A vision system is designed to observe large structures and serve as a complement to a traditional vibration monitoring system and provide an important data source to achieve a more complete monitoring by enabling the triggering of the acquisition system upon detection of cable vibration events by the camera. The system, formed by a digital camera mounted with high-quality lenses, a computer for image processing, and a data storage unit, the concept of distributed measurement together with spatial characterization of motion. Studies show that the vision system can capture the frequencies of cable vibration and the pedestrians. It is concluded that the vision system has some obvious accuracy disadvantages and the limitations inherent to optical systems, but can provide data of high interest, in particular civil engineering applications.