quest2chill 0 Posted October 31, 2014 Hi, I'm new to CCTV and have a question regarding wiring up cat5e cable to analog cameras. We have a 4 x analog camera setup connected to DVR using Cat5e and baluns. The cat5e cables supply power to the cameras (not locally powered). They are currently wired using 2 pair to carry video and 2 pair for power. I have read that they should be wired using 1 pair to carry the video and the other 3 pairs use for power. Could you say if this is correct and why and what problems we could expect giving our current wiring setup? Thanks for your help and assistance. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jazzar 0 Posted October 31, 2014 The video should be fine and the only difference on the power cable will be less voltage drop across the cable by doubling up pairs. as long as you are not using cable runs that are not too long and small cameras that don't use too much current ie pan tilt type which use more power than fixed / static cameras. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
tomcctv 190 Posted October 31, 2014 Hi. Only 1 pair should be used for video baluns Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
the toss 0 Posted October 31, 2014 I guess it must be working ok or you would have mentioned the terrible picture your getting , but as Tom has said you should only use one twisted pair for a camera. Are you using one twisted pair for one leg of the video & another twisted pair for the other leg of the video. OR have you split the pairs and used the colour leg of two pairs for one leg of the video and the colour trace of two pairs for the other leg of the video. Regardless you will have lost the CMR properties of the cable and I'm surprised you are not experiencing severe phasing problems. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
quest2chill 0 Posted November 1, 2014 I guess it must be working ok or you would have mentioned the terrible picture your getting , but as Tom has said you should only use one twisted pair for a camera. Are you using one twisted pair for one leg of the video & another twisted pair for the other leg of the video. OR have you split the pairs and used the colour leg of two pairs for one leg of the video and the colour trace of two pairs for the other leg of the video.Regardless you will have lost the CMR properties of the cable and I'm surprised you are not experiencing severe phasing problems. Picture is very poor, zooming in on dvr picture becomes useless. I will certainly be changing this to be using 1 pair only. Thanks for your response. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
