What a sewer camera actually finds
The defects that show up on a scope, which ones are urgent, which are monitoring items, and roughly what each implies about the repair.
A sewer scope produces footage, and footage without interpretation is not useful. These are the things being looked for and what each one means.
Root intrusion
Roots enter through joints and cracks, seeking water. Fine roots at a single joint are common and are usually a monitoring item, often managed by periodic cutting. Dense root masses across multiple joints indicate the line is compromised along its length, and repeated cutting becomes a subscription rather than a solution.
The question to ask is not whether roots are present but how many entry points there are. One is maintenance. Many is a lining or replacement conversation.
Bellies
A belly is a section where the line has sagged, so waste and water pool rather than flow. On camera it appears as standing water.
Shallow bellies are extremely common and frequently tolerated for decades. Deep bellies cause repeated blockages, because solids settle where the flow stops. Since a belly is a grading problem rather than a pipe-integrity problem, fixing it means excavation and re-laying rather than lining.
Cracks, offsets and separations
Longitudinal cracks in clay or cast iron indicate the pipe is failing structurally. Offsets, where two sections no longer line up, usually mean ground movement. Separated joints let both roots in and effluent out.
These are the findings most likely to justify action now rather than later, because they get worse and because effluent escaping into soil is a contamination issue as well as a plumbing one.
Pipe material
The camera reveals what the line is made of, and that alone changes the outlook. Clay is brittle and joints separate. Cast iron corrodes from the inside and scale builds up. Orangeburg, a bituminised fibre pipe used mid-century, deforms and collapses, and finding it is generally treated as a replacement conversation regardless of current condition.
PVC and ABS are modern and, absent a specific defect, unremarkable.
What it will not resolve
A camera shows condition, not cause. A blockage on the footage does not by itself say whether the problem is the blockage, a belly holding solids, or roots that regrew since the last cut.
It also stops at your connection point. Problems in the municipal main are the utility's responsibility, and establishing which side of the line a defect sits on is often the most consequential thing in the report.