1 TB per day with 8 cams...... WTF

[ArnonZ]

Today I noticed that the two HD of mine are already full (they do overwrite) and I can only get to see passed 8 days.
The thing is, I'm using 8X5442 cams, set on
resolution 2560X1440
bit rate 4096
frame rate 15
compression H.265
I'm using 2X4TB hd and something does not make sense in here.
I didn't notice it before. I'm not sure, but it could be since the last update.
I did notice that the cams are taking snapshot every second..... I don't need it but even then, I wouldn't expect to to 1TB per day for 8 cams of 4MP.

Any idea would be appreciated

 

[Lanaii]

I think your Encode settings are not correctly, i calculate and it must be around 22 Days Security Materials Calculator

 

[biggen]

If you are using CBR then 4.1Mb/s * 8 cameras = ~32Mb/s = ~4MB/s.
4MB/s * 60s * 60m * 24h = ~345GB/Day.

Change to VBR if not already. How large are your snapshots? You are taking 8 snapshots every second spread across all 8 cameras?

 

[Shockwave199]

Think it's the pictures. Disable that and see. I have 8 four mega pixel cams doing higher bit rate than that @ 15 fps and a 4tb drive alone archives 8 days. You should be getting 16 days or so.

 

[wombsganz]

Check if it's encoding in CBR

Check if it's encoding in VBR with too higher gain or sharpness at night causing grain which caps out the bitrate

Check if it's triggering excessively and set to save hi-res alert images upon trigger

Check if substreams are configured in BlueIris and if they are set to excessively high encoding settings in your camera

Check if there are orphaned video files on disk from when you were first setting up the cameras which are using up space but not being deleted

Check if some cameras are being re-encoded rather than recorded direct to disk, and if so check encoder settings or switch them back to direct to disk

It's probably just your photos though. Assuming 400KB per photo across 8 cams, that's 3.2MB/s which almost doubles your disk usage per second.

 

[ArnonZ]

Thank you guys

few note about your great remarks:

1. It should NOT be the encoding. I'm using H.265
2. CBR VS VBR is a good point.
I sew that most of my cams were set for some reason to VBR. Changed it back to CBR.
I'm not sure how to deal with right settings for VBR soI changed back to CBR.
I'd be more than happy to know what I need to know in order to use VBR but that's another issue.
Not sure about those two.
3. I'm NOT using BI so some of the great advises that could be related to BI are not relevant. I'm using AI NVR of Dahua.
4. The captures are also my best guess and now you guys are also suggesting that the numbers that it can indeed consume so much data.
I think that it was @looney2ns that was mentioning something about capture every second (talking about the 5442 series). I never wanted to capture images in addition to 24h video but for some reason, that's what it's doing and when I was trying to stop it VIA NVR and directly through the cams it changed back and continue with capturing images every second.

My current guess is that the 1 second capture is the reason and the VBR could also add to that.

 

[ArnonZ]

For some reason, I could not completely stop the captures, but I was changing them for all cams to every 3600 (every 1 hour).
for the time, I was changing all IPS to use CBR.
I'd be more than happy to know more about VBR and the change of settings needed for that.

 

[SouthernYankee]

Just because you are using h.265 for transport does not mean it is recorded in h.265. Depends on the processing of the NVR,

 

[Shockwave199]

If you want to completely stop it for the moment make sure you delete the schedule per camera in the snapshot page in the nvr. In the recording nvr page, make sure that snapshots are off across all cameras too. Then reboot and see if it sticks. I've never liked VBR in the past because if a scene goes from static to busy the bit rate ramps up and is noisy. At least that what I remember not liking about it years ago. Maybe it's better now. But I always prefer CBR with anything video. I really think you're eating up your drives with tons of pictures. If you have motion set or IVS, try photos on just one camera set to only take a picture(s) at the event and see how it goes. Otherwise you do not need to take photos all the time, imo.

 

[looney2ns]

Thank you guys

few note about your great remarks:

1. It should NOT be the encoding. I'm using H.265
2. CBR VS VBR is a good point.
I sew that most of my cams were set for some reason to VBR. Changed it back to CBR.
I'm not sure how to deal with right settings for VBR soI changed back to CBR.
I'd be more than happy to know what I need to know in order to use VBR but that's another issue.
Not sure about those two.
3. I'm NOT using BI so some of the great advises that could be related to BI are not relevant. I'm using AI NVR of Dahua.
4. The captures are also my best guess and now you guys are also suggesting that the numbers that it can indeed consume so much data.
I think that it was @looney2ns that was mentioning something about capture every second (talking about the 5442 series). I never wanted to capture images in addition to 24h video but for some reason, that's what it's doing and when I was trying to stop it VIA NVR and directly through the cams it changed back and continue with capturing images every second.

My current guess is that the 1 second capture is the reason and the VBR could also add to that.

This was a problem with an early firmware.
What firmware version is your cameras on?
Did you purchase the cameras and NVr from @EMPIRETECANDY ?

 

[ArnonZ]

If you want to completely stop it for the moment make sure you delete the schedule per camera in the snapshot page in the nvr. In the recording nvr page, make sure that snapshots are off across all cameras too. Then reboot and see if it sticks. I've never liked VBR in the past because if a scene goes from static to busy the bit rate ramps up and is noisy. At least that what I remember not liking about it years ago. Maybe it's better now. But I always prefer CBR with anything video. I really think you're eating up your drives with tons of pictures. If you have motion set or IVS, try photos on just one camera set to only take a picture(s) at the event. Otherwise you do not need to take photos all the time, imo.

Thanks,
At least in my NVR (NVR5216-16P-I), I did not find a way to delete the capture schedule. I DID try to set it for event rather than using a schedule BUT it turns back to schedule after I save..... probably a bug.
However, I did change the schedule to every 3,600 sec (1 hour) and also change to lowest quality so if it works, it must change it dramatically - closer to 0.

What firmware version is your cameras on?
Did you purchase from @EMPIRETECANDY ?

Yes, I bought everything from @EMPIRETECANDY
I'm using the newest FW 20200903.
The 4 5442T-ZE are using the special FW for the T-ZE and the rest four (B5442E-ZE) are using the the common version of the same date.
As far as I know, all 8 cams were capturing images every 1 sec on quality 5. As I was saying, could not delete the schedule completely nor could I change it from schedule to event but I did change it today to every 3600 sec on quality 1.

 

[Shockwave199]

Thanks,
At least in my NVR (NVR5216-16P-I), I did not find a way to delete the capture schedule. I DID try to set it for event rather than using a schedule BUT it turns back to schedule after I save..... probably a bug.
However, I did change the schedule to every 3,600 sec (1 hour) and also change to lowest quality so if it works, it must change it dramatically - closer to 0.


Yes, I bought everything from @EMPIRETECANDY
I'm using the newest FW 20200903.
The 4 5442T-ZE are using the special FW for the T-ZE and the rest four (B5442E-ZE) are using the the common version of the same date.
As far as I know, all 8 cams were capturing images every 1 sec on quality 5. As I was saying, could not delete the schedule completely nor could I change it from schedule to event but I did change it today to every 3600 sec on quality 1.

For the schedule look in the storage page, schedule/snapshot. Un the web gui for the nvr in in the management page. If you have to drop the picture quality so low then what's the point? You'd be better off just grabbing a snapshot from playback of an event.

 

[bp2008]

I can't imagine the NVR would actually save all those snapshots. That would be insane. Probably your cameras are just encoding a much higher bit rate than they were configured to. I've seen that happen plenty of times.

 

[Shockwave199]

I'm actually having the reverse problem with snapshots at the moment. I have it set perfectly for one camera and for the life of me, I can't search for them. I have no clue where they save to in the nvr.

 

[ArnonZ]

By the way, please correct me if I'm wrong here:
assuming that the CBR and the snapshot change fixed everything.
I did not find a way to check the writing speed by the NVR.
I do not want to open the NVR and check the HD externally.
If that's the case, my alternatives are only to wait few weeks OR to format the HDs and to check the free space left within days/hours.
Is that correct? can you guys think of another way to know if it's fixed?

 

[bp2008]

@ArnonZ If you can't find the measured bit rates (writing speed) then your best approach would be to keep a log of the precise time of day and the amount of space used/free. Measure again every hour or two until you have several useful data points. Then if you don't know how to use math to figure out what you need to know from that, just post it here and one of us can help

This is why I always prefer Blue Iris over some NVR black box. Not only is Blue Iris in a whole different league when it comes to configuration capabilities, but you have the whole power of a Windows PC. So you can easily analyze the file system, integrate with other software, monitor application performance, run RAID arrays, etc. Not to mention having a developer that is relatively easy to communicate with, and very frequent updates.

 

[bp2008]

If the drives are full and just overwriting old video automatically then just look for what the oldest video still on it is, and log that along with the current time. If you lose video at a significantly slower rate than time passes, then it should be obvious within 2-6 hours.

 

[ArnonZ]

For the schedule look in the storage page, schedule/snapshot. Un the web gui for the nvr in in the management page. If you have to drop the picture quality so low then what's the point? You'd be better off just grabbing a snapshot from playback of an event.

Thanks, again. found it after writing in here and cleared everything there. I used to have a schedule of M&A + intelligent yet it was taking a snapshot every second regardless of my settings.
Anyway, now it's all clear there + at the camera> encode>snapshot it sets for every 3600 anyway so I'm not sure if it's taking a snapshot even every 1 hour (could be no snapshots now).

I can't imagine the NVR would actually save all those snapshots. That would be insane. Probably your cameras are just encoding a much higher bit rate than they were configured to. I've seen that happen plenty of times.

I was shocked when I saw that I have only 8 days of recording and I was shocked again when I found all of those snapshot. That's how I saw it's taking a snapshot every second.... yes, it's insane but I saw them.

I'm actually having the reverse problem with snapshots at the moment. I have it set perfectly for one camera and for the life of me, I can't search for them. I have no clue where they save to in the nvr.

can't remember where I found it (few days ago). could also be that you can find it at the smart pss app.

This is why I always prefer Blue Iris over some NVR black box.

BI have big advantages. no doubts about it. I was choosing the NVR mainly because of the face recognition support and ability of that NVR.
and.... since it's NOT BI, I cannot have a windows access to the HD files as in Windows or Linux and I cannot see the files and the dates. The NVR can show me how much of the disks is full but when it's already overwriting, it's useless (I always see that I have 0GB/3.62TB free). If I was to format the HDs, I could see the rate.

 

[ArnonZ]

BTW,
If I set record for both general AND A&M AND intelligence, does it mean that I record the events twice?
Doesn't make sense but....
I did format the disks and after 4 hours, I saw that 3.44/3.62TB of one disk is free and naturally the second disk has 3.62/3.62
If I didn't make mistakes, it means that I'm using the disk space in a speed of 0.15/day =>less than a week to go. WTF.....

 

[steve1225]

I did format the disks and after 4 hours, I saw that 3.44/3.62TB of one disk is free and naturally the second disk has 3.62/3.62

You can always switch Dahua NVR to quota system (requires reformatting of HDD).
Then You will be see usage on disk per channel (camera) with separation for video and still images...