What's the surveillance room like? Repost

This is a repost of a post I made about a year ago, but I feel like it bares s repeating. Enjoy.

I got another good question last week, from a reader wanting to know what a surveillance room is like, how it is laid out and how it is staffed and run.  So here goes.

I have worked in surveillance departments at six different casinos in the last 25 years. Some very small (300 slots, 6 blackjack tables) and some very big (3000 slots, 60-70 table games of all kinds).

When I started in the early 90's it was all VCRs and not all cameras were recorded all the time. We used a lot of "multi-plexers" and "quad screens". A multi-plexer used one VCR to display and record up to 16 screens on one monitor. Since the VCR still records at 30 frames per second, that meant that if you did a review on any one of those 16 screens you would be looking at a "freeze frame" effect, where you only got 1.8 frames per second of the shot you were looking at. A quad would record all four screens at 30 fps, but the size of the picture on the screen was 1/4 (obviously) of the total screen size. The problem with quad reviews was that the resolution was always the same, so if you did a review on a larger monitor the picture would get real fuzzy and/or grainy.

Most surveillance rooms used monitors in quad format to display dedicated fixed shots over important areas, like the count rooms, cash cages and entry/egress routes and doors to those areas. These highly sensitive cameras usually had their own dedicated VCRs and so they would be recorded 24/7. Most of the cameras on the casino floor, and especially the PTZ (pan, tilt and zoom) were only recorded when they were brought up on what were called "working monitors". In order to move a PTZ, you had to call it up on a working monitor and then use a joystick to move it around.

So the working monitors and the shots that looked at money storage were recorded all the time, but that was it.  As the price of cameras and VCRs got lower, the casinos began to add more of them. So some rooms that might have had only 16 or 24 VCRs were able to expand to 96 to 128 or more. By the late 90's, some of the biggest casinos in Vegas had over 500 VCRs and over 1000 cameras.

Then, around 2004, VCRs began to be phased out. for two reasons. First, digital recording systems became more affordable, especially for the "big boys". And then VCRs and video tapes stopped being manufactured, primarily because the consumer market made the shift to DVDs and digital recorders like Tivo. Many casinos were caught flat footed and had to scramble to procure video tapes and they also spent a lot of money and time refurbishing their VCRs.

Eventually, everyone converted to digital systems, at least for recording. We'll talk more about that next time.

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Good luck everybody