Video Surveillance & System Maintenance Tips for Businesses
Appoint 2 persons to share duties of surveillance system maintenance;

Keep a record of maintenance/repairs performed, in a separate record book.

Record the make/model/serial numbers of all system equipment, including cameras, multiplexer, VCR's to be readily available for police reporting when & if required. This would also apply if the system is a digital recording system as opposed to video recording.

Review camera position setups to ensure optimum location and camera focus. An additional camera may be in-order to capture “fill-the-frame” images of suspects as they enter premises, or stand at counters. This is in addition to cameras that try to cover the whole scene with one camera only.

Camera focus should be adjusted clearly on the area most likely to capture a suspect image, such as counter area. Holding a card with large numbers or writing, at this counter area focal point will assist in checking the focus.

Ensure crucial areas, on which the cameras are focused, have sufficient lighting to illuminate the suspect. Likewise, ensure light sources are not improperly aimed at the camera, or that a ceiling mounted camera is not too close to an adjacent ceiling light that will cause interference or “white-out”.

A similar lighting situation to consider fixing is “back-lighting” that will cause the subject to appear as only a dark outline, obscuring any identifying detail. This often occurs in locations with sunlight streaming through windows, directly into the camera. It follows the old film camera advice of, “Don't shoot into the sun!” Consider repositioning the camera, or installing light reducing window shades.

Institutions should consider the placement of advertising posters which are sometimes attached to ceilings, and hang directly in view of the camera, obstructing clear view. Any line-of-sight of the camera should be kept un-obstructed if possible.

Monthly, clean camera lenses with approved lens cleaner fluid and paper. Put a few drops of cleaning fluid on the paper and wipe in a circular motion. Do not put fluid on the lens itself.

Monthly, clean the VCR's recording heads using a high quality wet-tape cleaning cassette, which will also clean the entire tape path inside the VCR.

Annually, have the VCR serviced professionally. Purchase one additional VCR for backup purposes to breakdowns, or servicing.

Daily, ensure that the correct time & date is generated by the multiplex unit if installed, and most importantly, that the time & date is set on the recording VCR and displayed on the monitor. Brief power outages will require this to be reset. What you should see if your system has a multiplexer, is two separate time/date stamps. One is displayed by the multiplexer, and one is displayed by the VCR. This time and date stamp displayed by the “multiplexer”, on your monitor, will not be seen when viewed by forensic investigators on their equipment, and will hinder examinations if it is not available. Therefore, this is the reason to ensure the VCR time/date is correctly set and displayed on the monitor. Make sure to correct for any time-zones who switch to day-light savings and back in the spring and fall.

Purchase a large wall mounted clock, and a large single numbered calendar, and position it so at least one camera clearly captures it in the background. The calendar should be the type that shows only one day-at-a –time, similar to what's used in financial institutions.

Annually, purchase 40 new high quality videotapes. Label them 1 to 31, using them only on that day of the month. This will always permit the previous 30 days of videos to be available should investigators need to review incidents which may have occurred several days prior to them being reported, such as fraud incidents. The extra 9 spare tapes are for replacement purposes. This is based upon 24 hour recording mode. Other recording modes will require additional tapes to be purchased, however each tape should be used no more than 12-15 times for optimum recording. On the tape label, record each new date that the tape is used. This will help keep track of the total number of times the tape is used.

When an incident occurs, don't permit yourself, or anyone to view the incident using the “pause-jog-shuttle' feature on the recording VCR in order to isolate the suspect image. This will damage the image and hinder forensic analysis. If necessary by staff or police officers for reasons of safety, review the incident using the play/stop controls only.

If at anytime a crime occurs, and the recorded videotape is ejected from the VCR, immediately break-out and remove the “record-tab”, which will prevent accidental erasure of the evidence. Several surveillance VCR models automatically begin recording when a tape is inserted, and removing the record tab will prevent accidental “recording-over” of the evidence from happening.

References:

Winnipeg Police Department