Phones nowadays have cameras that are so perfect in quality, yet security cameras are mostly always so grainy so why? You can get a phone with a perfect extremely high quality camera for a few hundred these days, sometimes even less
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The technical limit is storage, high quality video eats it up fast. Of course, a system could be more clever about it, only keep video where something moves, extract and store faces, license plates etc objects of interests and store only those in high quality leaving rest in lower quality.
But you know, most prefer to have a cheap system rather than a clever system. You only really need a security camera to decrease insurance costs or to comply with some other business requirement. Ticking that box for minimum price possible is what most businesses choose to do. For most places, there is no business benefit to paying for a better system.
A lot of it comes down to storage space and camera quality
In the olden analog times, we had to record to video tape and that was terrible quality anyway. Modern HD TVs are 1920×1080 resolution and 4k is.3840×2160. But old timey videotape was more like 720×480. That would definitely create a grainy, low wuality picture.
But it would help to know where you are seeing these low quality cameras. On TV or movies? Or online for sale?
Love to have got the skinny from all the security pros here.Another reason may be that, since most people are don’t work in security, people only see these images on films and series. I think grainy B&W images have become the cinematic shorthand for security camera.
Simply the presence of a camera invokes the most benefit in terms of discouraging criminal activity in the first place.
Additional benefits from investing in better resolution (and requisite storage costs) then begin to scale down sharply as cost increases. Let’s say you get 90% effectiveness from installing a low res camera system; the additional 10% will cost you 4x what you paid.
Low resolution is “good enough” for 99% of the use cases (simple avoidance).
u/fh3131 and u/Oclure are 100% correct. One other thing to consider is the processing power required for replaying. Watching 1 camera at 4k on regular speed isn’t an issue. Watching 4-6 cameras on 32x speed trying to find a specific incident is an issue. High speed seeking needs to remain smooth, if it gets choppy you can easily miss something. Higher resolution means more processing power required per frame.
As many have pointed out storage is the biggest reason, clubs, pubs, etc where I live are required to keep footage of incidents for 7 years, imagine storing 7 years worth of incidents in high resolution.
Cameras that record locally have much better quality. Wifi cameras that record on the cloud have to compress the video otherwise they would use too much data.
I will say, I am very disappointed by this. My Nest camera can’t pick up a license plate from 15ft away.
Cost. Not only does higher quality mean higher quality camera parts, but also having to store that info means better processing and needing more storage space over long periods of time. Remember that video already takes up a looooot of space and security cameras are meant to be on 24/7. Also, the higher the quality also means more potential energy usage so that can also cost more on your electric bill in the long run too. ALSO, more processing means needing a decent cooling solution so more energy being used to run fans to cool the system.
The company that sells the security camera also probably doesn’t have a huge research and development budget so they’re not going to try to sell higher quality equipment either. So this basically all boils down to “eh, it’s good enough.”
So much technical debate….
Security cameras are made incredibly cheaply.
Nothing to do with the video or quality or file sizes, they are the cheapest sensors that meet the resolution requirements. Even if that resolution is fake.
Why?
Because having cameras is more important than the output. This is why you can buy entire fake cameras with no sensors or output.
The value is deterrence not evidence.
I spent about an hour typing out an answer, and it was LONG. Then remembered I’m on ELI5 and deleted it all.
The easiest answer is “it depends on about 100 different factors”. Camera resolution, lensing, form factors, compression, storage, infrastructure to get the video from the camera to the storage (and viewing destination), the equipment to store and view the video, the manufacturer of the equipment and their interoperability with other manufacturers ( or lack thereof), knowledge of the person consulting on all of this….the list goes on and on.
I’ve designed systems that are cheap (inexpensive) and I’ve designed enterprise level systems that cover thousands of locations and hundreds of thousands of cameras. And it all comes down to “it depends”.
The best answer I can provide is it usually comes down to TCO (Total cost of ownership of the system), education, and proper design to meet the needs of the system owner.
The technology exists where we can do everything. Most of the time, the budgets don’t.
I can give answers for and against anything that can be brought up. But in the end, I’d say it takes someone knowledgable and current with what exists to assist.
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