Is Micro SD Card useful when using BI?

[gadutchman]

Long time lurker on ipcamtalk, I've learned a lot from going through all the great info and suggestions being provided! Last week I finally took the plunge and ordered a 5442T-ZE and a 2831TM-AS from Andy (of course). I've got the 2831 mounted in the front of our house pointed at the Front Door where there is a street light providing lots of illumination. Planning on mounting the 5442 in back which is very dark so I figure I need as much low light performance as possible. I'm planning on mounting at least one more camera in front and at least two more in back to get the coverage I want. I've been a Blue Iris user for several years and plan on continuing. Right now, the Micro SD card slots on both camera's are empty and I'm wondering if there really is a point to spending the money to put some 32GB cards in even as inexpensive as they are. I've got my BI PC on a UPS and I can't recall a single time in the past five years that BI went down unintentionally. I've gone through the Cliff Notes and did some searches but mostly came up with discussions of which vender/size to use. Do you veterans of the IP Security cam world put them in? If so, why?
Thanks for all the help!!!

 

[Ssayer]

I've got one in each of my cams for one reason... IF someone should ever break into my house (doubtful but who knows) and take the Blue Iris computer, there will still be footage of them on the cams. Overkill, sure, but like you said, cards are cheap...

 

[gadutchman]

I admit, I hadn't considered that possibility! Besides wanting to save a few bucks, I also didn't want to add yet another future point of failure. Have you had any SD Card failures?
Thanks for your input!

 

[Ssayer]

Now don't you go jinxing me here (no I haven't)...

 

[looney2ns]

It's a cheap backup for video.
You never can predict when the harddrive or the computer it's self will have a problem and Murphy's Law takes hold.
I have a couple of SD cards in cams that are going on 5 yrs old, that are still kicking.
I always put SD cards in my cams.
Buy a good card, and they will last a long time.

 

[gadutchman]

Just stumbled across some 64GB Samsung EVO Select Cards for only $8.99 each so going to order 4 or 5 of them. I know EVO+ are a favorite around here but assuming the EVO Select are comparable or better. Thanks all!

 

[hajalie24]

Tacking onto the thread, can anyone state how much storage is used for a typical motion trigger setup (like your front door?)

I'm thinking of getting a bunch of 256gb cards anyway cause they're relatively cheap, but am curious about how long it will last (in terms of days captured)

 

[sebastiantombs]

No offense, but that's like asking how long is a piece of rope. How long it will "last" is determined by how many write operations are performed versus the durability, stated life expectancy, of the drive. If you mean how many days of video can be stored, that depends on how many triggers occur, how long they last, and what the bit and frame rates are, all of which are another very variable thing depending on how much activity occurs.

 

[hajalie24]

No offense, but that's like asking how long is a piece of rope. How long it will "last" is determined by how many write operations are performed versus the durability, stated life expectancy, of the drive. If you mean how many days of video can be stored, that depends on how many triggers occur, how long they last, and what the bit and frame rates are, all of which are another very variable thing depending on how much activity occurs.

I'm asking for ballpark numbers.

Yes it's hard to get exact, doesn't mean you can't offer details that will be helpful for me.. You can provide your own parameters here and I can extrapolate, but instead you decided to be smug about it.

 

[Ssayer]

Smug??? Dang man, like @sebastiantombs tried to tell you, the low to high amount is a WHOLE lot...

 

[hajalie24]

Is it really so hard to tell me:

Resolution & framerate
encoding method
average length of clips
resulting average size for each clip

This is all I would need to get an informed idea for my usage. Tell me I'm wrong here? Another way of putting it, for every minute of recording it takes up X space at this resolution and framerate. I can then expect that doubling the framerate will double the size (not entirely accurate I assume but still good for ballpark numbers)

Guess I'll just test it myself when my microsd cards arrive.

 

[The Automation Guy]

Is it really so hard to tell me:

Resolution & framerate
encoding method
average length of clips
resulting average size for each clip

This is all I would need to get an informed idea for my usage. Tell me I'm wrong here? Another way of putting it, for every minute of recording it takes up X space at this resolution and framerate. I can then expect that doubling the framerate will double the size (not entirely accurate I assume but still good for ballpark numbers)

Guess I'll just test it myself when my microsd cards arrive.

There is a hard drive calculator in the Wiki. It's really designed to tell you how much HD space you need for continuous recording, but you can simply convert the final "days" number to minutes and it should give you a ballpark number based on how long you think each of your recordings goes for.