Oh it's not for a project it's just for information 

 

I was just wondering if people had a default set up which they use for most systems. After all most will need 31 days retention and 25 fps if they want real looking footage. So it's the bit rate that determines the storage/image quality 

It all depends on the requirements thats why everything is adjustable. Bigger HDD are cheap nowadays so we normally set it to the highest possible setting depending on how many cameras and the amount of days required and the size of the HDD.

 

Nobody has a crystal ball (not one that reliably works anyway) so nobody can predict when they are going to need to look at theyre CCTV to see what happened in the past. In most cases its after their car got broken into, or they were burgled, or a neighbour was burgled, or an incident that happened that day or within a few days. So ideally you need good recordings for the first couple of weeks at least. 

 

We rarely use 25fps on domestics in most cases 10fps will gather enough info, I drop the bitrate if we are not achieving the days required on motion detect. At home I have two recorders a cheap one recording the sub stream and the premium one recording the main stream. I get about 2.5 weeks on the premium, I figured if I hadnt noticed something that happened anytime over two weeks it wont be that important. However, just in case, the cheap NVR which still records better than my old analogue system for 2 months. It works well for me I might try selling that idea to my customers sell two recorders = more dosh. As a bonus to security one recorder is in an out building so it would be difficult to steal both before the Police arrive if I were burgled, so its win win  

 

 

 

If you use ip cameras you could use sd cards in the camera as a backup for stolen nvr. 

 

Or use it as edge recording on something like a milestone vms

 

The whole motion vs continuous is an interesting one. Everyone uses motion for storage saving but isn't it better to have continuous for business customers? You could miss the action with motion depending on settings as environment

what on earth do you need 25fps for you making a film?

2 hours ago, scrimshanker said:

If you use ip cameras you could use sd cards in the camera as a backup for stolen nvr. 

 

Or use it as edge recording on something like a milestone vms

 

The whole motion vs continuous is an interesting one. Everyone uses motion for storage saving but isn't it better to have continuous for business customers? You could miss the action with motion depending on settings as environment

Cheaper recorders only record on motion Our recorder records all the time but only saves motion, we can set it to save up to 30 seconds before and after the motion, I have yet to have an incident missed  

Have you ever tried sd cards as edge storage? the cards don't last. even the expensive mlc cards you are lucky to get a year out them

Typically I'd go around 6fps 1024k continuous record and 25fps 4096k on motion. when trying to view a bump in a car park or someone palming a note instead of putting it in the cash drawer the extra frames help. some just go to 12fps and 2048k, it really all depends. much of my stuff is 3,4 and 8 megapixel anyway and for some reason it's more scene dependant as you go up in resolution, put an estimate in and tweak until perfect.

Thank you petrolhead first actually answer. I totally agree with the extra frames (25fps) it's easy to lower but you can easily miss the frame with the impact etc. Then you just have before and after. 

 

The scene completely is something that has a massive effect on storage. I worked on a police detention centre project and the flooring was hardened resin, which had different flecks in it. So the camera saw a constantly changing image even with an empty cell! At night with the ir on it was even worse. 

 

Its a complete lottery at times, we had cameras at 6Mbps and the image was average, but that was more the camera. They only had 86 cameras and set to 1Mbps 96TB wasn't enough. Turns out windows, which the vms was working on needs 40Gbs per camera 

So you are confirming my actual point that hard figures don't apply if you are doing it properly, every situation should be assesed individually there is no one size fits all. That is the first actually answer which was post 2 in the thread.

29 minutes ago, petrolhead said:

So you are confirming my actual point that hard figures don't apply if you are doing it properly, every situation should be assesed individually there is no one size fits all. That is the first actually answer which was post 2 in the thread.

TBF Thats what we all said