Storage Requirement

rfj

Pulling my weight
Oct 26, 2014
415
124
Our cams seem to use a lot of disk space. Each cam is using about 2GByte per hour so about 50 GBytes/day/cam. With a dozen cams that is about 600 GBytes/day. The cams are set at 8kbps VBR (going to change it to CBR) so that should be 8192 bits/8bits/byte*24h/day*60minutes/hour*60seconds/minute = 88,473,600 bytes/day or 84MBytes/day/cam. Are those cam settings actually 8192 bytes/s instead of 8192 bits/s? That would explain the 50GBytes/day. Also are there good ways to reduce the storage size without compromising much of the image quality? Or are you just using some 8TB+ HDDs to have approx. a week of storage?
 
Are you recording continuous instead of continuous + triggers?

Cont+trig will take a lot less space as it will record substream until triggered and then switch to mainstream.
 
I have chosen to sacrifice some quality for quantity myself. In order to keep a months worth of recordings to 8TB, running 27 cameras 24/7 I have all cameras set using "continuous + triggered" and run from 5 to 15 fps depending on my personal requirements. This has been a continual "work in progress" and have enjoyed the continual improvements over the years with BlueIris.
 
I record continuously at full res. Previously I only recorded on triggers but I ended up missing important events (police did come by a couple of times and each time I didn't have the recording they were looking for). So how does this "continuous + triggers" work and may I end up in the same situation where I don't have the necessary video footage?
 
The pre and post video of the trigger will be in mainstream according to the time duration set.
 
The pre and post video of the trigger will be in mainstream according to the time duration set.
Which implies that the mainstream is being buffered, to provide the pre-record duration, but not yet stored until an event trigger.
I just wondered if it was the subtream that was being buffered.
 
Your frame rate will have a huge impact on the storage space you use. Recording 30 fps takes three times as much hard drive space as 10fps. There are only a few situations where you realistically need more than 10 frames per second being recorded. We aren't trying to make Hollywood movies here (but even they only record 24 fps).
 
Are most people here recording the substream and then record the main stream when there is a trigger? That seems kind of reasonable. But how do you set this up that way? I didn't see any such setting in BI. As for fps, I am recording at 15fps. Maybe I should lower that to 10fps except for the LPR cam.
 
Chosen for each camera in settings menu and under RECORD tab.
I just realized that I have some set up to record CONTINUOUS + ALERTS and some CONTINUOUS + TRIGGERED.
Could someone elaborate the difference between these 2?
 
 
Cont+Alerts means it will only switch to mainstream if it is motion that meets your criteria for an alert - for example, like you are using DeepStack for people but only want it to switch to mainstream if the trigger meets your alert criteria.

Cont+Trig means anytime the camera is triggered, it will switch to mainstream.

Most here do Cont+Trig because sometimes those that do not meet the alert criteria contain useful information.
 
Are we talking about "Triggered + continuous each"? Is this always recording the substream and then switches to the main stream when triggered.
 

Attachments

  • recording1.png
    recording1.png
    194.2 KB · Views: 2
I don't seem to have such an option. See attachment. Is it because I am on an old version of BI, i.e. 5.3.3.8?
 

Attachments

  • recording2.png
    recording2.png
    28.7 KB · Views: 5