On our website you can find IP video and CCTV glossary where you can find explanation of widely used words, like  focal lenght of a lens, camera format, auto iris,  H.264 and many others.

Also you can find here articles about field of view calculation, wide angle lens, cctv compression, network bandwidth and cctv storage calculation and more.

Bellow you can find most interesting external CCTV design resources:

There is a document called “CCTV Operational Requirements Manual” from UK Home Office Scientific Development Branch. This manual helps to understand a concept of recognition, detection and identification used in IP Video System Design Tool.

There is a very interesting and useful video from FBI. This video explains how to avoid common CCTV design problems such as using wrong camera lenses, installing cameras in the wrong locations, using low FPS and wrong compression and much more:

Bob Dolph (Security Sales and Integration) has written an article about this video.

Here is a preliminary version of a video tutorial on how to add a site plan to IP Video System Design Tool, find optimal camera locations, calculate camera lenses and required camera resolution.

This is a reason to find a proper balance between the wide field of view and possible drawbacks of wide angle lenses.

To find a proper focal length for wide angle lens the CCTV designer needs to perform many calculations. To ease the lens selection the designer can use special 3D CCTV design software where you can clearly see all 3 paramteres: actual field of view, lens distortions and camera resolution.

In the past rotating focal length calculators made out of paper were good and simple tools for quick calculation of the field of view.

Now it is time to use comprehensive CCTV CAD /CAE software for CCTV design, like CCTV Design Tool or IP Video System Design Tool.

Apart from the focal length calculator this software has 3D engine for automatic design and visualization of all elements of video surveillance systems.

User comments

Our CCTV CAD CAE program offers 2D and 3D modeling of  video surveillance systems and helps the designer to find optimal places  for security cameras on the site plan,  check coverage of all cameras,  choose proper camera lens, and get estimations of required hard drive storage space and network bandwidth for IP cameras. The user can draw or import a site/floor plan in BMP/JPEG format and then place test 3D models  like cars or men and obstacles like walls and buildings to see what security system operator will see on his/her CCTV monitors.

IP Video System Design Tool is widely used as CCTV CAD software by security system designers, installers, network administrators and DIYers from more than 60 countries.

Our CCTV CAD software lets the user:

• Switch between two-dimensional (2D) site plan or floor plan and three-dimensional (3D) views.
• Change any parameter of a security camera: When one parameter changes, related parameters are automatically recalculated.
• Zoom in and out the site plan with mouse wheel for close-up and distant views.
• Rotate cameras, change camera height to view them from different perspectives.
• See the result in a small 3D preview window and in a large 3D view window (3D view tab).
• Get estimations of required HDD storage space for different compression and recording options.
• Export two-dimensional (2D ) camera layout, 3D mockups and tables to other software to prepare video surveillance project documentation.

We developed our software to be as easy to use as other popular software packages used by security systems engineers like MS Visio or AutoCAD.

No special PC hardware is required for JVSG CCTV CAD  tool. However, in case if you plan to import large site plan/floor plan images or work with large CCTV layouts it is recommended to use a modern graphics card with more than 256 MB or RAM.

Please feel free to download a 45 days trial version and  read user comments .  In addition there is a special offer for bloggers and do-gooders to receive a serial number for this CCTV software for free.

As an alternative for simple calculations you can use our free lens calculator.

CCTV project planner software typically includes:  bandwidth and storage estimator, CCTV lens selector, field of view calculator, focal length calculator. Many manufacturers offer a product selectors to choose a proper model from the list of equipment (like lens or cameras) they offer.

The usage of a project planner software can help to ensure you are investing optimal amount of money in your CCTV equipment and your future CCTV system is going to fulfill all project requirements.

Our software helps you to save money by making an  optimal choice and placement of CCTV cameras and getting a correct estimation of video storage volume.

All image compression algorithms are divided in two groups: lossless and lossy.  Most CCTV compression algorithms used in CCTV are lossy compression, because such algorithms offer higher compression ratio (the ratio of the resulting video file size compared with the original file size).

Video compression algorithms are divided in two groups:

• Frame based compression (JPEG, Wavelet, JPEG 2000)
• Stream based compression (MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264, MPEG-7)

Usage of stream based compression algorithms enables greater savings on storage space and network bandwidth but these  algorithms require higher computing performance.

Three of the most common type of compressions widely used in CCTV are:

• Motion JPEG
• MPEG-4
• H.264

IP Video System Design Tool can help you to see how choosing of compression methods can affect required network bandwidth and cctv storage space, so you can clearly see the difference in terms of compression ratio.

Motion JPEG is very popular compression format. MJPEG fits very well for video archives because of its frame based nature.

MPEG4 can be 3 times more efficient in terms of compression ratio in compare with Motion JPEG.
But MPEG4 is a bad choice for systems with frame rate less than 5-6 frames per second.

H.264 can be 50-100% more efficient in compare with MPEG-4
MPEG-4 and H.264 are ideal for CCTV  systems with limited but stable bandwidth.

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