Blue Iris – Camera Storage Requirement Calculations

[NVR990]

Attached is a screen shot from the Blue Iris “Status” window on my PC. I am trying to use this information to calculate the daily storage requirements for each camera.

Take Camera1 (recording at 15 FPS) as an example. Blue Iris show bitrate of 439.95 kB/s. I can multiply this by 86,400 seconds per day, and I get 38,011,680 kB/day. Then, I convert from kB to GB by dividing by 1 million.

So, now I’ve got 38.01 GB/day for this camera.

But that can’t be correct, because my above calculation does not take framerate into account. For example, consider the camera on the same screenshot with the red dot next to it. This “red” camera is an identical camera with identical settings, except that it is set to record at only 10FPS.

Blue Iris shows that the two cameras have basically the same bitrate. So, if I do the above math on the “red” (10 FPS) camera, I will basically get the same storage requirement as for the 15FPS camera. However, I would expect the camera @ 15FPS to require 50% more storage than the camera @ 10FPS. So, obviously my math is wrong.

How, then, do I incorporate frame rate??

Any help would be appreciated!

 

[fenderman]

Attached is a screen shot from the Blue Iris “Status” window on my PC. I am trying to use this information to calculate the daily storage requirements for each camera.

Take Camera1 (recording at 15 FPS) as an example. Blue Iris show bitrate of 439.95 kB/s. I can multiply this by 86,400 seconds per day, and I get 38,011,680 kB/day. Then, I convert from kB to GB by dividing by 1 million.

So, now I’ve got 38.01 GB/day for this camera.

But that can’t be correct, because my above calculation does not take framerate into account. For example, consider the camera on the same screenshot with the red dot next to it. This “red” camera is an identical camera with identical settings, except that it is set to record at only 10FPS.

Blue Iris shows that the two cameras have basically the same bitrate. So, if I do the above math on the “red” (10 FPS) camera, I will basically get the same storage requirement as for the 15FPS camera. However, I would expect the camera @ 15FPS to require 50% more storage than the camera @ 10FPS. So, obviously my math is wrong.

How, then, do I incorporate frame rate??

Any help would be appreciated!

Storage capacity is dictated by bitrate only..its bitrate x time...fps has no impact...lower fps will allow you to use the a lower bitrate and keep the image quality uniform but simply lowering the fps and leaving the bitrate alone will do nothing.

 

[NVR990]

Storage capacity is dictated by bitrate only..its bitrate x time...fps has no impact...lower fps will allow you to use the a lower bitrate and keep the image quality uniform but simply lowering the fps and leaving the bitrate alone will do nothing.

Thanks, @ Fenderman!

So, compared with the 10FPS camera at the same bitrate, the 15FPS camera is forced to sacrifice quality within its individual frames? In other words, at 15FPS you get more frames, but each individual frame is of less image quality than on the 10FPS cam?

Along these lines…I have a camera where I’d like to be able to effectively use digital zoom on recorded footage. (I need to keep this camera’s hardware/optical zoom where it is). In this case, should I just set the bitrate to its maximum (and the framerate rather low), so that the digital zoom will allow me to zoom as much as possible before the video gets pixelated?

 

[fenderman]

Thanks, @ Fenderman!

So, compared with the 10FPS camera at the same bitrate, the 15FPS camera is forced to sacrifice quality within its individual frames? In other words, at 15FPS you get more frames, but each individual frame is of less image quality than on the 10FPS cam?

Along these lines…I have a camera where I’d like to be able to effectively use digital zoom on recorded footage. (I need to keep this camera’s hardware/optical zoom where it is). In this case, should I just set the bitrate to its maximum (and the framerate rather low), so that the digital zoom will allow me to zoom as much as possible before the video gets pixelated?

exactly. Higher bitrate will not translate into better quality after a point...there are diminishing returns...you can test this for yourself and find the sweetspot. If you cant see a difference whats the point of wasting space.

 

[NVR990]

great, thanks!