Importance of Security Camera Resolution

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What is Security Camera Resolution  and Why is it Important?  

Most people who buy a security camera don’t know what camera resolution is, but it is one of the most important specifications you need to be aware of when you buy any security camera.

What is meant by Camera resolution?

Basically it is how you measure the clarity of the picture on the screen.

Technical Aspects of Camera Resolution 

The resolution of a home security camera is the number of  horizontal TV lines that make up a picture. Each individual horizontal TV line is made up of a number of pixels, and the total number of these lines makes up the picture you see on the video screen. The greater the number of resolution lines the better the picture.

How Many Resolution Lines do you Need for a Good Picture. 

The number of resolution lines can vary between 350 to 580, in the kind of outdoor security camera,  you might wish to buy.
350 is pretty low by today’s standards, and 480 is probably good enough for home security use. If you can get 525-580 lines of resolution, then  that will give you incredibly good picture quality.

Realise you can go much higher and there are megapixel cameras and other very expensive high definition security cameras, but they are very expensive and probably unnecessary. Even if they were affordable, the detail they give requires a huge amount more storage information, and you could easily use up all your storage space on a DVR in far less than a day!!

Why do the terms Resolution and Megapixel get used  about security Cameras, aren’t they the same?  

No they aren’t the same, because Resolution actually applies to an Analogue camera and Digital cameras measure in pixels.

Analogue Video Resolution

Explanations can be complicated, but to keep this as simple as possible. Most security camera video is displayed in a 3x4 aspect ratio screen.  Which means 3 units wide by 4 units high.
 The number of vertical lines called TVL is the number that takes up the space of 3 units. A TVL of 420 means 420 vertical lines in a 3 inch wide screen. To give you an idea a standard CCTV camera runs in at about 380 TVL, and high resolution at 540 TVL. Don’t try to compare this to TV screens, this TVL is just an indicator of the security camera or monitor

Digital Video Resolution 

The display is also in the 3x4 aspect ratio, but the resolution is measured in pixels which are small dots, points, or squares. Digital cameras like Analogue Cameras have a  Charged Coupled Device sensor , known as CCD, which captures the image digitally. However the difference here is the digital resolution is captured in pixels. The three most common digital security camera resolutions  are 740x480, 352x480, and finally 352x240 pixels.

Here is where you could get confused about Digital camera resolution, so you need to read the next paragraph carefully.

The display resolution of the camera and the pixels of the CCD are not the same.

The CCD sensor has literally millions of light sensor cells, and the number of pixels produced by the sensor are the pixel count. A camera that can produce an image size of 640x480 would contain 307,200 pixels. A larger image size, say 3872x2592 produces over 10 million pixels, in other words 10 megapixels.

When you read a CCD rating of 10 megapixels is NOT the camera resolution. It merely gives you an idea of what is possible if the monitors and processors in the security camera system are of the same quality.

FINAL PICTURE QUALITY IS ONLY AS GOOD AS THE POOREST COMPONENT USED

How do I compare Digital and Analogue Resolution 

Here is a summary of Analogue TVL and Digital resolution with the quality of the picture improving from 1-6.

1. 352X240 pixels (digital)

2. 330 TVL (analog)

3. 380 TVL (analog)

4. 480 TVL (analog)

5. 704X240 pixels (digital) and 704X480 pixels (digital)

6. 570 TVL (analog)

Finally if you use a 570TVL Camera with a 480TVL monitor you will see a picture in 480TVL resolution.

Make absolutely certain all parts of your surveillance camera system operate at the same level, otherwise all you will get is to the lowest level in your system.

Summary of Security Camera resolution

Basically it is how you measure the clarity of the picture on the screen.

 The resolution of a camera is the number of resolution lines on the picture and is directly related to the quality of the picture. In other words the more lines = the better the picture = the better chance of identifying an intruder.
Apart from the presence of an outdoor security camera being a deterrent it should also identify the villain, and if the picture is too poor to do that then what is the point, you may as well buy a dummy camera.

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