On Field of View and Lens Focal Length tab you can use built-in lens calculator to calculate the CCTV lens focal length, camera field of view, pixel density at specified distance and clearly see areas of identification (red), recognition (yellow), detection (green) and monitoring (blue) on the drawing.
Focal Length (measured in mm) – The distance from the center of a lens to the focal point (sensor). The longer the lens focal length, the narrower is the angle of view.
To calculate the CCTV angle of view or lens focal length, you need to know some parameters of the installation. If you need to calculate the CCTV focal length, you should specify the following parameters:
Distance from Camera – maximum distance from Camera to the target.
Camera Installation Height – Security camera installation height.
Field of View: Height – Height of the target (for example 1.8 m or 6ft for people). When you select the Field of View(FOV) Height for the camera installation, the software calculates the camera Tilt.
Field of View: Width – The other option is to specify FOV width instead of the height. Just enter the desired width of Field of view (viewing area) for the specified camera distance. If you modify FOV parameters, the Focal Length and the Viewing Angles will be automatically recalculated. The other option is to specify viewing angles instead of FOV Width. In this case, FOV and Camera Focal Length will be calculated automatically.
Camera Sensor Format – CMOS or CCD sensor size (sensor format). You can choose the sensor format from: 1/2.3″, 1/2.5″, 1/2.7″, 1/2.8″, 1/2.9″, 1/3″, 1/3.6″, 1/1.8″, 1/2″, 1/4″, 1″ and 1.25″. Usually, you can find the sensor format in the camera specification. A typical value for network camera with Full HD resolution is 1/3 inch.
In case if you have a fixed lens with known lens focal length and need to calculate the angle of view you can just enter the Lens Focal Length parameter and get the Field of View and Viewing Angles calculated.
The 3D Camera View window of our CCTV design software shows results of camera view 3D modeling with 2 test objects: the first at the specified distance from camera (man in suit) and the second on the bottom camera line (woman).
Pixel density values at distances where these test people are located are shown in the status bar of the program.The user can click on the drawing to see the pixel density at the cursor position.
On the Site Plan tab, you can add some obstacles (walls, trees), test objects (3D models of people, cars, test charts) and add additional cameras to see and adjust your video surveillance system coverage.
You can download a free trial version of our 3D CCTV Computer Aided Design (CAD) software tool for video surveillance systems here.
To calculate network bandwidth of your CCTV cameras and get the required storage space for video archives you need to add camera types and specify some parameters of your security camera installations:
Picture 1. IP camera bandwidth calculator. h.265 and h.264 storage calculation.
Resolution – Camera resolution in pixels. You can select resolution from the drop-down list. The list contains most popular PAL and NTSC camera resolutions (like 352×288 CIF PAL, 704×576 4 CIF PAL) as well as some typical network cameras resolutions (like 640×480) including megapixel resolutions (1280×1024, 1600×1200), HD and full HD resolutions (1920×1080) as well as others.
Compression – Video compression. You can choose from MPEG4, H.264, four levels of Motion JPEG (MJPG) compression (from Low to High) and “RAW Data”. If you use Motion JPEG you can use different JPEG compression levels. If you use low MJPEG compression (level 10) you get best quality of picture and about 10 times lower frame size. If you use Medium MJPEG compression (level 20) you usually obtain a good picture quality and an optimal Quality/Frame Size ratio. With a JPEG level more than 50 your picture became bad for video surveillance purpose.
FPS – Frames Per Second. Typical FPS for video surveillance system is from 5 to 15 frames per second. In some applications (like CCTV in casino) it is required to use higher speed values (25-60 FPS). Alternative name for FPS is IPS (Images Per Second).
Days – Required length of video archive in days (24 hours). Used for storage space calculation.
Cameras – Number of cameras in your CCTV installation with the same parameters.
Recording % – Estimated motion recoding activity. 100% for constant recording. This parameter is used to calculate disk storage space in case the video is recorded on a schedule or on a motion detector.
Image Complexity – Frames from some CCTV cameras are more detailed and have a higher frame size.
Motion % – Motion activity (100% for constant activity). This parameter is used for MPEG4 and H.264 bandwidth estimation.
As a result for each camera type you get:
Frame Size (Kilobytes)- software can make frame size estimation based on resolution and compression. In some special cases you can measure your real frame size and specify it in this field.
Bandwidth, (Megabits per second) – How much network traffic is required for these cameras.
Disk Space, (Gigabytes) – Disk storage space required to store video archive.
At the bottom of the window you can find total bandwidth and disk space required for your video surveillance system.
To make proper bandwidth planning you should know practical the bandwidth values for your network type.
1 Gigabit Ethernet: 500 Mbit/s
100 Mbit Fast Ethernet: 55-60 Mbit/s
WIFI 802.11g 54 Mbit: 12-25 Mbit/s
The software calculates Frame Size estimations from Resolution and Compression using our own method based on our MJPEG frame size research.
Bandwidth and storage space are calculated using following formulas:
Bandwidth (Mbits) = FrameSize (Kb) * 1024 * 8 * FPS * Cameras / 1000000 Storage Space (GB) = FrameSize (Kb) * 1024 *FPS * Cameras * Days * 24 * 60 * 60* Activity * / 1000 000 000
The recent version of JVSG Design Tool also calculates RAID arrays: RAID1, RAID5, RAID6, RAID10 modes are supported.
This tool will certainly help you in designing any video surveillance project or proposal in an easy and fast manner.
How To Get Started?
After downloading the installer, just launch IPDesignToolSetup.exe and start the installation. Launch the program. Please press the “OK” button to get the trial version started. In case you have already have a license key for version 7, just press the “Enter Key” button and enter the license key which was supplied to you at the time of purchase. In case you are using the trial version the period of trial is 45 days from the date of installation, which should give you more than sufficient time to try out the various features and functionalities before purchasing the full version.
Given below is a Quick Start Guide to help you run the software in a smooth manner
Quick Start Guide
A typical scenario is created and outlined below to help you get an idea how to go about using the software.
Launch the program and choose Site Plan tab.
[optional]Load your site plan or floor plan (Right click on Site Plan tab and choose Background/Load Image). You can load site plans in JPEG/BMP/PDF format or not large drawings in DWG format. When the site plan is loaded, you will need to scale the background image by specifying a distance between any 2 points of your site plan.
Add walls and other obstacles (trees, cars etc) on Site Plan tab to see how walls and other obstacles affect camera view zone. You can adjust wall height by changing “H” parameter in the toolbar.
Add video surveillance cameras and specify initial camera parameters that you know, like
Camera Installation Height
Camera Resolution (optional)
Sensor Format (optional)
Lens Focal Length (optional)
You can also specify Field of View (FOV) Width instead of Lens focal length. When you specify some of these parameters, the program automatically calculates the remaining ones.
[optional] You can specify the Distance from Camera to the target. For example when the CCTV camera is located in the room, you can specify the distance till the point where people/intruders could walk. You can specify this distance by changing Distance from Camera parameter or by dragging red endpoint for selected camera on the site plan.
Check the camera zones. Modify cameras FOV (Field of view) width if needed using yellow endpoints or by entering a number into FOVWidth field. Different colours are used in the program to display different resolutions as follows.
Red colour for resolution sufficient to identify a person
Yellow colour for resolutions sufficient to recognize a person
Green colour for resolutions sufficient for monitoring purposes
In order to make recognition/identification areas large you can choose a video surveillance camera with higher resolution or make the angle of view narrower.
On the Camera Installation Drawing tab you can find projection from the side. On this view you can see vertical angle of view and tilt of the selected camera. To change camera tilt please modify FOV Height or Distance from Camera or just use mouse to drag the image up or down in the Camera 3D View window.
You can see enlarged view from the selected camera on the 3D View tab. The program can explicitly display how the lower camera resolution can decrease the quality of the resulting image (you need to switch on Real Camera Resolution option by using right mouse click).
Add and place cameras on the site plan, change cameras field of view to achieve optimal camera coverage while taking into account the customer requirements.
Calculate required disk storage space for video archive and estimate required network bandwidth (for network cameras) on Network Bandwidth & Disk Space tab. You will just need to specify Camera Resolution, Compression, desired number of frames per second (FPS column), and desired retention time in days (Days column).
Control Keys and Mouse Operations
To navigate your site plan you can use the following commands:
To Zoom In or Zoom Out the site/floor plans you can use mouse wheel or can press Ctrl+Shift+Left or Right mouse buttons.
To scroll the site plan you can press and hold the mouse wheel and move the mouse in the desired direction or hold Alt key while click and drag the mouse cursor.
