So, what's best for me? - A common question?

[WookieBoy 0]

Hi all,

 

Firstly, I'm not sure this post is in the right area of the forum so apologies if i messed up.

 

Ok, i'm sure you get this all the time, but I'm in need of some advice.

 

I'm looking to install a small cctv system onto my house and storage unit adjacent to my house. I've got some reasonable quality day/night cameras that do PAL resolution and have installed them in usefull but more importantly highly visable positions on the outside of the buildings. The coverage is good with each camera covering the approach areas to my house and unit and also each other camera to capture attempted tampering. Now i'm looking for either a DVR card or stand alone system to record the feeds.

 

Having looked about a bit, i've been a little overwhelmed by the quantity of available systems from a variety of manufaturers. As I have a background in IT i was favouring a PC based system, but from what i've seen, the stand alone DVR's have a better capture resolution which struck me as a bit odd. (even more so now i've read a few posts on this forum!)

 

My requirements are for 6 cameras (with a possable future expansion to 10 if i install some internally later) to be recorded in a decent resolution. I'd also like to be able to access the feeds and recorded footage remotely through my network if possable as I work away on site alot.

 

Another consideration is that while i'm away from the house/office, the only person who could perform admistration duties would be my 'Hapless techno weenie' sister... which made me lean more towards a standalone DVR.

 

My budget is modest at upto £1000 or so, but I'd prefer not to spend all that if I can get away with it as it's money I could use elsewhere. Still, you get what you pay for and would prefer to spend a lump of money now on quality than a trickle from now to eternity on replacing/fixing cheaper gear.

 

Also, any ideas what the laws are regarding submition of CCTV footage here in the UK? Is there some sort of standard I should be looking at? I've seen mention of 'digital watermarking' (whatever that is)on a few of the standalone DVRs, but nothing on any of the DVR cards...

 

Cheers in advance for you advice!

 

Wookie

[freeflyer 0]

Hi Wookie welcome

 

I’m a relative newb to PC based CCTV, but not CCTV in general; I can only advise of my own personal experience. If you search the forum for further info I am sure you will find most of the answers you are looking for, however for me I wanted a CCTV system at my site that was technology based & would give me a high level of features & flexibility including (not necessarily in order of preference) the following:

 

Ability to provide:

Record real time on all cameras (12 to 16)

View & control remotely (over LAN & the WEB) with SSL Connection

Video lost detection

Prove all images are authentic and unaltered (court admissible)

Tie into alarm systems & PIR sensors

Send alarm info &/or images to mobile phone &/or web address etc

Motion sensitive & controllable

Privacy masking (See Data protection Act)

Proper, high quality i.e. quality cameras..Day & night vision (when are you most likely to be broken into?)

 

My top priority was to have a system that was reliable but most of all able to record off-site when away from the premises (i.e. its no good if your hard earned cash / CCTV system is removed by burglars for example & if they select your place & see cameras, they will look for and rip out your system) Be aware though, if they see what appears to be a well installed, secure & professional CCTV system they will most likely just keep walking passed your place to your neighbours! Having had my fingers burned submitting time lapse evidence to a court previously I only wanted real time on all cams that is also recorded off site.

 

I have gone for Geovision myself! It’s the only system on the market that has provided me with what I want for my application and running 12+ cameras on real time from one box

 

Regarding Digital Watermarking; in the UK it’s a term commonly used to describe image authentication from the following 3 types;

Digital Fingerprinting: A method of generating a unique ‘fingerprint’ of the original recorded image that cannot be reproduced if the ‘original recorded’ image is altered and therefore reveals image tamper.

Checksumming: Each image is checksummed according to an algorithm based on unique key data. Any change to the image or metadata would cause a massive change in the resultant checksum.

Digital Watermarking: Visible watermarking describes visibly insignificant changes made to the pixel values to incorporate information, which changes if the image file is altered. Invisible watermarking, a form of checksumming, can provide image authentication checks without compromising the integrity of the original recorded digital image.

 

Regarding the legality of your system; there are several things you may want to make yourself aware of: (though take this as advice only)

Data protection Act (as a private / residential you should be able to circumvent most of this though, might be an idea to register your system simply for your own protection, incl: future changes to the regulations)

Local Planning laws (generally unless your in a protected property or your cameras are closer than 10 metres to each other on the outside of your premises you should be fine here)

Audit Trail you have to be able to provide an audit trail to any image/s that you submit as evidence in the UK (to show they have not been tampered with etc.)

 

You also have to take into consideration the fact that if you are compressing images you may start losing quality; in the UK you do need high quality images that clearly identify individuals to use as evidence in a court under the new regulations;

 

I would recommend you take a look at the new Code of Practice for Digital Recording Systems for the Purpose of Image Export to be used as Evidence. (http://www.bsia.co.uk/pdfs/Form_191.pdf )

This will give you all the info you need to be really sure, might be an idea for anyone in the UK that either installs or uses CCTV in the UK to read this fully too!

 

If you want to be able to use the evidence in court and are doing this on a small budget then naturally you will be installing yourself; however, it would be well worth your while getting a professional CCTV engineer in to provide you with a survey at least, this way you can use their experience and just pay for their time performing the survey that you will get a copy of, also reduces the huge learning curve you will have to otherwise take. Especially as camera placement, viewing angles, field of views & lens choice is so important and there are rules & regs for the identification of individuals, percentage of image size etc. I only recommend branded kit myself, there is a lot of OEM kit out there that simply isn’t up to the job of providing evidence quality recording!

 

Make sure you have created a list of all your questions before they arrive and only use a company that you have a reference (or several) for. I would only recommend using a company who has installed systems where the evidence has been used & stood up in court already; there are a lot of cowboys out there believe me! Try asking your solicitors for a reference, they should know exactly who has submitted CCTV evidence and who has installed the kit. You do not want to learn the hard way and see someone walk away from court when you & the police know they did it!

 

Finally, you do get what you pay for and I have tested numerous cams from UK suppliers, most of which turned out to be trash when it came to image quality & as they say image is everything! If you are a business, then open a trade account with a supplier to get trade prices allowing you to get decent kit at proper prices! PM me for more info

 

Hope this helps & good luck

[Cooperman 0]

WookiBoy,

 

There's lots of useful information and advice from freeflyer, but there are a few points which I would have a slightly alternative view about.

 

First off, if your camera system is installed at a residential location (i.e. not commercial), then there is no requirement to comply with the Data Protection Act. All domestic installs are specifically exempt from the Act (as indeed are many lower end commercial installs).

 

Planning legislation, and specifically 'Permitted Development' rules are very exact about what is acceptable. If you breach this law, then it is theoretically possible that any evidence obtained may be rejected as having been obtained unlawfully.

 

I would tend to suggest you look at a standalone DVR rather than a PC based system, simply on the basis of 'ease of use'.

 

Getting an experienced CCTV engineer in to advise you is better than nothing, but in my experience, really good ones are very few and far between.

 

There are no specific rules and regs regarding "identification of individuals" just some general guidelines which by modern standards are actually not as informative as they should be.

 

As an example, if it was stated that a target needed to fill 50% of the screen height to be acceptable for identification purposes, it does not take account of the camera / lens combination and recording system.

 

If you use a standard res. camera with a rubbish lens and record at low resolution, the target can be 50% of screen height and you still can't work out if it's male or female.

 

Go for 10% screen height with a multi megapixel camera, and it's a whole different ball game.

 

If you've previously installed cameras for your own work, you can almost certainly DIY, albeit you may need a few pointers to get you started.

[Thomas 0]

And residental end users should not be generally looking for 30 fps/25 fps recordings. The best benfit of realtime recording is when looking for slight of hand or with a human monitoring the cameras. Any recording over 15/13 fps and you are burning through drive space.

[WookieBoy 0]

Thanks alot guys, you've given me a fair amount to look into there.

 

I think I'm leaning towards a stand alone DVR simply for reliabilty and easy of use.

As for positioning and security of the DVR itself, I'm going to install it in my server rack as this is possably the most secure place in the building as it doubles as my gun/fire safe and is not in an obvious place (ie it's an 8guage steel lined locked room on the mezzanine, behind a false wall and only accessable via a ladder which goes with me when i'm on site).

 

I briefly thought about using the explosives/ammunition safe then quickly ruled that out for obvious reasons!

 

As for the cameras, i've decided to install a couple more on the rear of the premisies after my prowler incident last night (see my other post in introductions) so am now looking at 8 (with later expansion to 12 for the internal ones).

I checked out the images i'm getting from the ones i've installed on the front of the premises and am plesently surprised by their quality.

During daylight, i could see the flies annoying the builder i've got intslling the new doors and at night i can read number plates on the vhicles on my driveway and see peoples faces on the street as they pass by!

 

I'll try to post some capturerd images once i get a DVR on the buisness end.

 

Any recomendations on a standalone DVR then guys?

[Cooperman 0]

Just so you're aware WB,

 

If you are installing 8 cameras outside, you can't have more than 4 on one side of a building, and they must each be at least 10 metres apart.

Any less and they would be classed as unlawful, and any evidence you later capture on your DVR may (in theory) not be admissable as evidence.

 

As to choices for DVR's, there are literally hundreds on the market, and many of those discussed on the forum, are not available in the U.K..

 

Your choice will very much depend on how much you are prepared to spend. If you're looking at the 'budget' end of the market, quality and reliability may not be at the level you'd ideally like.

[kensplace 0]

What suffices as a watermark? Would a time date stamp on the image itself be enough? Or does it have to be embedded invisibly into the image?

 

 

Even then though, whats the point? Would not be impossible to digitally edit (even if it had to be frame by frame) the image, to alter a watermark, even if you had to reverse engineer by decompiling the dvr firmware to figure out the watermarking algorithm. If someone wanted to fit someone up and frame them for a crime - it could be done.......

 

Same goes for time/date stamps, its incredibly easy to add a time date stamp to a image that does not have one....

[Thomas 0]

Oh you can do some nasty things to prevent tampering of the watermark. Hash each frame, hash each file and then I can run it through some one way transformations...yeah.

[kensplace 0]

Hypothetically, say someone wanted to alter a video, that was watermarked, so a person was missing from the image, or whatever.

 

All they have to do surely, is play back the watermarked tape to a pc, that captures the image.

 

Get a pro to edit the video so its altered to suit their needs, then ...

 

Set the time / date on the dvr to when the crime occured, and plug the pc's TV out into the camera input on the dvr, then hit record....

 

It would then be re-recorded, with a genuine watermark, but with altered footage.

 

Or am I missing something?

 

Watermarking seems pointless to me, other than as tool to stop casual editiing.

[rory 0]

All that hashing slows things down though, so i doubt they do that much to the frames ..

[Thomas 0]

Compared to the CPU power to do the encoding the hashing functions are trival in CPU cost.

 

Kensplace, that's why there are chain of evidence issues. And it's not trivial to just "remove" someone or "add" someone to video. You have to go in and look at thier shadows, make sure they are angled right, see how they interact with other objects...it's not trival for a pro.

[Cooperman 0]

The various techniques used for authenticating DVR recordings are vitally important in themselves, but having said that, there is (in theory at least) a relatively simple way to fabricate 'evidence' which is authenticated as "original".

 

For obvious reasons, I'm not about to publish that on the forum.

[WookieBoy 0]

Thanks again everyone,

 

Nice to see so many helpful replies to a post!

 

CooperMan,

 

I'm a little concerned about the 10 meters between camereas thing... I can't get 10 meters between cameras on a face of the building as my building is not 10 meters wide. In this instance, and because of other obstacles on my site, it's impossable to cover it with just the one camera.

Is this information accurate as in stated in the law or is it an accepted guideline?

I've been in touch with my local Police force and they seem to know nothing about it... Am still witing for the CPS to get back to me as they were the next port of referance recomended by the Police...

I'm a little concerned about this for obvious reasons as I can't provide adequate cover for the site with one camera and with the two out front at the moment, the cover is good, but the cameras are only 7 or 8 meters apart, therefore making any evidence 'legally suspect'?

 

On another issue, I've done a complete U-turn on my recorder and bought a GeoVision DVR card as I got offered an amazingly good deal on one by the UK importer... So thanks to you guys (you know who you are)

It's now residing in a twin Xeon machine with ooodles of drive space and running smoothly so far. I'm extreemly impressed so far with the software and the quality of the images. Only complaint is that the manual is a little confusing as it only explains the features in order, and offers no advice on setting up the system or in which order you should configure the settings... so if anyone from Geo is reading this, 4 out of 5 overall guys. Well done But have a word with whoever writes your manuals maybe?

 

As a final comment, I'd like to say this on the subject of falsifying a digital watermark...

As someone who does use Premier and other video editing software regularly for compositing and general video editing, I can honestly say that even if i knew how to falsify the watermark, adding or changing recorded video unnoticably is not as easy as you may think. Compositing video streams takes immense processing power/time or specialist equipment and even then it's more often then not, quite obvious the video has been played with unless the added shots are filmed especially to fit into the existing video.

I think the watermark is there more to remove the possability of tampering 'in the eyes of the law' as a good lawyer could stand up in court and argue that it's theoretically possible to tamper with video evidence if it's not watermarked. And since most 'general public' don't know about watermarking, an 'expert witness' can use that as a 'surprise counter' to the argument of tampering. Or alternatively, it's arguable that to tamper with the video and retain a credible, uncorrupted watermark is more effort than it's worth in reality...

Just my thoughts on the subject.

 

I'd rather my recorder was watermarked as it removes the posability that i could be tampering with any evidence i present.

[kensplace 0]

The 10 meters apart thing is explained more at

 

http://www.doktorjon.co.uk/news%20archive/newsstories6.html

 

seems a silly rule to me, I can understand it if it applied only to huge pan tilt/lamp/housing setups, but it just says cameras...

 

The watermark issue is not whether its easy or hard to falsify stuff, if it can be done, then all a water mark does is make it harder, but not impossible to do, so evidence should be acceptable with or without a watermark.

 

Chain of command of evidence again does not matter much, if you supply false evidence in the first place, it can go through any chain of command, with all documentation, and still be false evidence...... Course its all down to trust, you either trust the evidence or you dont, and to me a watermark only means its less likely something was tampered with, but its not less likely the evidence was not faked in the first place.

[Cooperman 0]

WookieBoy,

 

The 10 metre rule is about planning legislation, so the Police would in almost all cases be totally unaware of it.

 

In practice, if material were submitted to court it would be up to the judge on the day to decide whether it was admissable, even if it breached the legislation (untested waters ). Is there any way you could mount the camera away from your property (perhaps covert) then it would be outside the scope of the law.

 

As I mentioned in my previous post, it is theoretically possible to nobble a digital recording (with or without a range of different tape marking techniques), but at the moment, it is simply regarded as a sensible safeguard to have some mechanism in place that would present a reasonable assurance that a recording hadn't been tampered with.

 

kensplace,

 

Agreed it is a very silly rule, but then we have loads of those here in the U.K. (makes you proud to know we're really good at something!).

 

Incidentally, brave of you to post the link; the last time I referred to that site, I had to do a quick finger count as I nearly lost all the digitals off my left hand

[kensplace 0]

Does mounting the cameras inside the property also get around it? After all, they are not on the outside, so dont need planning permission I would imagine..... Just clean windows.

 

I guess the rules are in place to keep the highly paid idiots busy, if they didnt have rules to make up, what use would they be to society

 

Still cant believe the rules over part p and electrical stuff, which can even stop me (maybe) from diy installing certain cctv stuff, its all madness, but it is designed to make money for the authorities at the end of the day......

 

ps, still got all my fingers