Packing and Dispatch CCTV Specification: Dispute-Grade Footage for Short-Shipment Claims (India)
The buyer says 48 cartons arrived; your invoice says 50. To answer, you need three things: a camera that counted the cartons leaving the packing table, a camera at the door that shows them going onto that truck, and footage with an IST timestamp that is still on the disk when the claim arrives. In the worked hall below (4 packing tables, one carton sealer, 4 staging lanes, 2 truck doors; checked 15 Oct 2026) that takes 7 cameras and, for a 45-day claim window, 15.9 TB.
Last checked: 15 Oct 2026. The hall layout, carton speed and claim windows are worked assumptions; densities, lens angles, shutter ranges and bitrates are sourced.
Verified against
- IEC 62676-4:2014 pixel densities (12.5 / 25 / 62.5 / 125 / 250 / 1,000 px/m), quoted in the foreword of IEC 62676-4:2025, edition 2.0, published 9 Oct 2025 (public preview, STN EN IEC 62676-4:2026; IEC webstore).
- CP Plus datasheets: CP-UNC-DA41L3C-Q (published 19-08-2025), CP-UNC-DA21L3C-Q (published 05-08-2026), CP-UNC-VC41ZL5C-VMD-Q (published 24-09-2026), all downloaded 15 Oct 2026.
- Hikvision, H.264(5) & H.264(5)+ Recommended Bit Rate at General Resolutions (archive copy; the original returns a bot check).
- Checked 15 Oct 2026. Nobody tested a camera for this page.
Dispute-grade footage
A clip wins a shortage dispute only if it answers the three questions the buyer will ask: how many cartons, onto which truck, and at what time. Each answer comes from a different place.
| Question in the dispute | Where the answer comes from | What makes it fail |
|---|---|---|
| How many cartons were packed? | Top-down camera over the packing tables (332 px/m in the worked hall) | A side view: touching cartons hide each other |
| Did all of them go onto this truck? | Camera inside each truck door at Recognise (125 px/m; 276 px/m in the worked hall) | Door out of frame, or a pallet cut off at the edge |
| When did it happen? | Camera and NVR clocks synced by NTP to IST | Timestamp that does not match the invoice or gate pass |
| Is the footage still there? | Retention longer than the buyer's claim window | NVR overwrote the day before the claim reached you |
Wrong clock, lost dispute. Footage whose timestamp does not match the invoice is weak evidence. Set NTP to IST on every camera and on the NVR, and check it after every power cut (CP Plus NTP setup). Write the invoice number and dispatch time on the gate pass, so the clip can be found in minutes rather than scrubbed for hours.
Retention by claim window. The claim window is whatever your buyer's PO or contract says; read its shortage clause. The rows below are example windows, with about 15 days added for the claim to reach the person who pulls the clip (assumption). Storage is for the 7-camera hall below: 5 × 4 MP at 4,096 Kbps plus 2 × 2 MP at 2,048 Kbps, H.265 at 25 fps, 265.4 GB/day.
| Buyer's claim window (example) | Keep footage (days) | Storage (TB) | With +30% margin (TB) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Up to 15 days | 30 | 8.0 | 10.4 |
| 30 days | 45 | 11.9 | 15.5 |
| 45 days | 60 | 15.9 | 20.7 |
| 60 days | 75 | 19.9 | 25.9 |
The bitrates come from the Hikvision recommended-bitrate sheet (checked 15 Oct 2026): 4,096 Kbps for 2688×1520 and 2,048 Kbps for 1080P, or 44.2 and 22.1 GB per camera per day. The sheet advises 20–30% more "if the real environment is more complex". The CP Plus DA41L3C-Q caps H.265 at 6,144 kbps and the VC41ZL5C-VMD-Q at 8,192 kbps, so a camera left at its maximum fills the disk faster than this table. Long retention is not needed everywhere: the table and door cameras carry the dispute. Legal triggers that set other floors are in the retention guide; size the disk with the NVR days table.
When a claim arrives, export the table-camera and door-camera clips for that invoice the same day. An exported clip outlives the rolling buffer.
Which view answers which question
| View | Question the owner asks | Level to plan for | px/m on target |
|---|---|---|---|
| Packing tables, top-down | How many cartons left each table this hour? Is a table idle? | Observe or better | 62.5+ |
| Carton sealer / line end | Is the tape on, is the label on, how many cartons went out? | Recognise or better | 125+ |
| Staging lanes and palletising | How many pallets wait in each lane, is a lane blocked? | Observe | 62.5 |
| Truck door, inside | What was loaded onto which truck, and when? | Recognise | 125 |
The px/m levels are IEC 62676-4:2014 values; applying them to cartons and pallets is our assumption (DORI explainer). A CCTV camera checks that a label is present; reading its barcode is a scanner's job.
Pick lenses by the printed HFOV, not focal length, and work your own distances in the lens and DORI calculator. Vendor DORI runs longer than the arithmetic: CP Plus prints Recognise at 15.2 m for the CP-UNC-DA41L3C-Q; the formula gives 13.3 m at 125 px/m.
Worked spec for a 4-table packing hall and 2 doors
Layout assumption: four 2.4 × 1.2 m packing tables at 3 m pitch, one carton sealer with a short outfeed conveyor, a 14 m deep staging area with 4 pallet lanes, two truck doors at 5 m centres (4 m openings), roof above 6 m, cameras on brackets or columns.
| View (cameras) | Example camera from datasheet | Pixels × HFOV | Height, distance (assumed) | Scene width (m) | px/m achieved | Level met | IR (datasheet) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tables, top-down, one per 2 tables (2) | CP Plus CP-UNC-DA21L3C-Q dome, 3.6 mm, 2 MP | 1920 × 86° | 4 m, over table centre (3.1 m to the table top) | 5.8 × 2.7 | 332 | Recognise and above | 30 m |
| Sealer outfeed (1) | CP Plus CP-UNC-DA41L3C-Q dome, 3.6 mm, 4 MP | 2688 × 78° | 3 m, 2.5 m back (3.2 m slant) | 5.2 | 518 | Recognise and above | 30 m |
| Staging lanes, one from each end (2) | CP Plus CP-UNC-DA41L3C-Q dome | 2688 × 78° | 5 m, far pallet 14 m (14.4 m slant) | 23.4 | 115 far, 212 mid-lane | Observe (Recognise from mid-lane) | 30 m |
| Truck door, inside, one per door (2) | CP Plus CP-UNC-VC41ZL5C-VMD-Q vandal dome, 2.7–13.5 mm set ~70° | 2688 × 70° | 5 m, 6 m back (6.9 m slant) | 9.7 | 276 | Recognise | 50 m |
| Total | 7 cameras |
At 332 px/m a 100 mm label spans about 33 px; at 518 px/m about 52 px (label size is an assumption). That is enough to see a label is missing or skewed, not to read it.
Cameras per N tables and D doors (rule of thumb, assumption): ceil(N ÷ 2) top-down, plus 1 per sealer or line end, plus 2 per staging area up to about 14 m deep, plus 1 per door. For N = 4, D = 2: 2 + 1 + 2 + 2 = 7.
Truck doors: one camera inside each door is where this page stops; the truck, the yard apron, backlit door openings and plate capture are in the loading dock spec.
Sealer outfeed: a carton at 0.3 m/s (assumed speed) smears 1.6 px at 1/100 s and 3.1 px at 1/50 s at 518 px/m. A fixed 1/100 s shutter also stops rolling bands under 50 Hz LED battens (flicker fix); both CP Plus 4 MP models list a manual shutter of 1/3 s to 1/100,000 s.
IP, IK, light
| Item | Spec for packing and dispatch | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Ingress | IP67 printed on all three example models; corrugated dust and stretch-film fibre settle on domes inside the hall | CP Plus datasheets; test meanings in the IP/IK guide |
| Impact | IK10 at doors and palletising, where forklift masts and pallets swing | CP-UNC-VC41ZL5C-VMD-Q lists IK10; DA41L3C-Q and DA21L3C-Q list none |
| Low light | 0.03 [email protected] colour, 0 lux with IR on (DA41L3C-Q); 0.001 [email protected] colour (VC41ZL5C-VMD-Q) | CP Plus datasheets |
| Lanes in corridor (portrait) format | DA41L3C-Q: "4MP only support 0°/180°"; VC41ZL5C-VMD-Q supports 90°/270° at 2688 × 1520 and lower | CP Plus datasheets |
| Heat under a tin roof | Operating range –40 °C to +60 °C (DA41L3C-Q), –30 °C to +60 °C (VC41ZL5C-VMD-Q) | CP Plus datasheets |
What else breaks in packing and dispatch
- Stretch film and IR. Wrapped pallets reflect IR back into the lens. Switch IR off where hall lights stay on at night.
- A packer standing still is not idle. Video shows tables busy or empty and cartons leaving; it does not show why a table stopped. Short stops on form-fill-seal machines are covered in FFS micro-stops, and changeover hours in SKU changeover.
When to call the installer / what to ask the vendor
Ask for the HFOV at the focal length you will set, the IK rating of the exact model, and whether manual shutter can be locked at 1/100 s. At handover, check that every camera and the NVR show the same IST time, px/m at the far end of each staging lane, and that a pallet at each door is fully in frame (commissioning checklist).
Mama reads a factory's existing cameras over RTSP/ONVIF and tells the owner, in plain language, how long packing tables, the sealer and dispatch doors stood idle (askthemama.com). Tell workers what the cameras record (DPDP notice). Leave an email or phone in the form below.
FAQ
Can CCTV help with short-shipment disputes? Yes, if a top-down camera counts cartons at the tables, a camera inside each door reaches Recognise (125 px/m), the clock is NTP-synced to IST and footage outlives the customer's claim window.
How many days of CCTV recording does a dispatch area need? The buyer's claim window plus time for the claim to reach you. For the 7-camera hall above, a 45-day window means keeping 60 days: 15.9 TB at the Hikvision H.265 bitrates.
Which camera proves how many cartons were dispatched? The door camera shows which truck they went onto, matched by timestamp to the invoice; door coverage is in loading dock CCTV spec.