Blue Iris

[JonSnow]

I plan on setting up 4 possibly up to 6 cameras, how many days of continuous footage can i store on a 2TB HDD?

Right now i only have the 1 camera, will be adding more as I go and find camera on sale.

1 Cam =
2 Cam =
4 Cam =

 

[SouthernYankee]

Depends, frame rate, video quality, frame size in pixels, compression type, complexity of the video......

 

[TonyR]

Check out IPCT's Calculating Required Hard Drive Size

 

[Badtux]

Continuous recording? Why are you doing continuous recording rather than on motion detection? With motion detection, I have no problem storing 8 cameras for about two weeks on 2 terabytes, a mix of 2mp and 4mp cameras operating at 20fps. Continuous, though, would be significantly fewer days.

Note that I don't have a lot of motion on my cameras at night in particular (days can be a bit frenetic for several of my cameras). No motion = no data stored. Looking at that calculator above, it looks like I have motion around 1/4th of the time to fit the number of days onto 2 terabytes that I'm fitting.

 

[SouthernYankee]

It is strongly recommend to do continuous recording. If you read the post from most people miss the real action using motion, The action may be on the edge of the video or you do not have motion configured correctly.

There are a number of calculators for drive size, but you need to know all your camera specs.

I have 13 cameras 2.1 MP at 12 fps on a 4tb drive for 11 days.

 

[Badtux]

It is strongly recommend to do continuous recording. If you read the post from most people miss the real action using motion, The action may be on the edge of the video or you do not have motion configured correctly.

There are a number of calculators for drive size, but you need to know all your camera specs.

I have 13 cameras 2.1 MP at 12 fps on a 4tb drive for 11 days.

It really depends on your purpose. Continuous recording would actually violate my purpose, which is to view all incidents of motion that occur during certain time periods. I'm not going to watch 12 hours of video from 8pm to 8am when the goal is to see the 20 minutes of motion that occur in that time frame. If on the other hand you have a human watching the cameras 24/7 and have legal compliance requirements, yeah, do what you want. BTW, Blue Iris allows setting a "buffer" to record prior to the motion detection triggering, which is highly recommended. I have mine set to record video starting 10 seconds before motion is detected, which catches most of those edge cases.

 

[TonyR]

I'm not going to watch 12 hours of video from 8pm to 8am when the goal is to see the 20 minutes of motion that occur in that time frame.

Nor would I...which is one reason why BI can place a marker on the timeline for specific motion events which occur when continuous recording is being used.
You can jump right to the marker and view the detected motion event and backup/fast forward either side of it with no need to view "12 hours of video".
You can expand/contract the timeline to show those motion markers occurring over several days, the last 24 hours, 12 hours or hour.

 

[samplenhold]

Agree with SouthernYankee and TonyR on this.

Case in point: several month ago my neighborhood had some door checkers come through. While my doors were locked, they did gain access to other people's cars and yards. Stole things from cars and two bikes from yards. My two driveway cams picked up one of the guys checking the door on my jeep. Since I record 24/7, I checked other camera views which showed the second guy, his clothing, what he was carrying and the direction they came from. It showed them getting into a car across the street from me and taking a bike from the yard across the street. It showed them go down the street, then return 8 minutes later to head out of the subdivision. I made a few vid captures to give to police. The officer reviewed them in my home and said "Oh yeah, I know those guys". If I was on motion only, the second guy would never have been known. The thefts from across the street would have never been recorded.

Storage info:

I currently have 18 cameras installed inside and outside. All continuously recording at 15fps. There is one 4MP cam and the rest are 2MP cameras. Seven of the 2MP cams are low bitrate, cheap, 'baby monitor' style cameras that have low file sizes. The rest of the cameras are decent Dahua cameras with good bit rates and larger file sizes. Average daytime Bitrate seems to be in the range of 8900-9500 kB/s.

I have two WD 10TB Purple drives, nine cameras writing to each drive. I get about 27 days of recording using the Blue Iris DVR format and the Direct-to-disc Video Compression option.

Hope this helps.

 

[JonSnow]

Thanks this is very informative, I'm hoping to keep at least 15 days with 4 camera minimum. Right now its just getting the equipment setup and getting used to BI and just tinkering.

Using a 2TB WD green, actually need to get the camera mounted outside as currently they are just pointing out the window. I'll will buying a WD purple when i kill the 2TB from all the writes , this is just a work in progress.

 

[samplenhold]

That is a good way to start. Start small and experiment. Your ideas/requirements will change as you gain experience. My system has evolved over time. I added cameras in phases as my understanding of what can be recorded and what the mission of each camera position was. It is still a work in progress.

Take that one camera and record a weeks worth of video. See what the daily files sizes add up to and you can guestimate your HD size requirement from that data.

 

[Badtux]

across the street. It showed them go down the street, then return 8 minutes later to head out of the subdivision. I made a few vid captures to give to police. The officer reviewed them in my home and said "Oh yeah, I know those guys". If I was on motion only, the second guy would never have been known. The thefts from across the street would have never been recorded.

After viewing some of my videos I see what you mean. Milestone would have picked up the guys across the street, its motion detection is very finely adjustable. Blue Iris seems to have only some basic adjustments for motion detection and at the default settings doesn't seem to pick up obvious things like a cat walking across my yard -- I see the cat at the end of the yard, then a skip to the cat eating kibble on the patio. Going to see if I can fiddle with it some more, because I don't have the disk space for continuous recording -- I didn't need it with Milestone, my network just grew past 8 cameras at which point Milestone wants major $$$.

 

[fenderman]

After viewing some of my videos I see what you mean. Milestone would have picked up the guys across the street, its motion detection is very finely adjustable. Blue Iris seems to have only some basic adjustments for motion detection and at the default settings doesn't seem to pick up obvious things like a cat walking across my yard -- I see the cat at the end of the yard, then a skip to the cat eating kibble on the patio. Going to see if I can fiddle with it some more, because I don't have the disk space for continuous recording -- I didn't need it with Milestone, my network just grew past 8 cameras at which point Milestone wants major $$$.

Blue iris can be set to trigger on motion very aggressively, just as aggressive if not more aggressive that milestone. You just have it setup incorrectly and need to read the help file on setup.

 

[Badtux]

Blue iris can be set to trigger on motion very aggressively, just as aggressive if not more aggressive that milestone. You just have it setup incorrectly and need to read the help file on setup.

As I said, I have it set at the defaults for motion detection. Obviously the default is not very sensitive, and I need to fiddle with it some more. Thanks for restating what I said . That said, Milestone has some *very* detailed mechanisms for adjusting motion sensitivity at a fine-grained level. If I have a tree that's blowing around in the wind, for example, I can omit tiny rectangles so that the tree doesn't trigger motion detection. It is a nice product, just expensive and overkill what what I need for a home network. Blue Iris lacks some of the functionality (I miss the 'play backwards' button, sigh), but (shrug). It is what it is, and it does the job for a price I can afford, so.

 

[fenderman]

As I said, I have it set at the defaults for motion detection. Obviously the default is not very sensitive, and I need to fiddle with it some more. Thanks for restating what I said . That said, Milestone has some *very* detailed mechanisms for adjusting motion sensitivity at a fine-grained level. If I have a tree that's blowing around in the wind, for example, I can omit tiny rectangles so that the tree doesn't trigger motion detection. It is a nice product, just expensive and overkill what what I need for a home network. Blue Iris lacks some of the functionality (I miss the 'play backwards' button, sigh), but (shrug). It is what it is, and it does the job for a price I can afford, so.

You said you see that the poster means, when you dont have a clue as to what he would have missed with motion detection as only a fool would leave settings at default. Why would the default settings every be relevant? You deliberately made it seem like you didnt need continuous recording with milestone but you do with blue iris, that you have to fiddle with blue iris more, when its clear, you didnt make any adjustments at all. Well duh. Motion detection settings will vary by the cameras view and scene. What you said was wrong, just clarifying your misrepresentation.
You must have just installed blue iris a few minuets ago. With blue iris you can block out the tree as well. You can also play video backwards at up to 256x speed. Time to read the manual, perhaps you will shrug less. Milestone lacks lots of the functionality built into blue iris.
IF you want to be a pompous ass, at the very least read the manual so you dont look like an idiot

 

[samplenhold]

Milestone would have picked up the guys across the street

Maybe I was not clear. Milestone would not have picked up the guys across the street, because if I was only recording on motion, I would not want all of the across the street motion being recorded. Every time someone came and went from their houses, cars passing by, etc. But having 24/7 recording, I can view the other cameras (that I consider overview cameras and only send motion notices for events on my property) to see where perps came from and went to.