher. 4K is supported.

    Terminal servers, remote desktops, Citrix, Virtual machines are not supported. But versions 2024 and 11.2 have been tested with Parallels Desktop 17/18 for Mac.

    How to purchase?

    You can purchase the software fast and secure using Credit Cards or PayPal via our e-commerce provider. Also it is possible to use ACH, Direct Debit, Purchase Orders,  Money Bookers, Local Bank Transfer or International Wire Transfer.

    See also our security camera layout guide:

     

    download now

CCTV Camera Lens Calculations

On Field of View and Lens Focal Length tab you can use built-in lens calculator to calculate the CCTV lens focal length, camera field of view, pixel density at specified distance and clearly see areas of identification (red), recognition (yellow), detection (green) and monitoring (blue) on the drawing.

Camera Installation Plan

Focal Length (measured in mm) – The distance from the center of a lens to the focal point (sensor). The longer the lens focal length, the narrower is the angle of view.

To calculate the CCTV angle of view or lens focal length, you need to know some parameters of the installation. If you need to calculate the CCTV focal length, you should specify the following parameters:

  • Distance from Camera – maximum distance from Camera to the target.
  • Camera Installation Height – Security camera installation height.
  • Field of View: Height – Height of the target (for example 1.8 m or 6ft for people). When you select the Field of View(FOV) Height for the camera installation, the software calculates the camera Tilt.
  • Field of View: Width – The other option is to specify FOV width instead of the height. Just enter the desired width of Field of view (viewing area) for the specified camera distance. If you modify FOV parameters, the Focal Length and the Viewing Angles will be automatically recalculated. The other option is to specify viewing angles instead of FOV Width. In this case, FOV and Camera Focal Length will be calculated automatically.
  • Camera Sensor Format – CMOS or CCD sensor size (sensor format). You can choose the sensor format from: 1/2.3″, 1/2.5″, 1/2.7″, 1/2.8″, 1/2.9″, 1/3″, 1/3.6″, 1/1.8″, 1/2″, 1/4″, 1″ and 1.25″. Usually, you can find the sensor format in the camera specification. A typical value for network camera with Full HD resolution is 1/3 inch.

In case if you have a fixed lens with known lens focal length and need to calculate the angle of view you can just enter the Lens Focal Length parameter and get the Field of View and Viewing Angles calculated.
The 3D Camera View window of our CCTV design software shows results of camera view 3D modeling with 2 test objects:  the first at the specified distance from camera (man in suit) and the second on the bottom camera line (woman).
Pixel density values at distances where these test people are located are shown in the status bar of the program.The user can click on the drawing to see the pixel density at the cursor position.
On the Site Plan tab, you can add some obstacles (walls, trees), test objects (3D models of people, cars, test charts) and add additional cameras to see and adjust your video surveillance system coverage.
You can download a free trial version of our 3D CCTV Computer Aided Design (CAD) software tool for video surveillance systems here.

See IP Video System Design Tool, CCTV Design Tool, Online Camera Lens Calculator;

FREE online CCTV Lens Calculator

CCTV Bandwidth and Storage Space Calculation

To calculate network bandwidth of your CCTV cameras and get the required storage space for video archives you need to add camera types and specify some parameters of your security camera installations:

Part5: Bandwidth and Storage Space Estimation

Network Bandwidth and Storage Space Requrements Calculation

Picture 1. IP camera bandwidth calculator. h.265 and h.264 storage calculation.

  • Resolution – Camera resolution in pixels. You can select resolution from the drop-down list. The list contains most popular PAL and NTSC camera resolutions (like 352×288 CIF PAL, 704×576 4 CIF PAL) as well as some typical network cameras resolutions (like 640×480) including megapixel resolutions (1280×1024, 1600×1200), HD and full HD resolutions (1920×1080) as well as others.
  • Compression – Video compression. You can choose from MPEG4, H.264, four levels of Motion JPEG (MJPG) compression (from Low to High) and “RAW Data”. If you use Motion JPEG you can use different JPEG compression levels. If you use low MJPEG compression (level 10) you get best quality of picture and about 10 times lower frame size. If you use Medium MJPEG compression (level 20) you usually obtain a good picture quality and an optimal Quality/Frame Size ratio. With a JPEG level more than 50 your picture became bad for video surveillance purpose.
  • FPS – Frames Per Second. Typical FPS for video surveillance system is from 5 to 15 frames per second. In some applications (like CCTV in casino) it is required to use higher speed values (25-60 FPS). Alternative name for FPS is IPS (Images Per Second).
  • Days – Required length of video archive in days (24 hours). Used for storage space calculation.
  • Cameras – Number of cameras in your CCTV installation with the same parameters.
  • Recording % – Estimated motion recoding activity. 100% for constant recording. This parameter is used to calculate disk storage space in case the video is recorded on a schedule or on a motion detector.
  • Image Complexity – Frames from some CCTV cameras are more detailed and have a higher frame size.
  • Motion % – Motion activity (100% for constant activity). This parameter is used for MPEG4 and H.264 bandwidth estimation.

As a result for each camera type you get:

  • Frame Size (Kilobytes)- software can make frame size estimation based on resolution and compression. In some special cases you can measure your real frame size and specify it in this field.
  • Bandwidth, (Megabits per second) – How much network traffic is required for these cameras.
  • Disk Space, (Gigabytes) – Disk storage space required to store video archive.

At the bottom of the window you can find total bandwidth and disk space required for your video surveillance system.

To make proper bandwidth planning you should know practical the bandwidth values for your network type.

  • 1 Gigabit Ethernet: 500 Mbit/s
  • 100 Mbit Fast Ethernet: 55-60 Mbit/s
  • 10 Mbit Ethernet: 6-7 Mbit/s
  • WIFI 802.11g 54 Mbit:  12-25 Mbit/s

The software calculates Frame Size estimations from Resolution and Compression using our own method based on our MJPEG frame size research.

Bandwidth and storage space are calculated using following formulas:

Bandwidth (Mbits) = FrameSize (Kb) * 1024 * 8 * FPS * Cameras / 1000000
Storage Space (GB) = FrameSize (Kb) * 1024 *FPS * Cameras * Days * 24 * 60 * 60* Activity * / 1000 000 000
The recent version of JVSG Design Tool also calculates RAID arrays: RAID1, RAID5, RAID6, RAID10 modes are supported.

You can also estimate bandwidth and storage using JVSG online CCTV storage calculator.
See also: Video Tutorial, IP Video System Design Tool, CCTV Design Tool;

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