looney2ns
IPCT Contributor
Massive number of files in alerts directory
- Thread starter Thanamite
- Start date
+1 above - and in your friends situation, if true, well that would have been found with daily scrubbing of video.
As @sebastiantombs, I can quickly scrub thru in less than 30 seconds for any overnight activity that warrants saving or future investigation, and a couple of minutes scrubbing key cameras for daytime activity.
You may think having 1.3 million alert files is good, but it is giving you a false sense of security. As you are seeing, at 400,000 files, Windows file manager is already unstable. Wait until it is 3 times that amount.
Here is a test. You have 14 months of alerts you said. Go back 11 months and see how long it takes for you to find a red pickup truck LOL. Or lets go to a two hour window on a specific day - a kid dressed up as a football player for halloween LOL.
Plus in many states a homeowner is not liable for falls due to snow or ice....unless your friend lives in a muni that specially removed it. For example in NY you are not held liable, but in NYC you are...
www.10tv.com
As @sebastiantombs, I can quickly scrub thru in less than 30 seconds for any overnight activity that warrants saving or future investigation, and a couple of minutes scrubbing key cameras for daytime activity.
You may think having 1.3 million alert files is good, but it is giving you a false sense of security. As you are seeing, at 400,000 files, Windows file manager is already unstable. Wait until it is 3 times that amount.
Here is a test. You have 14 months of alerts you said. Go back 11 months and see how long it takes for you to find a red pickup truck LOL. Or lets go to a two hour window on a specific day - a kid dressed up as a football player for halloween LOL.
Plus in many states a homeowner is not liable for falls due to snow or ice....unless your friend lives in a muni that specially removed it. For example in NY you are not held liable, but in NYC you are...
No, Ohio property owners are not liable for injuries that happen on snow, ice-covered sidewalks
This is a question that we received from a viewer, and one that local legal expert, Sarah Cole, answers often.
www.10tv.com
Hi, and thank you for helping. I update my install every few weeks. I now run 5.6.1.3.
I find the internet much more helpful that the help file. I just searched it for "Database only" and found not results.
I am in NYC unfortunately. I know liability is ridiculous here. It is abused a lot.+1 above - and in your friends situation, if true, well that would have been found with daily scrubbing of video.
As @sebastiantombs, I can quickly scrub thru in less than 30 seconds for any overnight activity that warrants saving or future investigation, and a couple of minutes scrubbing key cameras for daytime activity.
You may think having 1.3 million alert files is good, but it is giving you a false sense of security. As you are seeing, at 400,000 files, Windows file manager is already unstable. Wait until it is 3 times that amount.
Here is a test. You have 14 months of alerts you said. Go back 11 months and see how long it takes for you to find a red pickup truck LOL. Or lets go to a two hour window on a specific day - a kid dressed up as a football player for halloween LOL.
Plus in many states a homeowner is not liable for falls due to snow or ice....unless your friend lives in a muni that specially removed it. For example in NY you are not held liable, but in NYC you are...
No, Ohio property owners are not liable for injuries that happen on snow, ice-covered sidewalks
This is a question that we received from a viewer, and one that local legal expert, Sarah Cole, answers often.
I don't have time to check my alerts regularly and it is a huge comfort to know the clips are there.
I just checked. I have "Combine or cut video each:" checked with 8 hours and 4GB. I also have the "Also re-triggers" under Alerts unchecked which I believe means that there is only alert file for multiple continuous triggers.
Here is what I don't understand. Many people advice not to create alert clips or thumbnails and save to "Database only". The question is, which database. If it is the continuous 24/7 recording, it is not good because it continuous and therefore huge.
If I could say "Database only" and that database was a separate alerts only database in a different location that the continuous one, then that would be perfect. I am not sure how to test this without messing up my setup but it may be the perfect solution. I will try a test setup on a separate PC. If anyone knows what database is used by "Database only" you will save me a lot of time.
Really, I just want 1 month (14TB) of 24/7 recordings and 1 year (another 14TB) of alerts. Is there another way to do this?
If the alerts BVR is separate from the Continuous recording BVR (and a separate drive), then this would be exactly what I want. I will test it over the weekend. Thank you.
It is saving to the BVR file that is set up for that camera.
What about running a clone camera (s) using just the substreams for that 1 year of data. That would give you alert thumbnails for however long that drive could record 24/7 substream.
But at the end of the day I still think it is giving you a false sense of security.
If you really want that much extra storage, you need to look at a NAS or a more robust VMS system.
I think you would be better served taking those drives and splitting the cameras across them and then daily or weekly scrubs and save anything that looks questionable.
But then again that works for my situation, if you are in NYC where tens of thousands walk past your place every day, that may be a little more problematic.
While having lots of days/months sounds great, the reality of it is unless it was something catastrophic (which you would have known about sooner anyway), most are not going to start scrubbing video for something that may have happened a few weeks ago. I used to save it for years on end and ran out of storage and realized that I will never go back and look at that.
By spending time to dial in the alerts and a frequent peek at what is going on, you would have noticed something around your property within days. I literally every morning in under 30 seconds can scrub what happened the night before and see if anything happened I need to look at further
If a neighbor comes up to me and says "sometime around 2 weeks ago someone backed into my car, can you see if you caught it?" You will find that even with the best scrubbing this is a monumental task. Unless they can narrow down the day/time window, most of us are not going to scour it.
What about running a clone camera (s) using just the substreams for that 1 year of data. That would give you alert thumbnails for however long that drive could record 24/7 substream.
But at the end of the day I still think it is giving you a false sense of security.
If you really want that much extra storage, you need to look at a NAS or a more robust VMS system.
I think you would be better served taking those drives and splitting the cameras across them and then daily or weekly scrubs and save anything that looks questionable.
But then again that works for my situation, if you are in NYC where tens of thousands walk past your place every day, that may be a little more problematic.
While having lots of days/months sounds great, the reality of it is unless it was something catastrophic (which you would have known about sooner anyway), most are not going to start scrubbing video for something that may have happened a few weeks ago. I used to save it for years on end and ran out of storage and realized that I will never go back and look at that.
By spending time to dial in the alerts and a frequent peek at what is going on, you would have noticed something around your property within days. I literally every morning in under 30 seconds can scrub what happened the night before and see if anything happened I need to look at further
If a neighbor comes up to me and says "sometime around 2 weeks ago someone backed into my car, can you see if you caught it?" You will find that even with the best scrubbing this is a monumental task. Unless they can narrow down the day/time window, most of us are not going to scour it.
That is unfortunate you live in the town of abused laws...
But in this case, if your friend was sued and lost, how would the video of changed the outcome unless it was clear the fall wasn't on his property? Otherwise it just confirms it was on his property taking away reasonable doubt it wasn't on his property.
Again, a huge comfort knowing the clips are there is immaterial if Windows is unstable with a third of the amount of files you plan to have.
Hopefully one of the options I presented to you above is a more workable solution.
Another can of worms. I can't get umbrella coverage because I am considered too close to the shore - they don't care that I am on a hill, they have their miles distance and that's is all they go by. Complicated. Another problem is they can sue for more than the coverage anyway. Finally, most of these people who sue are crooks. It will be good to show that.
So, I consider BI my friend.
We suspect the person probably staged a fall which may be visible that is is fake. Maybe also had the spot checked out before pretending to fall.
Is that alerts BVR in the "New" or the "Alerts" folder?
Cloning is another interesting idea. I could set the clones to record only alerts to their own BVR file. Probably will complicated the interface but guaranteed to work.
It is frustrating that the solutions seems to be so easy: just have BI create a subdirectory per camera or per day.
Alerts go to alerts folder. What is interesting is that folder will be empty if you look at it in Windows if you are using database only.
If you only have a few cameras you can set up in clips and archiving to save each camera to a different location.
Having a subdirectory for everyday would be a nightmare. I had that on a camera when I was using its free computer VMS and it was horrible having to jump thru all those folders.
BI system works well if using it as intended with BVR files and the way we all scrub videos works well and is quick and efficient.
But if you are doing something like saving mp4 files for every alert I can see that getting problematic fast.
Hopefully the clone option gets you what you need.
If you only have a few cameras you can set up in clips and archiving to save each camera to a different location.
Having a subdirectory for everyday would be a nightmare. I had that on a camera when I was using its free computer VMS and it was horrible having to jump thru all those folders.
BI system works well if using it as intended with BVR files and the way we all scrub videos works well and is quick and efficient.
But if you are doing something like saving mp4 files for every alert I can see that getting problematic fast.
Hopefully the clone option gets you what you need.
I meant that BI could create an alerts subdirectory for each day automatically. As users of the BI interface we would never notice anything.
sebastiantombs
Known around here
The bottom line is what you are trying to accomplish taxes the base operating system with the sheer number of files involved. The only way to preserve the video, safely, is to record 24/7 onto disk. That will require, by your numbers, ~150TB of disk and will eliminate millions of alert files. If something happens you will have the date and time available from the law suit. From that information you can locate the incident on those disks. It all comes down to how much you're willing to invest in insuring you have access to that video to protect against a potential loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Disk space is relatively inexpensive by comparison.
looney2ns
IPCT Contributor
Be sure you really understand how BI handles storage.
Blue Iris Support - YouTube
Blue Iris Support - YouTube
That has a lot of interesting videos. Thanks.
I have BI ftp alert images plus my front door camera video to a different computer. That computer is backed up via BackBlaze with a one year version history. Around 500 GBs per month. No data base and it would be a real PITA to find something from 10 months ago, but...
Probably about right - Comcast 1,000 down/40 up and 2.5 TB total (out of unlimited) last month.