Closed-circuit television (CCTV) refers to the use of video cameras to transmit signals in a specific place, across a limited set of monitors. CCTV is often used for surveillance in areas and industries that may need around the clock monitoring, including banks, industrial warehouses, and convenience stores.
In industrial plants, CCTV equipment is frequently used to observe parts of a process from a central control room. This generally occurs because it is not safe for humans to be present in these environments. It is possible for CCTV systems to operate continuously or alternatively just when they are required to monitor a particular event. A more advanced form of CCTV, utilizing Digital Video Recorders (DVRs), provides recording possibly over many years. This also offers a variety of quality and performance options and extra features such as motion-detection and email alerts.
Surveillance of the public using CCTV has become particularly common in the UK, where it is thought that there are more cameras per person than in any other country in the world.
The first CCTV cameras that were used in public spaces were conspicuous, low definition black and white systems without the ability to zoom or pan. More modern CCTV cameras use small high definition colour cameras that can not only focus to resolve minute detail, but by linking the control of the cameras to a computer, objects can be tracked semi-automatically. The technology that enable this is usually referred to as VCA, Video Content Analysis and is currently being developed by a large number of technological companies around the world. The current technology which exists, enable the systems to recognize if a moving object is a walking person, a crawling person or a vehicle. These systems can also determine the colour of the object.
Computerized monitoring of CCTV images is currently under development. This mean that a human CCTV operator does not have to continuously monitor all of the screens, and allows an operator to observe many more CCTV cameras. These systems do not observe people directly. Instead they track their behaviour by looking for particular types of body movement behaviour, or particular types of clothing or baggage.
This piece was written by Holly Forster who works across a number of industrial and commercial titles. For information oncctv and cctv equipment use the links provided. Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/security-articles/how-far-has-cctv-come-1608332.html