When iconic Dublin restaurant and super pub Café en Seine was totally redesigned and refurbished, Create Security Solutions was called in to provide an extensive but discreet video surveillance system, for the protection of customers and staff. Create worked with Hikvision to design and install a network video system that delivered on Café en Seine’s need for a high quality, aesthetically pleasing security solution.

Renowned for its five-star service, and described as Dublin’s first ‘super pub’, Café en Seine offers an extensive food menu which caters for a range of tastes and occasions.

An intelligent video monitoring solution was required and system designers Mark Woods & Niall McDonnell set about devising a system which would address Café en Seine’s specific needs. Woods, who is Create’s Managing Director, said the system had to be able to deliver a wide variety of results, whilst also blending into the art deco aesthetic of Café en Seine’s redesign. It was required to be able monitor the venue’s till areas, and to record any customer and staff health and safety issues, as well as the conventional function of after-hours surveillance for break-ins or theft.

“At the same time,” Woods explains, “the whole of the network design, the topology, cable lengths and routes, the network video recorder and camera settings needed to minimise the impact on the network’s bandwidth as much as possible.”

The solution Create devised was based on network topology using Hikvision H265+ encoding technology, to reduce bandwidth loads. Hikvision’s H.265+ is an optimised encoding technology based on the standard H.265/HEVC compression format. H.265+ video quality is almost equivalent to H.265, but uses far less transmission bandwidth and thus also extends video storage recording capacity. Time was important, because the system had to be installed simultaneous with all the redevelopment work which was taking place to the premises.

As well as dealing with that complexity, Create needed to make sure that they addressed both the aesthetic and practical requirements of the system’s installation.

“We had to ensure that all 127 cameras we installed would blend into the interior, that they’d look unobtrusive and be able to see everything we needed them to,” Woods says. “The challenge we had was to ensure we positioned the cameras in the optimum place to get the best image, while also making certain nothing would encroach on the camera’s field of view. That included speakers, trees, and chandeliers and other lights. Café en Seine’s pretty generously decorated, from the floor to the high ceilings, so this was a fairly complicated part of the process itself.”

The cameras record to four 32-channel network video recorders, sited in a comms room three floors above the diners. In the manager’s office is a 32-inch monitor. Using a mouse and switcher all 127 cameras can be easily and conveniently viewed from here.

“We wanted to ensure that there was a minimum of equipment in the manager’s office, but that full control of the system was still possible,” Woods explains. 

David Murray, Café en Seine General Manager, confirms the sentiment and satisfaction. “We are extremely happy with the new CCTV system from Create Security Solutions,” he says. “Create have exceeded their remit in providing a high quality, aesthetically pleasing system. We asked that our new CCTV system blend with the new fit out and that has been achieved by Create. All areas of our premises are covered by CCTV. We could not ask for better-quality images, and the system is extremely user friendly. From the start of this project Create have worked with us to overcome some challenges with lighting and placement of cameras, and the results speak for themselves.”