From a single camera and monitor to complex video surveillance systems with hundreds of cameras, multiple operators, and digital recorders - closed circuit television (CCTV) systems; Rugged CCTV can provide security for a wide range of businesses.
A good video surveillance system can make your business safer, more efficient, and less prone to theft and accidents.

Specifically, video surveillance can provide many benefits:

• reduce shrinkage by catching shoplifters
• deter potential thieves
• monitor cash registers
• record evidence to prevent bogus accident claims
• identify visitors and employees
• monitor hazardous work areas
• increase security in and around business premises and parking lots
• meet insurance requirements

The most basic video surveillance setup would be a single camera connected directly to a monitor and a digital recorder to store the video. While a setup like this could help security in some cases, it is unlikely to be enough for most businesses. Most situations call for multiple cameras. In some cases, you may even want a moveable camera to cover a large area. This Rugged CCTV General Overview, as well as some of the other helpful sections of our Learning Center, will help you understand what goes into a video surveillance system, how to compare and how to make a successful purchase.

Before starting to compare systems or choose potential vendors, sit down and consider your CCTV needs carefully.

First, consider what you want to monitor. General comings and goings? Vehicles? Do you want to see faces, merchandise, crowds? Once you decide what you want to see, choosing components will become easier.
Next, decide what picture quality you need. Quality can refer to both how detailed the image is and how fast the frame rate is. Frame rate is simply a measure of how many individual pictures make up the video. "Full motion", what you see on television and on VHS tapes, is 30 frames per second, or fps. Most often, security systems record at slower rates, which, when below about 10 frames per second can result in more jerky-looking images but saves tape or hard drive space, allowing longer periods of time to be recorded. Many businesses end up recording around 15 frames per second and the resulting video is smooth enough to appear very close to real time recording. In fact, the human eye cannot tell the difference between 20 fps and 30 fps, so why fill up your archive space with frames that are not truly needed.
Think about how your system will be monitored. Will you simply record at all times, and only review the archived footage when a problem occurs? Or will you have a dedicated employee watching for trouble? Also, with multiple cameras, you have the option of connecting each to its own monitor, or combining multiple images onto one monitor.
You should also decide whether your priority is to deter potential crimes or to catch perpetrators. Both can be important, but your priority will influence your purchasing decisions. If you are more interested in deterring certain activities, large, visible cameras are your best bet. Trying to catch criminals on tape without them being aware of it requires hidden, or covert cameras, which can sometimes cost more both for hardware and for installation. If your monitoring target is internal, you run the added cost of having to hide and secure the recorder and monitor equipment as well.

Resolution refers to how detailed a picture the camera can see. The measurement to look for is horizontal TV lines (TVL). A normal CCTV picture is around 380 to 420 TVL, with high resolution getting up to 480 or 550. Upgrading a camera's resolution is not a substantial cost anymore, and may be as little as $10 to $20 more. Note: do not be impressed by pixel measurements in the hundreds of thousands. TVL is a more consistent measurement.

Along with your surveillance camera, you need several peripherals to get your video surveillance system working.

Lenses
As with regular surveillance camera, the lens on a surveillance camera determines how wide an image is created and how much light is let in. Lenses are always included with any Rugged CCTV cameras.
The lenses you choose should match the format of your surveillance camera: 1/4" lenses work best with 1/4" cameras. It is possible to use a larger format lens than the surveillance camera calls for, but it is not recommended.
You also need to decide what type of lens you need. Fixed focal length lenses offer only one set field of view and are the least costly. To change the resulting image, you need to switch lenses. Variable focal length lenses and zoom lenses offer greater flexibility, allowing you to adjust your image's field of view. Motorized zoom lenses, the most costly type available, give you the ability to control your cameras remotely. If you want to zoom out for general surveillance and in for detail when you spot suspicious activity, motorized zooms are the way to go.
If you will be using the surveillance camera outdoors, look for a lens with an automatic iris. As in the human eye, the iris of a lens is what controls the amount of light coming in to the surveillance camera. Automatic irises can significantly improve performance for outdoor cameras, where light levels vary considerably. Manual iris lenses are available, but Rugged CCTV includes Auto-Iris lenses on all of our Varifocal lens combinations.

Pan, Tilt, Zoom
For advanced security applications, you may want a pan, tilt, zoom (PTZ) camera. With the right equipment, a camera operator can pan (scan left and right), tilt (look up and down), and zoom in and out. Every Rugged CCTV DVR is equipped with the ability to control these types of cameras at the DVR or even remotely over your Network or the Internet. The significant catch is the cost: PTZ systems are considerably more expensive than fixed cameras.

Housings
Cameras may need to be protected from potential vandalism or from the elements. Housings can range from simple coverings, to impact-resistant protection, to outdoor housings that include heaters and blowers for cooling. A more specialized type of housing is the dome: tinted Plexiglas hemispheres that prevent subjects from seeing which direction a camera is pointing. Choose the right housing based on the placement of the surveillance camera and its expected usage.

CCTV Security Camera Monitors
Selecting a monitor for your CCTV security camera is a relatively minor decision, but there are a couple of important points to keep in mind.
First, make sure to purchase a monitor specially to handle the type of use it will receive. Televisions are not good monitors, since TVs are built to be on for a few hours per day, not the 8 to 24 hours per day they will endure. In some cases, computer monitors do make acceptable substitutes. Flat-panel LCD screens make great CCTV security camera monitors for larger systems because they take up little space, have excellent resolution, and generate less heat than regular monitors.
Also consider the size: a 9" monitor may be sufficient if the operator is sitting directly in front of it, but a 14" monitor is the smallest you should choose if you plan to combine images from multiple cameras onto one monitor. Merging multiple images onto one screen can be an effective way to save space, and appropriate if there is a dedicated employee who has the ability to zoom in on suspicious activity.

Video Security System Recorders
Recording is essential to the effectiveness of any video security system. Without recording, you need to have an employee watching a monitor at all times - hardly a cost-effective solution. And even if you spot suspicious activity, without a recording, you have nothing to use in court.
Almost all video security systems include some sort of recorder to store the images the cameras capture. Only a few years ago, the universal solution was the familiar VCR. However, the introduction of digital video recorders (DVRs), which record onto hard drives instead of tape, has dramatically changed the situation.
DVRs offer so many advantages over VCRs that they have rapidly taken over as the CCTV recording solution of choice:
Ease of locating events - Instead of fast-forwarding through hours of tape, DVRs can instantly retrieve images from any specific time or date, or automatically skip to the point on a recording when something changed. In fact, Rugged CCTV DVR's give you the ability to do "Smart Searches", where you tell the system to find all instances of movement in any particular part of a scene, and even be able to see every hour of a day simultaneously for any single camera. Rugged CCTV gives you more features than any other DVR on the market.
Storage quality - Like all tapes, video cassettes start deteriorating almost immediately once you record on them - and the problem gets worse every time you reuse them. DVR recordings have no degradation at all since they are stored onto a hard drive.
Multitasking - While analog VCRs can either record or play, most DVRs can do both at the same time, letting you review images while still recording. In gact, Rugged CCTV DVR's can do up to 6 things at one time (see our DVR pages for more details).
Smart monitoring - The DVR can be set to take one picture per second or less - just enough to create a running record. However when it detects motion, it can automatically bump the recording speed up to full (30 frames per second), getting every detail of the unauthorized activity.For businesses that do not want to constantly change tapes, DVRs are definitely the way to go. While security VCRs usually offer a time-lapse mode that lets them for long periods of time, the resulting images are not a good record of events - they record only one snapshot every eight seconds. To get higher quality, you need to change tapes every day or more often. DVRs, on the other hand, can record for weeks or even months.
DVRs are more considerably more expensive than VCRs, which is their only major drawback. However, the DVR prices have fallen considerably over the last year and will continue to do so. Already, low-end DVRs and high-end VCRs are in similar price ranges, and most manufacturers have stopped introducing new VCR models. Despite the increased cost, we recommend video security system buyers purchase a quality DVR whenever possible.

Choosing a DVR

As part of your CCTV shopping preparations, decide how much quality you need out of your recorder. There is no magic number or spec here: you need to decide how "good" the recorded picture needs to be, either for your own use later or possibly to use in court. Once you decide this, you will be able to look at samples on the DVRs you are evaluating and see if they meet your standard. Vendors may be eager to throw compression settings, pixel counts, and other statistics at you - but those numbers are irrelevant if the picture itself does not offer the detail you need for legal or investigatory purposes.
The size of the hard drive will dictate how much you can record. On the low end, an 80-gigabyte (GB) hard drive will store about five to eight days of full-motion video from one camera. Most of the time you will not be recording full motion, so this is much more than it might seem. For most businesses, spending a little extra to get 250 or 500 GB is a worthwhile investment. Units expand up to 4 terabytes (4,000 GB) or more, which can store many cameras' worth of data for long periods of time.
Replaceable hard drives are a cheap way to boost storage capacity. With some DVRs, you can buy additional hard drives for as little as $150 and swap them in and out as you need. This gives you the advantage of being able to store your data separately from the main security system.
You will also need to consider how many cameras you want to connect to the DVR. Keep your future expansion needs in mind - buying a higher-grade model to get more inputs and more storage space can save you considerable money in the future. The DVR will also function as a multiplexer, putting up to 16 cameras on one display and allowing operators to call up any one image for closer inspection.
Also, if you ever have to use your security images - in court or in other ways - you will need to be able to export the video. This is an important consideration: Rugged CCTV systems let you create industry-standard .avi files, which can be played on any PC, and burn them to CD or DVD. Others only allow you to export proprietary formats that can only be played on the same brand player.

As with most modern electronics, CCTV components are generally very reliable, especially if you are purchasing industry-recognized names, such as Rugged CCTV brand products. If they are going to fail, they will almost always do so within the first two years, while covered by the Rugged CCTV's exclusive Two-Year Warranty. So any Warranty over 1 year is valuable, and should be an important consideration when choosing a system.

- Know what you want to see. Knowing exactly what you want to see in the monitor and on recordings - both the scene and the quality - is the single best way you can prepare for having a CCTV system. Please tell our Engineers your expectations for each camera view.
- Avoid dummy cameras. While they may deter some problems, they also can create a legal liability by creating an expectation of safety when none exists.
- Put up signs. Highly visible signage that lets customers and employees know that they are being filmed can greatly increase the deterrent effect.
- If you choose to record audio - make sure your signs say this. People in public places can be videotaped without their consent, but their voices can not. It is a Federal law that you must notify people that Video & Audio are being recorded in order to comply. So make sure you have signs in many areas including your entrances, exits, counters or any place that ensures it will be seen.
(These signs are provided free by Rugged CCTV when you purchase a system).