# CCTV

Security camera · DVR

A security camera sends a small, soft, oversharpened picture to a recorder, and the recorder plays it on a tube monitor in a back room. CCTV gives your picture that whole chain, and can photograph the monitor too, at an angle, the way someone holds a phone up to the guard's screen.

## Controls

### Camera

- **Sensor** (Select: CIF / D1 / 960H / HD). The camera's sensor. CIF is small and blurry, D1 is the classic recorder size, 960H and HD are sharper.
- **Sharpening** (hero knob, 0 to 100, rests at 50). The hero. How hard the recorder sharpens. Turn it up and dark shapes get bright rims.
- **Lens** (Knob, 0 to 100, rests at 30). How soft the lens is.
- **Interlace** (Knob, 0 to 100, rests at 30). Every other line lands a little to the side, so edges comb.
- **Frame rate** (Select: 30 / 15 / 7.5 / 4). The recorder's frame rate. At 7.5 or 4 a moving picture stutters, frame to frame.

### Picture

- **Picture** (Select: Color / Mono / Night IR). Color, Mono, or Night IR, which is black and white with glowing highlights.
- **Cast** (Fader, -100 to +100, rests at +40). The cast. Toward Cool is the blue of most monitors, toward Warm is old fluorescent light.
- **Contrast** (Knob, 0 to 100, rests at 45). Crushes the blacks and blows out the whites.
- **Color** (Knob, 0 to 100, rests at 28). How much color survives.
- **Bloom** (Knob, 0 to 100, rests at 15). Bright parts bleed into their surroundings.

### Signal

- **Noise** (Knob, 0 to 100, rests at 30). Grain, finer in color, heavier at night.
- **Compression** (Knob, 0 to 100, rests at 20). The recorder's compression. Blocks and banding grow as you turn it up.
- **Roll** (Knob, 0 to 100, rests at 0). The picture rolls up the screen, a whole number of times per loop.
- **Jitter** (Knob, 0 to 100, rests at 10). Rows shiver sideways.

### Overlay

- **Overlay** (Select: Off / Camera / Camera + time / Full). What the recorder writes on the picture. Camera shows the name, Camera + time adds a clock that ticks with the loop, Full adds a blinking REC. Set the date in the field beside it.
- **Camera** (Select: CAM 01 / CAM 02 / CAM 03 / CAM 04 / LOBBY / GARAGE / ENTRANCE / LOADING DOCK). The camera's name. **Switch** moves to the next one.
- **Lettering** (Switch: Clean / Block). Clean letters, or the blocky ones of older recorders.

### Monitor

- **Scanlines** (Knob, 0 to 100, rests at 45). How dark the gaps between the monitor's lines are.
- **Lines** (Knob, 200 to 600, rests at 444). How many lines the monitor draws.
- **Mask** (Knob, 0 to 100, rests at 20). The red, green and blue stripes of the tube.
- **Curve** (Knob, 0 to 100, rests at 30). How much the glass bulges.
- **Glow** (Knob, 0 to 100, rests at 30). The monitor's glow round bright parts.
- **Vignette** (Knob, 0 to 100, rests at 35). Darkens the corners of the tube.

### Photo

- **Photo** (Switch: Off / On). Photographs the monitor. Everything below is about that photo.
- **Moiré** (hero knob, 0 to 100, rests at 60). The hero of the photo. How much the camera's pixels catch the scanlines. Low is a clean photo, high ripples across the screen.
- **Camera pixels** (Knob, 0 to 100, rests at 40). The size of the camera's pixels. Bigger pixels make bigger, slower ripples.
- **Distance** (Knob, 0 to 100, rests at 15). Steps back from the monitor, so its bezel shows.
- **Focus** (Knob, 0 to 100, rests at 15). Defocuses the photo, which softens the scanlines and calms the moiré.
- **Glare** (Knob, 0 to 100, rests at 25). Light reflected on the glass.
- **Refresh bands** (Knob, 0 to 100, rests at 20). The dark bands a phone catches when its shutter and the tube disagree. They travel down the screen once per loop.
- **Exposure** (Fader, -100 to +100, rests at 0). The photo's exposure.

### Buttons

- **Switch** (Pulse button). Press it to cut to the next camera with a tear across the picture.
- **Loss** (Pulse button). Press it and the signal drops to snow with VIDEO LOSS, then comes back.

### Settings

- **Angle across** (Knob, 0 to 100, rests at 50). Turns the photo left or right. Drag on the **Aim** screen to tilt it in both directions.
- **Angle up** (Knob, 0 to 100, rests at 50). Tilts the photo up or down.

## Presets

- **Phone Shot**: A phone held up to the guard's monitor: tilted, moiré across the lines, glare on the glass.
- **Lobby Monitor**: Straight on, a cool color feed with the time ticking in the corner.
- **Night IR**: Infrared after dark: black and white, glowing highlights, heavy noise.
- **Evidence Still**: Four frames a second, blocky DVR compression, oversharpened edges.
- **Garage Cam**: A cheap camera in fluorescent light: green cast, rolling, jittering rows.
- **Across the Room**: The monitor photographed from a few steps back, bezel showing, angled down.