Professional CCTV Design Tools
In this review we will compare CCTV design software: IP Video System Design Tool from JVSG , VideoCAD from CCTV CAD Software and CCTV Pro’s Toolbox from NAAA.org
CCTV Design Problems
If you need to design any CCTV system, first thing you should do is to figure out where and how to put your video cameras.
Cameras with different sensor size and different lens focal length have different viewing angles.
And often you need to calculate lens focal length for 3-rd party camera lens.
We have tested 4 special software for such tasks and published our tests results bellow.
IP Video System Design Tool / JVSG
Actually this software from Joint Video Surveillance Group is nice and easy to use.
With it you can calculate CCTV camera’s field of view, focal length for 3rd party lens, and see how any changes will affect viewing angles on a 2D drawing.
With this tool you can make estimations of storage space for your video recordings and to calculate network traffic for IP video systems.
Also this tool beats others in price. It cost just about 40 USD and can be a good modern replacement for CCTV focal length calculators made out of paper as well as it helps with bandwidth and disk space calculation.
You can test this tool during 30 days.
More info at IP Video System Design Tool Homepage
CCTV Pro’s Electronic Toolbox / www.NAAA.org
Actually this software from National Alarm Association of America contains few separate calculators. Some of them are completely obvious and so far not really useful (like “unit converter”, “True Distance” or Ohm calculator) but for our task it has built in field of view calculator. You can see this calculator on the screenshots.
Big problem of this FOV calculator – it calculates the field of view in one horizontal projection only. Other software (from JVSG and CCTV CAD) support calculation in both – horizontal and vertical projection. And this is very important because the CCTV camera can be installed using different camera installation height.
NAAA software has a very basic hard drive storage calculator where you cannot even specify frame resolution or compression method.
This software is sold together with a simple CCD camera. The price of the toolbox is very high for it’s functions – $400 USD.
Unfortunatelly, no demo-version is available. Other versions (clones) of this software named “CCTV Salesman’s Toolkit” and “CCTV Installer Toolbox”.
Web site of this software – NAAA.org
VideoCAD / CCTV CAD
VideoCAD can make more than you can even imagine. Including 3D modeling of CCTV system. But it is not easy to do what you want. I found I need to click Help button too often.
This software is relatively expensive – price of version 5 is 300 USD. Version 6 – about 500 USD.
But in case if you want to put your cameras on AutoCad or Visio drawings you should choose this one.
Demo version of VideoCad works 30 days and it has some limitations, like you cannot select camera sensor size – it is fixed on 1/3”.
VideoCAD web site: “CCTVCAD Software”
Conclusion
1st place – IP Video System Desing Tool from JVSG
This software does all FOV and camera lens caluclations as well as bandwidth and storage space caluclations and has fair price.
2nd place – VideoCAD from “CCTVCAD”
Main reason why we placed it on 2nd place – this software is functional, but too complicated and not user-friendly.
3rd place – CCTV Pro’s Toolbox from NAAA.org
We have placed it on 3-rd place because of too basic functions for $400 software. But we hope the NAAA will continue to develop new functions.
