Pixel people are robbing pharmacies...

[LedJedi]

If the pixel people were spotted in Boston they would shut down the city.

My daughter just brought home a Gir hoodie. I scored rep points by knowing who it was.

But do you have enough faction to get anything useful from the Daughter Faction quartermaster?

(it's a wow joke... someone will laugh i promise)

[KD5NRH]

In many cases, the camera is not at fault. Video storage systems do not capture all of the information gathered by the camera. That's why the pictures on a live monitor often look way better than retrieved recordings.

Here, we use them to watch parking lots and vehicle entry gates, so the stationary ones are set on motion sensing to decrease the compression and increase the frame rate when needed. The DVR also has some adaptive capability; record at a higher rate, then drop frames after a certain time for archival. In this case, it's useful, since the system isn't attended for about 11 hours a day and we're usually just trying to identify make/model/color of a car or truck. I can't see any reason that a pharmacy wouldn't want to set up the system for maximum quality, since they should be able to stop recording within minutes after an incident. (preventing overwrite, dropping frames after the fact, or increased compression)

[Excaliber]

I can't see any reason that a pharmacy wouldn't want to set up the system for maximum quality, since they should be able to stop recording within minutes after an incident. (preventing overwrite, dropping frames after the fact, or increased compression)

Many of the recordings you see on the TV news are not incident triggered, but taken from the standard always-on recording configuration, which brings you back to the cost of storage space issue. Some systems are programmed to go to higher resolution and frame rates for a certain period to provide better images when something is happening. This requires some kind of an input - either a holdup button or some other type of alarm device integrated with the DVR. In many cases, the counter clerk doesn't have an opportunity to activate these systems without unacceptable danger to himself until after the bandit is out the door.

Motion activated video like you mentioned would help in some circumstances, but in a busy convenience store, this wouldn't use a whole lot less storage space than constant recording because there's nearly always motion present.

If you dive into the issue, you'll find as often as not that the person making the purchasing decision gets personal benefit from minimizing the cost because it helps him or her achieve bonuses, meet budget targets, etc. and poor image quality which doesn't help much in a post incident investigation doesn't affect their performance evaluations or their compensation packages.

Most businesses incent employees based on money saved, without adequate measures for the quality of results. I always caution executives to be careful to consider what folks are likely to do to qualify for the incentives or bonuses they offer, because those things may not exactly coincide with what the folks who set those things up had in mind.

[DoubleJ]

Pixel people are robbing pharmacies...

I wouldn't worry about it too much. Eventually they will run into "HemiZygote" and he'll take care of it.

best post evar, ftw.