God, I hate these snarky sarcastic comments. You know like when someone asks why you didn’t get a hold of them and they say "we have these things, with numbers, and if you push seven of the numbers the one that I have makes a ringing sound’…I don’t understand why people do that.
You could just say 'They can be mounted on the wall instead of he the ceiling and then someone else, like me, can say ‘if you mount a camera on the wall it’s much more likely that someone will walk in front of it and totally obscure what’s going on so instead of sort of seeing the bad guy, you don’t even know he’s there’.
As for the grainy, black and white (sometimes stop motion) videos. It’s all about space. Having their videos like that might mean being able to save 3 months of videos where having HD quality might give them 24 hours.
At my store, we have 8, low(ish) res cameras and can hold about 3 weeks worth of video.
I designed these types of systems for many years and each poster makes good points.
Having a camera slightly elevated (above the head of the cashier) and behind the teller windows puts it in a practical location with little chance of interference or blockage. Put a camera on the teller counter and someone can just walk up and put a hat over it, or block it with the signs advertising mortgages. An elevated camera also gives us a much better view of the movements of the perpetrator, including his/her hands as he/she walks through the lobby. Eye-level cameras can also be useful in some applications, but not as often.
As far as image quality, it is fair to say that every digital video recording system is a compromise between the cost of storage, image resolution, and image frame rate. With a single camera (e.g., with your cell phone), this is usually not much of a problem. With a bank using 10 or 12 cameras, this is a major consideration, especially when you add in purchase, installation, and maintenance costs. Older D&B 35mm film cameras were capable of astonishing resolutions and picture quality. Today, somebody in the bank’s security group makes the decision that they want 7 ips at a certain resolution so they can store a week’s worth of video. I might disagree and advise 3 ips at a higher resolution for just three days of storage. Guess who wins?
I’m sorry, but I forgot to mention the quality of the video encoding/compression. A bank’s security director goes to a trade show and sees a DVR that boasts of megapixel recording of 12 cameras at 30 ips simultaneously. He is impressed. However, when the unit is installed, it’s obvious that the “q” is lousy, with lots of compression artifacts. The decision is often made to reduce the ips and resolution to a point where the “q” is once again acceptable, but the requirement to maintain the recorded video for a week is unchanged.
This often doesn’t make much sense. If a client values image resolution and “q” very highly (which they should, in this application), then they ought to lower their requirements for storage and ips significantly.
TL;DR: When a buyer tells his/her boss the equipment will store 30 ips for a week, the “q” and resolution are often sacrificed to achieve that goal.
But storage is cheap. You can buy a cheap 8TB HD for a couple hundred bucks. Or a better 16TB RAID HD for under a thousand. And you don’t need to keep more than a day of data–the bank only gets robbed once. Or maybe say 3 days of data in case the robber came in to have a look around in advance. If the place is robbed, you dump the data off to another drive.
No, as the poster after you and others have indicated, it is decidedly not the reason cameras are not at face level. And even if it were correct, the remark was snarky. So don’t do it again. If you wish to discuss moderation further, take it to ATMB.
But that’s true no matter what kind of hard drive you have. The question was asked about quality of image, the answer was limited storage capacity, and my point is that storage capacity is inexpensive.
Robberies are very rare events for a bank office – many never get robbed. The camera records are used much more often to investigate possible employee theft (as Gato pointed out), or review records in identity theft, fraud, or forgery cases. Most of those aren’t uncovered until after a few days have passed. So keeping a weeks worth of data is a common choice.
Interesting that things haven’t changed much re Doper gripes on this subject since 2009.
As for putting bank customers at ease - one place more than any other where you’d expect to be under surveillance is a bank, so I doubt that’s a major reason for mounting cameras up high. Placing them out of reach is a way to deter vandalism, either during a robbery or when someone is targeting an ATM machine.
While high-definition video storage for the long term might get expensive and unwieldy, having supplemental motion-activated cameras at teller stations taking still shots that are saved and stored remotely might solve some resolution and storage problems and provide high-quality images relatively cheaply.
Both of the local banks that I use have small digital cameras mounted on the counter right next to the teller window, pointed right at the customer’s face. They are very obvious and not at all disguised.
This gives us great video of the customer in criminal investigations, and is probably pretty effective at discouraging robberies.
This. It’s been a while since I visited my local BoA branch, but I could swear I remember seeing, next to each teller station, a stout post (maybe 2-3" in diameter) with a camera embedded in it. The lens was at face level for a person of normal height, and the post extended far enough above that height so that it would be difficult to cover the camera by simply hanging a baseball cap on top of it. You also would need something unusually tall to set on the counter to block it.
Back when I banked with Bank of [del]Everything-Incurs-A-Fee[/del] America, every teller window had a little camera, mounted on a short post on the counter, pointed directly at the customer, behind the [del]bulletproof glass[/del] security barrier.
Same thing at my current bank, Navy Federal, minus the barrier.
When you give a bank a check or other signed document, they invariably run it through a machine that scans/digitizes it. You can generally download images of deposited checks and things from their website.
So, I’m not convinced that’s a meaningful security problem to worry about. They already have to secure images of things like signatures and check numbers. And account numbers are woefully insecure anyway. Anyone you give a check to has it.
As a now-retired detective, I’ve often wondered this myself. Not so much with banks (they don’t get robbed all that often) but convenience stores. There are many places a camera could be hidden at eye level that could capture a suspects face. My conclusion is that its a cost thing and they are more interested in catching employees than armed robbers. The store doesn’t really care if the robber is caught or not - they almost never get their money or merchandise back. Catching an employee who is stealing on a continuing basis is another matter. Prosecution makes for a good deterrent for other employees. My last case before retirement was a murder near a bar. The suspect was in the bar just prior and there were several cameras. Every one was pointed at a cash register drawer or liquor storage area. The cameras are there for the business, not the police or public good.
