What Commercial CCTV Resolution Should You Opt For
Commercial CCTV cameras are the trusted technology when it comes to protecting your commercial space. But camera resolution can create a big difference in the surveillance of commercial premises.
How is aspect ratio related to Commercial CCTV resolution?
Given Commercial security cameras and screen resolution measurements are expressed using width x height in pixels, the aspect ratio refers to the relationship between those two measurements of a particular image. When calculating the number of pixels in the width to the number of pixels in the height, of a 4MP camera, you would get an aspect ratio of 16:9, or 16 pixels in width for every nine pixels in height. This is the most common aspect ratio today, it is the most common ratio for large screen HD Television Displays
See below security camera aspect ratio list:
- 1MP (720p) – 16:9
- 1.3MP – 5:4
- 2MP (1080p) – 16:9
- 3MP – 4:3
- 4MP (1440p) – 16:9
- 5MP (1920p) – 4:3
- 4K (8MP) (2160p) – 16:9
How Does Resolution relate to Commercial security cameras?
The relationship between resolution and security cameras is much like the relationship between resolution and television sets. Over 15 years ago, both security cameras and television sets were analog devices. Their resolutions were not measured as we would measure them today and the resolutions were poor quality in comparison to today’s resolutions. Before the year 2000, horizontal lines of resolution called “TVL” short for “TV Lines”–was the standard method of measurement for analog video. It a whole other world for displays and security cameras alike.
Today’s technology if using the video from a 4K (8MP) security camera whose resolution is 3840 x 2160 for a total of over eight million pixels, would allow you to zoom and enhance the image to a greater level of detail in an image than you could from a camera with a lower resolution. It’s not that you can’t “zoom and enhance” images captured from 1080p, 4MP, or other cameras, it’s just that they will pixellate and distort much sooner. This is because they did not capture the same number of pixels per image or they did not capture the same level of detail. Zooming an image can be very useful when capturing large areas or when you need to see a level of detail that lower resolution cameras cannot provide. A few common examples of the detail retrieval available with a 4k (8MP) commercial CCTV security camera would be a license plate on a car or even the wording on a t-shirt of a person of interest, all of which might be located at a far distance from the camera. Having the highest resolution Commercial CCTV cameras your budget can afford will give you the most flexibility when it comes to solving any security concerns.
How CCTV camera resolution effect storage space?
As the resolution of your commercial CCTV security cameras increase, so will the amount of hard drive space to store footage. As resolution increases, the duration of video that can be saved on the same amount of hard drive space will decrease.
When stored using the same video compression a 4MP image uses roughly twice as much storage space as a 2MP image, while a 4K(8MP) image takes up twice as much storage space as a 4MP image. 1080p uses half the space of a 4MP.
In the simple terms, higher resolution commercial CCTV security cameras contain more pixels per individual image they capture, images with more pixels take more storage space on your hard drive. Should you find yourself needing to store more video, perhaps you decide you need to retain months of footage you would simply need to add more hard drives to your Network Video Recorder (NVR).
