Forget shaky UFO videos. Why are today’s surveillance cameras so crappy?

This has got to be one of my main rants/gripes about today’s technology.

The following article is about a 15 year old girl who was attacked in broad daylight as she was walking home from a community center. The man grabbed her, licked her face, and pushed her down, then tried to pull his pants down to rape her. Thankfully, she was able to get away after punching him.

Good for her! I love it when criminals chose victims who are feistier than they appear to be!

A crappy surveillance camera caught the guy getting out of his vehicle and walking in the girl’s direction. The actual attack is out of the camera’s view. Soon, the man is seen running back to his SUV and driving off.

The attacker is described as a light skinned black man, from 17 to 18 years old, with a medium-length Afro. Police said he also has a tattoo on the back of one of his arms. (Alas, no description of the tattoo is provided in the article.)

He is also considered nervy (for attacking in broad daylight), drives a blurry gold SUV, sporting white shorts, a black shirt, and a white hat. He is thin enough to be concealed by a telephone/traffic light pole (pic #5). His license plate is also blurry.
Slideshow: www.wftv.com...

I don’t know how it’s been determined that the assailant has a medium length afro since he’s wearing a hat, but this is what’s been reported by the victim. Maybe she knocked his hat off and he was able to retrieve it and put it back on before hopping back into his fuzzy vehicle. (Can anyone on ATS even identify what type of SUV this is from the fuzzy image?)

I also noticed that the pervert’s height wasn’t mentioned. Can’t the cops even use the scale of the SUV while the perp is standing beside it to determine a general height of the sicko? Yeah, police work at its finest!

So, if anyone in the Orlando area knows an extremely blurry black man that drives an extremely blurry gold SUV (even though it looks silver in the slideshow), please notify the Orlando Police Department.
Source: www.wftv.com...
(Don’t bother clicking on the video that shows the blurry attacker near his blurry SUV, you’ll just get redirected to a live feed of the Casey Anthony hearing -- I know, reporting at its best)

I realize I’m being very tongue in cheek with this, but you would think with today’s technology, surveillance cameras would be able to provide better quality images. I mean, seriously. We have satellites that can zero in on a license plate and read it, but surveillance cameras aren’t able to provide crisp, clear images? What good are they then? I bet our gubbermint’s facial recognition cameras provide better images, so why can’t simple surveillance cameras do this, too? It seems to me that the surveillance cameras should be improved upon before we spend more money on red light cameras and facial recognition technology. If Big Brother really cared about its citizens, it should start by spending money on the basics, then go from there. I hope this little girl’s attacker is caught, but with the quality of the evidence, I’m afraid it isn’t likely. I do realize that whoever purchased this surveillance camera is most likely a public sector individual, but I honestly feel that these shoddy cameras should stop being sold to business owners. Even if they're only buying them to identify valdals, they're getting ripped off. The vandals will be blurry and unidentifiable, too.

So, all the folks who complain about shaky, blurry UFO videos -- remember this thread and realize that today’s technology can’t even be used to give a clear image of a sick pervert let alone get a crisp image of a craft in the sky.
Welcome to the 21st century.

Im guessing that they have to record so much information non stop and store it for long periods. But still, with todays technology we should have better images.

You are quite right. Todays technology is very capable of giving first rate pictures, but consider this:

Councils want the cheapest deal for the tax payer.
Equipment get installed and left - rarely it is upgraded - due to budgets.
Some surveilance cameras may have been mounted, as older technology and hence cheaper - up to 5 or 6 years ago. So that could be up to 7 year old technology.
It is possible this was being recorded to VHS tape or even DAT tape. These tapes are rarely replaced over the years and can become worn and low quality. Budgets again!

So there is the answer to your qyestion. It is simply local government saving cash. We do have the technology, but not the funds.

reply to post by Idonthaveabeard


Maybe you're right. I hadn't thought about the level of information that is being processed and stored. I'll admit that I don't know much about surveillance technology and how it works, but I know enough to know that it should be better than what we're seeing here.
If I were the business owner who purchased this system, I'd want my money back.

reply to post by Shamatt


I hear what you're saying. Maybe this latest event will convince the system's owner, as well as others, that it's time for an upgrade. One can only hope.

reply to post by Afterthought


recently read online there are over 50 million security cameras in use in the USA. holy cow. mostly on private property, in businesses.

when was the system bought? sure, there is great technology available. means nothing when your system is 25 years old.

what quality is the system? 'quality' is not a definitive term. there is low quality, medium quality, etcetera.

all show and no go? how often do investigators find out surveillance cameras pointed right at a crime scene are defective, have no recording media in the deck, are not plugged in, you name it.

bottom line: OP makes an excellent point. this is an excellent time to get into safety & security devices business. learn about your product and they pretty much sell themselves. good chance insurance companies give discounts on business policies for having such devices as well. like the scared white lady in lovely home on TV commercial says: "the time to get a home security monitor is before a break-in, not after!"

Very often the issue is not with the device which captures the image, but the method by which the information is stored. Most video surveillance only takes a frame of data every few seconds, rather than thirty or more frames per second, unless deliberately set to do otherwise. You almost never see truely high quality video surveillance film, because to actualy store the data that would accumulate, even with todays technology , would require more space, expenditure and an awful lot more cash, than most people want to spend.

The other problem is that even wealthy private owners are only after a system which they can show to thier insurance broker, to make them charge less on premiums. The only places you see proper , real time speed video shot by surveillance cameras, is if you are fortunate enough to look at the systems used by the military and by high level government .

Very often it is only the lesser type that get used by everyone else.

I've wondered why they don't camera's at eye level by the doors of banks. Inside and out. Or afixed to the counter.

In the USA we've had cameras in banks for ever and ever, and I don't think the quality has changed a jot since the '60s? '70s? I've always wondered why it is that consumer-quality laptop cameras--I mean for criminy's sake, even the cheapest *cellphone* cameras--are better than what the banks have. I don't know how many stills I've seen of bankrobbers with an appeal to citizens to try to identify them. And I don't care if it was your own brother, you couldn't tell.

Of course in the movies and TV shows they can take the video from a surveillance camera and zoom in and sharpen a license plate or count a perp's nose hairs. They can take a reflection off someone's sunglasses on a glass door as seen through a surveillance cam and identify a suspect (I think I actually saw that on CSI Miami)! They can zoom in on a medicine bottle under the bed on the other side of the room and take the patient's name off of it. Not saying that such cameras even exist (certainly not for non-spy-agency customers). But surely as hell there are better cameras out there, if customers were willing to pay....

Originally posted by TrueBrit
Very often the issue is not with the device which captures the image, but the method by which the information is stored.

As others have said, many systems are older which explains why they aren't using "today's technology", but you make a good point that even if you install "today's technology" there is a cost to recording the stored data. The higher the quality of data, and the more frames per second, the more storage space needed. Eventually this will become less of an issue with larger and larger hard drives but I can fill a 2 terabyte drive up pretty quickly with 1080 HD 30fps video. Yes I could record it like that and fill up a huge hard drive quickly, but I'm not going to, and neither are most people or agencies.

This is one of those problems that will eventually solve itself as older systems are replaced with newer ones and the technology and storage capacity continues to improve.