I want to draw attention to one of the latest features (as of 6.0.9.17) which is the ability for a confirmed alert to move the recording clip/file to another folder. Ken gets all the credit for the specific approach and implementation, but it was based on a request that I made and I think it is absolutely awesome for anyone who uses the "Continuous" video recording. Allow me to describe my situation which I suspect applies to a lot of you.
For context, I use the "Continuous" recording on all my 50+ camera streams because I often need to look far before or after a triggered alert to see where a person or vehicle originated before triggering the alert, or went after the alert was finished. While recording only "When triggered" or "When alerted" would clearly save a ton of disk space, that simply would not work for me, and I suspect it wouldn't work for a lot of you. The downside of continuous recording is that it takes a lot of disk space, thereby limiting the number of days that anyone can keep recordings based on the amount of disk you have purchased.
Having said that, I do not get alerts every moment of every day. Particularly at night, there simply isn't as much activity. I have configured BlueIris to cut each video recording in lengths of one hour, and I will have entire hours in which there are no alerts. I often wished that I could delete those clip recordings which had no alerts, in order to keep more of the recordings with alerts. The ability to have an alert "Move clip to folder" gives us all exactly that, albeit requiring one other configuration change.
I now specify that alerts move my recording clips to a different folder (see the screenshot below), then in the storage folder configuration I specify that recordings in the original folder can be deleted much sooner. I still keep them for a couple days for peace of mind, but in theory I could specify to delete them almost immediately. In turn, this allows me to keep recording clips with alerts for a much longer period of time, without needing to purchase additional disk space.
As a purely hypothetical example, let's say that today you can only retain your recordings for a duration of 14 days. If you only have alerts in ~50% of your recording clips, then by adopting the process that I just described, you should be able to maintain your recording clips with alerts for ~28 days with the same disk(s) that you have now.
This also has me reconsidering the length of my recording clips, because even one alert within one hour means I keep the entire hour of recorded video. By contrast, if I used clips with a max of 30 minutes of duration, then I could theoretically keep only that 30 minute clip with the one alert and more quickly delete the other 30 minutes which did not have any alert.
I hope my description helps clarify how using this feature can be super useful and valuable. The degree to which you get the benefit depends entirely on the frequency and distribution of your alerts, but I suspect many of you have hours, particularly at night, when you simply don't have any alerts. Using this will allow you to store your "alerted" recordings for longer, without buying more disk. It's like the best combination of "Continuous" recording with recording only "When alerted".
For context, I use the "Continuous" recording on all my 50+ camera streams because I often need to look far before or after a triggered alert to see where a person or vehicle originated before triggering the alert, or went after the alert was finished. While recording only "When triggered" or "When alerted" would clearly save a ton of disk space, that simply would not work for me, and I suspect it wouldn't work for a lot of you. The downside of continuous recording is that it takes a lot of disk space, thereby limiting the number of days that anyone can keep recordings based on the amount of disk you have purchased.
Having said that, I do not get alerts every moment of every day. Particularly at night, there simply isn't as much activity. I have configured BlueIris to cut each video recording in lengths of one hour, and I will have entire hours in which there are no alerts. I often wished that I could delete those clip recordings which had no alerts, in order to keep more of the recordings with alerts. The ability to have an alert "Move clip to folder" gives us all exactly that, albeit requiring one other configuration change.
I now specify that alerts move my recording clips to a different folder (see the screenshot below), then in the storage folder configuration I specify that recordings in the original folder can be deleted much sooner. I still keep them for a couple days for peace of mind, but in theory I could specify to delete them almost immediately. In turn, this allows me to keep recording clips with alerts for a much longer period of time, without needing to purchase additional disk space.
As a purely hypothetical example, let's say that today you can only retain your recordings for a duration of 14 days. If you only have alerts in ~50% of your recording clips, then by adopting the process that I just described, you should be able to maintain your recording clips with alerts for ~28 days with the same disk(s) that you have now.
This also has me reconsidering the length of my recording clips, because even one alert within one hour means I keep the entire hour of recorded video. By contrast, if I used clips with a max of 30 minutes of duration, then I could theoretically keep only that 30 minute clip with the one alert and more quickly delete the other 30 minutes which did not have any alert.
I hope my description helps clarify how using this feature can be super useful and valuable. The degree to which you get the benefit depends entirely on the frequency and distribution of your alerts, but I suspect many of you have hours, particularly at night, when you simply don't have any alerts. Using this will allow you to store your "alerted" recordings for longer, without buying more disk. It's like the best combination of "Continuous" recording with recording only "When alerted".
