Click on a letter to go to the definitions that start with that letter:
A
Alarming
The capability of the surveillance system to send an alarm to the user’s phone/email by means of an integrated security system.
Analog
An electrical signal transmitted by means of cable from a camera to a monitor. An analog camera is generally charged with voltage and current.
Angle of View
The maximum angle a camera can view through a lens.
Aperture
An opening though which light travels into the camera lens. It controls the amount of light rays that reach the CCD.
Aspect Ratio
The ratio of the width of the picture to the height.
Auto White Balance
The ability of a color camera to automatically balance flushes of white light into the aperture.
Automatic Gain Control
A function on the camera (and many electronics) that automatically balances the gain, or volume, of the signal, i.e. raise the volume if it is too low and lower it if too high.
Automatic Iris Lens
A camera lens that automatically adjusts to the lighting around it, by closing and opening the iris.
Auto-Terminating
A function on the camera that automatically terminates the loop-through once it reaches the last device on the chain of devices.
Backlight Compensation (BLC)
The ability of the camera to balance the lighting conditions when there is abundant light behind the object in focus. A more advanced form is Wide Dynamic Range.
Check our article Wide Dynamic Range to neutralize shadows
Back Focus
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Bandwidth
The amount of data allowed to your computer over a specific period of time, usually expressed in bytes per second (bps). The bigger the river, the more stuf flows through, so if you want faster internet, get more bandwidth
Black Level
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BNC
British Naval Connector, a connector used between coaxial cable and an input/output port, either male or female, and couplingis complete with a quarter twist of the connector.
Read our article aboutconnectors
A lens mount which attaches a lens to the camera. C mount lens are placed at 17.526 mm from the image sensor, whereas CS mount is placed at only 12.5 mm away. They are both 1 inch in diameter, and they produce the same image quality.
Camera
An image capturing device that utilizes light waves and displays the captured images (in a sequence) on a monitor.
CAT5
Short for Category 5 cable, also known as Ethernet cable, transfers data from an IP network camera (sometime analog) to the monitor.
Cathode Ray Tube (CRT)
A vacuum tube which contains electrons that bounce off a fluorescent screen to display images from a camera. This is an outdated type of monitor.
Charge-Coupled Device (CCD)
A chip in the camera that processes the signal of a picture as the camera receivs it. It produces high-quality images.
Closed Circuit Television (CCTV)
The use of surveillance cameras to monitor and observe people, places, and things.
CD-RW
A compact disc that allows for rewriting over saved data by means of CD-RW drive.
Coaxial Cable
A cable used to transmit analog signal from a camera to a monitor or DVR. It is named coaxial because of its components: a copper core and a woven copper shield.
Composite Video
A form of analog video format in which video feed and line and frame synchronization are combined onto one cable.
Compression
The feature on a DVR, or an IP camera, to compress an image, or make it smaller. Compression forms are MPEG4 and H.264.
Read about compressions
Contrast
Thedifference between color and brightness to help make a subject in an image more distinguishable.
