The client approached Clarion as their current system was not providing the amount of day’s storage as calculated at the design stage. At best we were getting 7-10 days of recorded footage across both servers.
The system is configured to record only when motion is detected by the cameras. Because the variable gain setting within each of the cameras is set to maximum as default, the camera will increase its video signal in an attempt to generate an image during periods of low light.
The knock-on effect to this is that as the signal to noise ratio evens out i.e. there is as much noise in the scene as there is usable video. Increasing the gain amplifies the noise creating an unstable image and triggering the camera record unnecessarily.
Reducing the gain setting within each camera (In this circumstance to around 19dB) stabilised the image preventing the camera from triggering into motion event recording through periods of low light. The knock-on effect of doing this resulted in an increased minimum lux level (amount of light) that was required in order to generate an image, effectively reducing the amount of time that the camera would function.
This can be rectified by reducing the shutter speed of the camera slightly allowing more light onto the chip within each frame. Caution: Too slow a shutter speed and you will get motion blur, too fast and you get a nice sharp picture that requires lots of light.
Applying these settings has more than doubled the number of days recording on site.
