Goals for implementation of CCTV

Identification goals to consider when implementing a CCTV system:
1. Personal Identification: ability of the viewer to personally identify something within the scene, beyond a shadow of a doubt. This does not reflect human identification, but rather, the ability to identify specific information or objects within an image.
Personal identification has two very important phases: The relationship of size and detail of an image, and the angle of view from which the scene is viewed. Without careful consideration of both aspects, your CCTV system merely records useless, unidentifiable images.
2. Action Identification: ability of the system to capture the events occurring in front of the camera as they actually happened. Because of the need for accuracy, using time-lapse video could cause problems.
Time lapse recording captures one picture every few seconds. For every picture captured in time, there are three to four seconds where events are not being recorded. Sometimes the unrecorded seconds in time would be necessary to positively document what happened.
Installation of surveillance cameras outside of a certain area may not produce sufficient information to indicate guilt or support an arrest for theft. Placement of the camera outside the area may help narrow the scope of suspects in a theft investigation, but the video will not necessarily identify the thief.
3. Scene Identification: ability for the scene to stand on its own merit. In a building with many similar hallways, equipped with surveillance cameras having similar angles of view, how can the hallways be differentiated when a CCTV monitor or tape is viewed? If an action is being recorded, how can each hallway be distinguished from the others? Scene identification is an important, but often overlooked, form of identification vital to effective video systems.
Computer graphics digitally placed on the monitor and video cannot be relied on to provide the sole method of scene identification. These graphics can aid in identifying one scene from another when both have a similar angle of view. Without being able to identify the scene on its own merit, it would be easy to argue that the graphics were added to the tape after the fact.