What is CCTV stand for?
Closed-circuit television (CCTV) is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors. It differs from broadcast television in that the signal is not openly transmitted, though it may employ point to point (P2P), point to multipoint, or mesh wireless links. Though almost all video cameras fit this definition, the term is most often applied to those used for surveillance in areas that may need monitoring such as banks, casinos, airports, military installations, and convenience stores.
General
What is WDR?
Wide dynamic range (WDR) describes an attribute of an imaging system that can record greater scene details, from shadows to highlights than normal. Having "wide dynamic range" is a relative term that can describe both the capability of a sensor or other imaging system, as well as the contents of an image file containing such data. The amount of dynamic range in an image which would qualify as "wide" changes over time as new systems are developed.
What is IP65/66/67/68?
IP65 Enclosure - IP rated as "dust tight" and protected against water projected from a nozzle.
IP66 Enclosure - IP rated as "dust tight" and protected against heavy seas or powerful jets of water.
IP 67 Enclosures - IP rated as "dust tight" and protected against immersion.
IP 68 Enclosures - IP rated as "dust tight" and protected against complete, continuous submersion in water.
What does NTSC/PAL mean?
NTSC is an abbreviation for the National Television Standards Committee. The term "NTSC video" refers to the video standard defined by the committee, which has a specifically limited color gamut, is interlaced, and is approximately 720 x 480 pixels, and 30 frames per second (fps). This standard is used in North America.
PAL is an abbreviation for Phase Alternating Line. This is the television display standard that is used mainly in Europe, China, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, the Middle East, parts of Africa, and other parts of the world. PAL uses 625 lines per frame and a frame rate of 25 frames per second.
What is Auto-Iris Control used for?
A lens with Auto-Iris Control has a motorized iris that adjusts automatically to only allow a specific amount of light to pass to the imaging sensor / CCD sensor. If the lighting conditions are very bright the lens will close the iris to reduce the amount of light that is passing to the imaging sensor. Same is true if there is very low light, the lens will open to allow more light to pass to the imaging senor making the image appear brighter. The major benefit to the Auto-Iris lens is that they will adjust to any lighting conditions. This can be very useful in a situation where a camera is installed outside of a building, the camera as the light changes during the day will change the iris to help maintain the picture quality.
Auto iris lens are options on most cameras. Most box / long body style cameras accept either Manual or Auto-Iris style lens. The lens does require power so make sure the the camera that you are selecting has the option for an Auto-Iris lens.
What is H.264
H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10 or AVC (Advanced Video Coding) is a video compression format that is currently one of the most commonly used formats for the recording, compression, and distribution of video content. The final drafting work on the first version of the standard was completed in May 2003, and various extensions of its capabilities have been added in subsequent editions.
H.264/MPEG-4 AVC is a block-oriented motion-compensation-based video compression standard developed by the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) together with the ISO/IEC JTC1 Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). The project partnership effort is known as the Joint Video Team (JVT). The ITU-T H.264 standard and the ISO/IEC MPEG-4 AVC standard (formally, ISO/IEC 14496-10 – MPEG-4 Part 10, Advanced Video Coding) are jointly maintained so that they have identical technical content.
H.264 is perhaps best known as being one of the video encoding standards for Blu-ray Discs; all Blu-ray Disc players must be able to decode H.264. It is also widely used by streaming internet sources, such as videos from Vimeo, YouTube, and the iTunes Store, web software such as the Adobe Flash Player and Microsoft Silverlight, and also various HDTV broadcasts over terrestrial (ATSC, ISDB-T, DVB-T or DVB-T2), cable (DVB-C), and satellite (DVB-S and DVB-S2).
H.264 is typically used for lossy compression in the strict mathematical sense, although the amount of loss may sometimes be imperceptible (and it is possible in some rare usage cases to create truly lossless encodings using it).