How many days of video do you keep for a home system?
- Thread starter scoob8000
- Start date
While having lots of days/months sounds great, the reality of it is unless it was something catastrophic (which you would have known about sooner anyway), most are not going to start scrubbing video for something that may have happened a few weeks or months ago.
By spending time to dial in the alerts and a frequent peek at what is going on, you would have noticed something around your property within days. I literally every morning in under 30 seconds can scrub what happened the night before and see if anything happened I need to look at further. This is for things off my property. I will know immediately with an alert of a person or car is on my property.
If a neighbor comes up to me and says "sometime around 2 weeks ago someone backed into my car, can you see if you caught it?" You will find that even with the best scrubbing this is a monumental task. Unless they can narrow down the day/time window, most of us are not going to scour it.
There are some other considerations or law reasons for businesses that may need longer, but for the average homeowner, the reality that we are going to scrub thru months of video is slim. I would rather have higher quality for a shorter duration than longer duration but lower quality. But that doesn't mean I run continuous mainstream either. I run substream until triggered and then mainstream. Anything of interest I export out.
By spending time to dial in the alerts and a frequent peek at what is going on, you would have noticed something around your property within days. I literally every morning in under 30 seconds can scrub what happened the night before and see if anything happened I need to look at further. This is for things off my property. I will know immediately with an alert of a person or car is on my property.
If a neighbor comes up to me and says "sometime around 2 weeks ago someone backed into my car, can you see if you caught it?" You will find that even with the best scrubbing this is a monumental task. Unless they can narrow down the day/time window, most of us are not going to scour it.
There are some other considerations or law reasons for businesses that may need longer, but for the average homeowner, the reality that we are going to scrub thru months of video is slim. I would rather have higher quality for a shorter duration than longer duration but lower quality. But that doesn't mean I run continuous mainstream either. I run substream until triggered and then mainstream. Anything of interest I export out.
Last edited:
Starglow
Getting comfortable
I have 10 cameras recording 24/7 and the NVR drive storage overwrites about every 2-3 weeks unattended. If I see something I want to save then I clip it before it gets overwritten.
CanCuba
Known around here
I have 15 channels recording with 8 gigs of storage and I get just under a week. I'd like to have 14 days and the upgrade is planned for next year as we want to replace the drives regardless before they fail.
When something peaks my curiosity, I save it to an external 2TB drive that is used specifically for backup.
As others have said, a month or more isn't necessary unless legislated by law or required by insurance.
When something peaks my curiosity, I save it to an external 2TB drive that is used specifically for backup.
As others have said, a month or more isn't necessary unless legislated by law or required by insurance.
Mike A.
Known around here
- Joined
- May 6, 2017
- Messages
- 3,939
- Reaction score
- 6,616
I get a little more out of mine but I shoot for about 2 weeks. Most all of my look-backs are within a few days. I have gone back farther a few times to see when something changed that I didn't notice before but that's been very rare and I could have lived without it. Generally, for my purposes I'd rather have good coverage and better quality video for a shorter time vs tying to maximize storage and compromising that. Different circumstances, my objective could be different.
Hmm...I guess many of you never leave for more than a week of vacation: I am usually away for around 3 weeks at a time, once a year. While it's true that I have others looking after my house while I'm gone, it's still nice to be able to review footage for at least the last month or so.
looney2ns
IPCT Contributor
12 cameras and I'm getting a little over 3 weeks saved on a 4tb drive.
I have 22 cams writing to three 10TB HDDs and get about 2.5 weeks stored. I would prefer 6 weeks and some day will add enough HDD for this. The reason is we travel 3-5 times a year for 4-6 weeks at a time. While I do check cams every morning and evening, if someone asks about something while I am away, it is a royal PITA to really look for it while we are away. Sometimes it is not even a security situation but maybe something shows up that is interesting to post. But going through all of that on an underpowered laptop over a cellular hotspot in a low connectivity area just does not cut it.
I'm kinda in the same boat. Originally I only had about a week, but wanted a few more days. Enough to cover being on vacation for a week with a little padding on either end.
I added a couple extra 2tb drives I had laying around collecting dust in an enclosure. Depending what drive I'm recording to, I'm right about 2 weeks. Maybe a little over on some cams. I feel pretty comfortable there.
Lately I started using the excellent powershell script by Jaydeel to get a better view of how many days I have for each cam.
ipcamtalk.com
I added a couple extra 2tb drives I had laying around collecting dust in an enclosure. Depending what drive I'm recording to, I'm right about 2 weeks. Maybe a little over on some cams. I feel pretty comfortable there.
Lately I started using the excellent powershell script by Jaydeel to get a better view of how many days I have for each cam.
Blue Iris Clips and Files - Disk Usage Utility
I've created a PowerShell script for summarizing the contents of the Blue Iris clip directories. I created this script because I've always found examining the unindexed Blue Iris clips folders using Windows Explorer to be tedious at best. I'm confident to say that the first time you use this...
Parley
Known around here
I have 3 NVRs. One saves maybe 30 days. The next one saves maybe 60 days, and the last one saves maybe 90 days.
Edit: I have 20 cameras with 4 doing LPR duty.
Edit: I have 20 cameras with 4 doing LPR duty.
Last edited:
saltwater
Getting comfortable
13 Cams, 24/7 mainstream & sub-stream recording, about 18-19 days on an 18 TB drive, but only use 16.9 TB of the drive for recordings using Blue Iris.
If police were to ask me about a car driving past 16 or 17 days earlier, first I'd scroll through the alerts, if not found or no alerts for the time period I'd scrub the video at about 16x as I don't fully trust the motion/alert system. If something is found, at least I could export the best quality clip for law enforcement. I say I don't trust the motion triggers but I can't complain it's pretty damn good but not 100% reliable.
If police were to ask me about a car driving past 16 or 17 days earlier, first I'd scroll through the alerts, if not found or no alerts for the time period I'd scrub the video at about 16x as I don't fully trust the motion/alert system. If something is found, at least I could export the best quality clip for law enforcement. I say I don't trust the motion triggers but I can't complain it's pretty damn good but not 100% reliable.
Sybertiger
Known around here
I have a 10TB drive and it's currently storing 10 days worth with 11 cams. I'm probably saving higher res video that some of the folk on here. I could probably double it going with lower res.
CCTVCam
Known around here
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2017
- Messages
- 2,781
- Reaction score
- 3,650
Yes I use very high resolution. One thing for the OP to remember is if you detect a crime, you can simply protect the clip and it will be retained until unprotected. You can also make a copy and store it outside of the BI PC on another pc or usb stick etc. Having eg. 14 days doesn't mean you only 14 days worth of evidence. It simply means you only have 14 days in which to discover a crime. Once protected or saved out or preferably both, a clip lasts for ever.
Flintstone61
Known around here
10 cams, with 10-15 FPS ( mostly)
I'm getting 4 weeks, Across an 6.46TB of an 8TB WD Purp, and 1.21 TB assigned to a Seagate 8TB ( 7.67 TB used)
bigredfish
Known around here
8TB and Im getting 10 days out of 8 cameras (6 -4MB and 2 -4K). I run max bitrate and FPS mostly.
I have another 8TB WD purple sitting in a box I plan on adding to get me to 3 weeks recording. Anything beyond that I doubt I'll ever give a shit about.
I have another 8TB WD purple sitting in a box I plan on adding to get me to 3 weeks recording. Anything beyond that I doubt I'll ever give a shit about.
With a ~40TB JBOD setup I am seeing about 5 weeks for 34 cameras. Obviously this is +/- depending on how much motion there is.
I have a couple 4K, but mostly 4mp. Some are recording continuous and some are sub+triggered.
I had some drives sitting in a drawer and just added them. I haven't allocated the additional space yet, but am just short of 60TB now.
My LPR drive was a 5TB split between two LPRs. Apparently I had 6 months of license plates on this one, haha.
I have a couple 4K, but mostly 4mp. Some are recording continuous and some are sub+triggered.
I had some drives sitting in a drawer and just added them. I haven't allocated the additional space yet, but am just short of 60TB now.
My LPR drive was a 5TB split between two LPRs. Apparently I had 6 months of license plates on this one, haha.
Flintstone61
Known around here
The only time I saw the benefit of having 4-5 weeks of recording....Was when the Asian mailbox gang...made a mistake and left a Bank of boxes slightly ajar....A sharp Board member noticed this....and called me....having had 2 events of Stolen/missing mail" in the past 6-8 weeks. I was able to go back and see the mail being stolen from a guy who had a pending case with a company who had mailed him an insurance check of about $1500.....4 weeks back..... and then on the Nightowl DVR....I saw another mail event on the lobby cameras about 6 weeks back.....Then we knew we had repeat offenders......and I padlocked the Banks of mail boxes....until the Postmaster could investigate.......
Last edited:
This is actually pretty slick and I didn't realize it was even an option. I have a cam in my detached garage, that I usually only had record when triggered. I just set it up to run continuous sub + trigger. Pretty slick, you can still see everything but soon as it gets triggered, it goes to the main high res stream.
CCTVCam
Known around here
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2017
- Messages
- 2,781
- Reaction score
- 3,650
Your sub stream can still be pretty high quality depending on your number of cameras and settings. eg I run 1080P @ 4,000kbs as a sub and 4k @ 16,000kbs as a main. Even the sub is pretty good quality video and with todays compression, it doesn't take a huge amount of space. With 2 cameras running the same settings continuos + triggered main, and a 4tb HD, I get over a month of recording.