Cost of Secure HDD

[dgbytes]

Hi folks. Ive been reading up on the need for surveillance hard drives in an NVR due to the constant writing for live video recording. I was curious if anyone has played with using a normal hdd as a mirror or to archive the footage. I want 16 4MP cameras running 24/7, but with 90 days of footage.. that creates an expensive storage situation. Does anyone have a cost effective solution and is archived footage usually accessible remotely via app or do I need to rdp into the NVR?

 

[dgbytes]

I was hoping for H.265 and some form of UCode function to lower the bitrate even more. I have no idea what h/w ucode.. yet another feature to read up on :-D

 

[biggen]

I was hoping for H.265 and some form of UCode function to lower the bitrate even more. I have no idea what h/w ucode.. yet another feature to read up on :-D

Using H.265 @1080 and 20fps my cams running 24x7 eat up about 1.5GB/hour each. I'm using VBR but have it set to the highest setting (4096K). So figure ~36GB/day per camera or ~3.2TB/camera per 90 days. So you are talking ~50TB of storage for 90 days retention for my cameras.

You could squeeze this down by using a going with 5 or 10 fps, and a low VBR. You just have to build out a NAS or server and stuff it full of drives. You can get up to 16TB drives nowadays. Its not cheap but thats the price you pay for having so many cameras and a long retention time.

 

[looney2ns]

This is why you see cctv footage from large stores, hospitals, etc, that are only recording at 1-2fps.