Hey guys, what's goin on? It's Tyler from Nelly's Security and today I wanted to show
you this security camera. It's an analog security camera that I set up earlier. I'm having some
issues with it, so I wanted to show you guys kinda what's goin on. You can see there, yeah it's like,
not got a very good image. I do have this crimped with homemade cables. I mean it's,
uh, it's definitely not the best crimping job in the world but, I mean it does the job, right?
There we go, we got more lines,
there's definitely something going on, so let's see if we can figure this out.
I'm just going to follow the cables here. Let's see, where is this goin' to?
Let's go check this out. Here we are in our warehouse. These wires come back here and go up,
and uh, let's see, I think this is them.
And, uh, oh.
That's not good.
We've got this, this Siamese cable wrapped around this outlet,
wrapped around these power cables. Um, I feel like that's...
That's gotta be part of the reason. *static*
Okay, that was an extreme and overly-dramatic example, but it illustrates a common issue
that many people have with their analog CCTV systems: video interference. I'm sure we've
all had this experience at one time or another, going to our DVR, turning on the monitor, or
going into the playback and seeing that the video was fuzzy, noisy, maybe there was some
horizontal bars running up and down the image. It's a frustrating experience to be sure,
but in most cases, video interference can easily be fixed, and that's what we're going
to be talking about in today's video. Video interference and grainy, noisy footage can
be caused by a number of factors. However, in the vast majority of situations, your video
interference is most likely caused by your cables. And that's exactly what we saw in my little demo
installation from the beginning of this video. In that example, there were two main issues with
my cables that led to this terrible and maybe too extreme video interference. And those two reasons
have to do with one: the quality of the cable itself, and two: the method of installation.
First, let's talk about cable construction. Here is an illustration of an RG59
coaxial cable. I gotta make sure I'm pronouncing that correctly.
Coaxul.
Coaxul?
Coaxial.
Coaxial. I'm getting... I'm getting mixed signals here.
Coakshul.
Coiaxial.
Coiaxial. Alright quick poll. Let me know down in the comments below,
how do you pronounce this word?
So here is an illustration of a coaxial cable. At the very center of this cable, we have our copper
core. This core is what transfers the video data from your security camera to your DVR. Around that
copper core we have our first layer of insulation. This is going to protect your video data from all
kinds of electrical interference. And around that first layer of insulation we have a copper
braid. This additional shield prevents even more electrical interference from getting inside your
cable. And outside the copper braiding shield we have the outer insulation. So if you have
really good, high-quality Siamese cable, you should be able to bypass most video interference
issues. Now obviously, that's not always the case. But having high-quality Siamese cables
really is going to filter out most of the video interference issues that you might come across.
And that is the first mistake I made with my cable here. First, you can see that there are areas
where this outer insulation was stripped back in places. Sometimes that copper braid was missing.
If you come across Siamese cable like this, throw it away. Now obviously, again, this is a little
bit extreme. Nobody is going to throw up an RG59 cable where the copper core is exposed like this.
But I'm exaggerating this intentionally just to have this example to show you.
So there are some simple tips her. Invest in high-quality equipment. Your cables really
need to be professionally-built. This isn't something that you can skimp on. I know,
sometimes it's tempting to just pick up the cheapest thing that we can find. But more
often than not, the cheapest option is not the best option. So get yourself some good cable.
And second, if you are buying your cables in bulk and putting the connectors on yourself,
just be sure to have really nice and tight connections on both ends of the cable.
For most scenarios, we recommend going with compression connectors. Compression gives
you a much more even and much more reliable connection, whereas opting for a crimp-on
styyle of connector sometimes can give you an uneven connection. It can crush your cable into
unnatural shapes and just leave you with some less-than-ideal connections. So that's cable
construction. The second mistake I made with this installation was the actual method that I used.
So as you saw, I took the cable, I ran it out into our warehouse, I wrapped it around that outlet a
couple of times. It was kind of braided around our power cords, and then I brought it back into this
room to power up the camera. The problem with that is, since I was using poor quality cables, having
these cables in such close contact to these power cords introduced a ton of electrical interference.
This cable wasn't properly shielded, so the electrical signals from the power cable were
interfering with the video signals from the RG59 cable. And again, like we said, this
was over-exaggerated on purpose. Nobody would ever install a security camera like this. But the point
here is, when you're laying your cables, you have to be careful where you're laying them. Sometimes
the easiest way to run cables is just to run them alongside cable runs that are already existing.
The problem with this is, especially if those are high-voltage cables, again, this just introduces
a bunch of unwanted signal interference between the electrical signals and your video signal. It's
always best to keep your security camera cables as far as possible from power cables. It's not always
easy, but just like we said with the cables, the cheapest method is not always the best method.
In this case, the easiest method is not always the best method. But, like we talked about in the
previous section, if you have really good cable construction, if you have solid insulation and
adequate shielding, this might not be something you really have to worry about too much. I mean,
as long as the cables aren't touching each other, you should be fine. However,
where we see this issue come up more often than not is when you're using Ethernet cables to run
video and power from your camera back to the home site at the DVR. Sometimes it's just easier and
cheaper to use these video baluns to connect to your DVR and your security camera, and then use
an Ethernet cable to connect the two. This is great. It's easy to use. We sell video baluns
here at Nelly's Security. But when we do this, you have to understand that we are hacking the system.
Ethernet cables were not designed to transmit video data from a security camera to a DVR.
Ethernet cables were designed to connect devices to a network. Now this isn't necessarily a bad
thing, and it can be incredibly efficient. But it is a hack. And one of the drawbacks of this hack
is that Ethernet cables are not nearly as shielded as RG59 coaxial cables. So if you are
using Ethernet cables in your analog CCTV setup, you just have to be extra cautious
about where you are laying that Ethernet cable. Make sure it is well out of reach of any cables
that could be sending high-voltage electric signals to interfere with your video data.
So those are the two main mistakes that we see most often when it comes to video
interference. One, you cables are not high enough quality, or two, your cables are not
properly installed. So if you are having any kind of issues with your analog security camera feeds,
this is the first place to check. If you've double- and triple-checked your cables and
you know that they're high enough quality, and you know that they are crimped and installed properly,
then there are some other factors that you can look at. And if you want to learn more about that,
we do have an entire blog post which you can check out in the description below. In that blog post,
we walk you through everything that we've talked about in this video, plus we give
you a few other scenarios that you can check if fixing your cables does not fix your grainy
and noisy video. But again, in the vast majority of cases, it's going to be your cables. So be sure
to check the links in the description below. There I will post some of the cables that we
sell here at Nelly's Security. And I'm not just recommending these cables because we sell them,
although that is the primary reason. I'm also recommending these cables because they work.
Do you know how hard it was for me to introduce video interference into that example from earlier?
We tried all sorts of setups with that cable and we could not get the video to look bad.
That's because, I mean, we have nice cables here. So check out our cables below and if you have any
questions at all, do not hesitate to reach out to us. We are only a phone call or an email away.
Thank you guys for watching this video and I will catch you in the next one.
When we talk about cable construction...
I have no idea.
When we talk about cable construction, what we're really talking about is...
Something.
Hmm..
What are we really talking about?
Don't mind me, just Googling things.
Because I don't know what I'm talking about.