Right forum to ask about coax cable?

[Dave18 0]

Hello!

 

I'm new to this forum (and CCTV), and I have a question about coax cable. Is this the right forum to ask that question? It's camera related, I suppose, but it's not a camera or a lens, so I wasn't sure.

 

If this is the right place, then here's my question: Let's say you have an analog NTSC CCTV camera with a S/N ratio of 50 dB and you want to send the composite video output to a computer 50 feet away. Can you use any type/brand/color cable? Is one RG59 cable as good as another? How about RG6? Also, it looks like the cameras typically use a BNC connector, and my video capture card will have an RCA connector. I've seen adapters. Once again, are all adapters created equal?

 

Oh, and if I've got 10 cameras hooked up, I assume I'll have fewer noise issues if I run 10 cables instead of trying to share lines, correct? If things work out well, I'll have to build this setup again and again, so I'd like to make my own cables if possible. I've done that with RG cable in the past, but I wasn't too worried about quality back then. Are there any preferred tools or methods that help keep the noise away? I don't want to sound paranoid, but the computer is going to encode and compress the heck out of these video feeds, so any and all imperfections will be amplified several times over.

 

Thanks a lot for any help! This looks like a great forum!

dave

[kandcorp 0]

Hello and welcome,

 

You probably could have started this thread in the "Installation help and acc" or "System design" but oh well. If Admin finds it is out of place they will move it.

 

As far as the cable you will be using, I would stick to RG-59U 95% Bare copper braided Coax and 18 Guage for the power. How are you going to be powering the cameras? My suggestion would be through a Power Distribution box. You can find them here: http://b-tron.com/main2.html

 

You will probably want to go with a Siamese cable so you can run both video and power through all 10 cables. Here:

The connector you will need to adapt to your Vid Cap Card will be a Female BNC 2 Male RCA, something like this:

 

You do not want to share video or power lines! Just run a Siamese per camera. If your going to be making your own cables, buy a 500ft or 1000ft spool of siamese and some BNC crimp on connectors; like this:

 

I will get back to you on methods of crimping and recommended tools. There are some helpful videos I will have to search for that give you a step by step on crimping.

[kandcorp 0]

Check out this:

http://www.cctvforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=2318&highlight=crimp+video

[Dave18 0]

Thanks for the reply!

 

How are you going to be powering the cameras?

 

You ask that, and I think, "Plug it into the nearest wall outlet." LOL! OK, so I haven't thought about the power source yet. I probably will use the siamese cable and something like what you pointed out. Another thing for me to look into. Oh well, at least now I know I can definitely put these cameras onto a power source that is protected with a UPS for power glitches, things like that.

 

Thanks again for the help. I'll definitely post my future cable/power source questions over on one of the other boards.

 

Regards,

dave