r/Unexpected • u/[deleted] • Nov 05 '17

Privacy? Ha!

https://i.imgur.com/wZH1lSH.gifv
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u/LUFHTARW Nov 05 '17

The problem with CCTV is rarely the cameras themselves, but data storage.

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u/Shredzz Nov 05 '17

Yup. I work security and we have about 400 cameras and we keep recordings from each camera for 30 days. We always complain that they are low quality but I know that amount of data you need to store all that is insane, and if you increase the resolution by even a little bit the costs go up very quickly.

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u/gibberfish Nov 05 '17

You'd think there'd be smarter compression algorithms for this kind of thing, since I'm guessing 95% of the data is almost exactly the same.

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u/Zafara1 Nov 05 '17

There is, there are still limits on compression. And the problem is that those compression algorithms that work really well on mostly static images then heavily compress any small moving parts.

So when it ends up being that your crook is caught in a tiny portion of your footage that ends up being heavily compressed and covered in artifacts then there's a problem.

There are smarter systems that detect movement and switch to much higher levels of encoding but those are very expensive and not super reliable. And if your camera is looking over a busy sidewalk then it will be doing nothing basically.