what frame rate you trying to achieve?

real time 25fps which i believe the hd500 should be able to do across 16 channels. which makes me think it has something to do with HDD space.

But with only two cameras there should be plenty of space. Although I could also be reading the info wrong

A quick look at the manual for the WJ-HD500 and that machine is not capable of recording real time on 16 Channels, the frame rate you are referring to I believe is a global frame rate shared between the channels in use, it seems the DVR is capable of 30 Frames per second total (this is likely to be NTSC so that would be 25 Frames per second in PAL).

In your application I believe 5 frames per second is enough per camera so if you have 2 cameras around 10 frames per second global frame rate should suffice, check what setting in the recording will give you for that setup. Be aware that the machine has two record setup options (frame and field) and which one you are set to because the DVR seems to use FPS (fields or frames per second) and relies on you to know which one it is referring to. 2 x Fields = 1 Frame.

as above 5 fps is usually more than enough for most applications.

real time 25fps which i believe the hd500 should be able to do across 16 channels. which makes me think it has something to do with HDD space.

But with only two cameras there should be plenty of space. Although I could also be reading the info wrong

Yep thought so.

It'll be that i can watch live but only record @ X FPS

ok I'm going to have another read of the manual It gets easier to read the more accustomed i get to the unit

Edited March 18, 200917 yr by Mattyg2004