Do most people save cam data 24/7 or only when motion sensing works?

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dabomb18359

n3wb
Sep 29, 2016
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I've read some about BlueIris and that it seems to have good motion sensing capabilities, but that doing so requires a ton of CPU usage, whereas simply saving cam data to disk is much less of a CPU burden.

Do the majority of people do motion sensing and only save data triggered by those events? Or do most people store 24/7 to avoid bad motion sensing, have lower CPU usage, and have an uninterrupted camera recording?

Just trying to gauge what's most common and if I'm thinking about it the wrong way. Thanks :D
 
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dabomb18359 said:
I've read some about BlueIris and that it seems to have good motion sensing capabilities, but that doing so requires a ton of CPU usage, whereas simply saving cam data to disk is much less of a CPU burden.

Do the majority of people do motion sensing and only save data triggered by those events? Or do most people store 24/7 to avoid bad motion sensing, have lower CPU usage, and have an uninterrupted camera recording?

Just trying to gauge what's most common and if I'm thinking about it the wrong way. Thanks :D
Click to expand...
Motion detection does not add any significant cpu usage. Direct to disk is a must, however, blue iris does motion detection while using direct to disk.
You can record 24/7 AND have motion detection mark the timeline and/or send alerts.
 
I was almost certain I read somewhere (perhaps here or on some Reddit posts on IP cams) that if you use the setting which only records to disk when motion sensor detects something that it requires much more CPU. Is what you're talking about simply recording everything but also keep track of when motion sensor "alerts" take place?
 
dabomb18359 said:
I was almost certain I read somewhere (perhaps here or on some Reddit posts on IP cams) that if you use the setting which only records to disk when motion sensor detects something that it requires much more CPU. Is what you're talking about simply recording everything but also keep track of when motion sensor "alerts" take place?
Click to expand...
that is not the case...and yes.
 
fenderman said:
Motion detection does not add any significant cpu usage. Direct to disk is a must, however, blue iris does motion detection while using direct to disk.
You can record 24/7 AND have motion detection mark the timeline and/or send alerts.
Click to expand...

Oh wow! I did not know this. So it's basically the encoding that happens when DTD is off that significantly increases CUP usage?
 
I record 24/7 on a Dahua NVR, and record triggered events with Blue Iris on a dedicated computer. In my experience, Blre Iris is superior for off site viewing.
 
storage space is cheap, defacto practice regardless of recording device is continuos recording with flagging motion.. unless your dealing with a scale of cameras so large that you have to resort to it.

now if you want alerts/notifications based off video analytics; then BluIris is really the best hope you have..

Murphy is a bitch, recording continuously ensures events happening in masked zones still get recorded.. sure you dont want to trigger on cars driving by, until one has an accident or takes out your mailbox.. or audio you might record out of frame like gunfire, glass breaking, etc.. that may critically help an investigation by nailing down the exact time an event occurred... What if tomorrow an asteroid bursts in the atmosphere but you didnt get a recording even though you had an awesome video of it... You could monetize the Youtube video and pay back your video cameras and then some.

You dont want to invest all this money in video surveillance; then not actually record the video you really needed because you didnt tune it correctly.. but you also dont want to have to watch days of recording on high speed to find an event.. so use both and get the best of both.
 
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My main system only records motion. But for a while I have been running a second Blue Iris server that records continuously, and it has come in handy on occasion when something happens that motion detection did not catch (this is why 24/7 recording is so popular).

As mentioned above, you can do both with one system, where you record continuously while also creating alerts on motion. However this won't give you the extremely long clip retention you can have in a pure motion-based setup. Sometimes it is invaluable being able to look back a month or longer for an old clip you didn't think was important at the time. Likewise, sometimes it is invaluable being able to look at something that was missed by motion detection for whatever reason. I've benefitted from both.
 
A useful system will record 24/7 with motion detection. Without 24/7 and HD cameras you will miss what happened in the background, out of range of the sensors. If you set the sensors so sensitive that you capture everything moving you will be recording 24/7 anyway... There is always something moving; sensor detection just tells you something happened you might want to look at. :)

www.crowderfarm.com
 
Apparently, I've been doing it wrong. I was only recording motion events, not realizing the benefits of 24/7 recording.

I made the following assumptions:

  1. Wading through a continuous recording looking for an event was extremely time consuming, especially when you didn't know when the event occurred;
  2. Based off of the above, I would find events much easier if I only recorded when motion was detected;
  3. My real-time stream would be lagging (and jittery) since the NVR has to also spend time writing to the disc; and
  4. With 8 cameras recording 24/7, I wouldn't be able to search very far back in time. That is, the number of days to review would be limited. I wasn't sure if my 3TB of storage would hold just a few days, week, or months.
Again, those were my assumptions, which now seem wrong.

Based on what I've read in this thread, I may record 24/7 for my exterior cameras, but only record motion for my interior cameras. I'll still have motion detection set for my exterior cameras. However, I only care about interior recording if a thief broke into my house (or when I'm hosting a social event as a keepsake).

I guess I'll also have to get smarter about calculating storage requirements. 3TB of storage may not be enough to cover an extended period of time. Actually, I have no idea how far back I can review with 3TB (chalk it up to being a newbie).

Any comments on my assumptions and/or new strategy?

P.S., This thread has been enlightening. Thanks OP for posting the question. There's no "Like" button, so I gave you a "Thanks".
 
http://www.stardot.com/bandwidth-and-storage-calculator

You'll get 7-8 days if you record em all 24/7 on 3TB @ 15FPS 1080p, more if you record only your indoor cams on motion.

Typically for residental use you dont need much more space than your longest vacation; If you take a 2 week vacation every year.. probably a good idea to have ~16-18 days of storage (few extra for long holidays).. otherwise, if you get robbed or something stolen you have your archive length to discover it; If your car is missing you'll proabibly know within hours, but if someone swiped a bike/lawn decoration/tools/etc.. it might take you a few days to notice it missing.. but a few weeks? If you didnt notice something missing within a couple weeks then you probably didnt mind it disappearing in the first place ;)

21 days is the longest I'll ever be away from the house; and I have footage going back 27-28 days.. very rarely do I go back more than a week, and I cant think of any instances when Ive gone back more than 2 weeks in the last 2 years.. but storage is cheap and I keep adding cameras, so I bought far more storage than I really needed.

When something does happen I just manually export the video to my cloud storage; then I can keep the video indefinitely if I need it and reach it from anywhere.
 
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bp2008 said:
My main system only records motion. But for a while I have been running a second Blue Iris server that records continuously, and it has come in handy on occasion when something happens that motion detection did not catch (this is why 24/7 recording is so popular).

As mentioned above, you can do both with one system, where you record continuously while also creating alerts on motion. However this won't give you the extremely long clip retention you can have in a pure motion-based setup. Sometimes it is invaluable being able to look back a month or longer for an old clip you didn't think was important at the time. Likewise, sometimes it is invaluable being able to look at something that was missed by motion detection for whatever reason. I've benefitted from both.
Click to expand...

This is what I do as well. Same reasons - long retention and quick scans of activity on the motion detect system, with the ability to check out anything that didn't trigger the MD on the 24x7 system. I don't use the 24x7 often,but when I need it, it's been very useful.

It does require running 2 systems, but that's nice redundancy in case anything goes wrong with one of them, if you're into the belt-and-suspenders thing. My second system doesn't run BI, but it's stable and effective, and runs on a low power PC. An NVR would also be a good backup system.
 
The best case is certainly 24/7 plus motion detection that saves thumbnail stills plus motion clips. In one case of a neighborhood burglary, the police spent the time to look through a few hours worth of video clips and found a car of interest. I don't know if they would have done that if I'd had only the raw continuous video. Maybe so but motion flagging and still/clip extraction saves time, at any rate.
 
If you want the most reliable motion detection, a pir/microwave motion detector is required. These won't trip when a cloud goes by, the wind blows, or a bug crawls in front of the camera.
 
cam235 said:
The best case is certainly 24/7 plus motion detection that saves thumbnail stills plus motion clips. In one case of a neighborhood burglary, the police spent the time to look through a few hours worth of video clips and found a car of interest. I don't know if they would have done that if I'd had only the raw continuous video. Maybe so but motion flagging and still/clip extraction saves time, at any rate.
Click to expand...

Well, the point is you CAN record 24/7 with the motion clips and make it easy on the police. If you only record motion, the police miss the before and after, and you don't get your stuff back. The only reason to record on motion only is in a small room or you want to miss what really happened. :)
 
Hopefully I can get some clarification. I have selected TRIGGERED and CONTINUOUS as an option for two cameras. Under Clips and archiving, am I correct to assume when I CHECK the Limit clip age, select 31 days, and DELETE, on the 32nd day, clips from day 1 are deleted, maintaining a clip log of only 31 days? Seems logical but I only have clips from today ONLY, not from yesterday when set up.

Thanks for the help
 
What you describe sounds correct, @micoinde, except that if clips from day 1 are disappearing already then either:

1) You don't have enough disk space for more than 1 day.

or

2) You also set a size limit and that is causing your clips to be deleted after just one day.
 
I have been using BI for since version 3.0 and no issues until today. My original settings archived for 90 days to a 4TB WD Purple. I do not need a 90-day archive so I adjusted the time to 31 days. Now nothing from yesterday and a repair database did not help. The folder tree is correct so it's something simple but I do not see it. Thanks.
 
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