Enterprise video surveillance design

I design video systems independently of who supplies them. Camera selection follows the requirement, storage follows the real retention policy, and the recorder architecture follows the load. I hold no margin on anything I specify, take no commissions, and sell no hardware, software or installation. I take no commissions and hold no margin on anything specified, which is set out in the independence policy.

Design starts with what the view must prove

Detection, recognition and identification are three different requirements with three different pixel densities, and they get quoted as though they are one. A camera that tells you somebody was there is not the camera that tells you who.

• Purpose per view. What each camera exists to answer, written down before selection.
• Pixel density on target, calculated at the distance that matters rather than at the lens.
• Scene conditions. Backlight, headlights, snow, dust, wash-down, and the hours when the site is actually dark.
• Field of view and mounting reality. Where a camera can physically go, what will obstruct it in summer, and who has to reach it to clean it.

Sizing the system honestly

• Storage against real bitrates. Not the manufacturer's calculator defaults, which assume compression behaviour a busy scene will not deliver.
• Retention against the actual obligation, whether that is policy, regulation, an insurer, or a collective agreement.
• Recorder and archiver architecture sized for write throughput and rebuild time, not just capacity.
• Failover and redundancy proportionate to what losing a day of recording would actually cost.
• Network load, designed alongside the security network rather than assumed.

Platform selection, after the design

The platform decision comes after the requirement is understood, not before. Genetec, Milestone, Avigilon, Axis Camera Station and the rest all have environments they suit and environments they do not, and the honest answer sometimes is that your incumbent is fine and the problem is elsewhere.

Where a platform is already chosen, the design works within it and says plainly where that constrains the outcome.

What you get

• A camera schedule with purpose, selection, mounting and field of view per device.
• Pixel density calculations supporting each view's stated purpose.
• Storage, retention and throughput calculations with the assumptions shown.
• Recorder and server architecture, including redundancy where it is warranted.
• Documentation another party can build from and be held to at commissioning.