Target detection, recognition and identification have no uniform international standards and industry standards in video surveillance currently. Comprehensively compared and analyzed the traditional CCTV DRI standards with Johnson criteria and proposed a target observation performance evaluation method with CCTV Johnson-DRI criteria for video surveillance. Applied equivalent number of line pairs instead of the target-screen ratio in traditional analog video surveillance DRI standards. The absolute quantitative evaluation criteria were more beneficial for evaluating the performance of digital video surveillance systems. Finally, the demonstrated DRI testing in laser night vision, and the experimental results show CCTV Johnson-DRI criteria were effective and equivalent to the traditional video surveillance DRI standards. It showed this method can be using for evaluating and designing system performance for target observation in daytime color video surveillance and LED/laser night vision systems.