Question about recording "Continuous" vs "Continuous Sub + Triggered"

perfect777

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I have been using BI for several years and it's great!

I typically have all my cameras set to record video "When Triggered" and this has worked fine except for 2 front yard cameras which have missed some events.

I have plenty of bandwidth left on my BI server and some large 10TB hard drives left over from my NAS uprade that I plan to place directly in my BI machine.

My questions is related to the 2 choices for video recording: "Continuous" vs "Continuous sub + Triggered".

If I select "Continuous", this will record full quality 24x7 in 4.0GB chunks (per my settings), right? Will it still take snapshots of the triggers and bring me to the correct spot in the continuous recording to view those events (if I want to see them)?

Alternatively, if I select "Continuous sub + Triggered", this will record my sub-stream (which is recorded in lower quality??) and then anytime the camera is triggered it will record those clips in full quality, right?

I do have substream enabled on both of these cameras (set to max resolution of 704x481 (D1), 15FPS CBR, 15 I Frame interval, 512 Kb/S). I really don't want to lose out on the high-quality settings that I spent so much time and money setting up for these cameras.

I have read the Help file but still am confused about which is the correct selection.

Thanks!
 

perfect777

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Thanks for the very quick response!

Should I change any of the settings (other than to "Continuous" for Video) below? If I don't check the "Cut video when triggered with break time", will the recordings be gigantic?

cam settings.jpg

Thanks!
 

Mike A.

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I cut mine at 2 hours/4 GB. I think that it's easier to scrub though a smaller file.

10 seconds is kind of long for pre-trigger but you may want that. I use 5 only because that's the lowest now in recent versions. I'd rather do 3 for most cams.

Why save to Aux 1 instead of the default New?

Having JPEGs checked will generate a ton of extra image files but you may want them for some reason.
 

perfect777

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I cut mine at 2 hours/4 GB. I think that it's easier to scrub though a smaller file.

10 seconds is kind of long for pre-trigger but you may want that. I use 5 only because that's the lowest now in recent versions. I'd rather do 3 for most cams.

Why save to Aux 1 instead of the default New?

Having JPEGs checked will generate a ton of extra image files but you may want them for some reason.
I'm using my "Aux 1" (which I renamed to "Continuous") for a specific hard drive for the storage of my "Continuous" clips. The "New" folder is for the rest of my cameras (which are still only recording "Triggered" videos) and used a small but fast SSD.

I like the 10 second make time since my camera triggers don't always start when something first enters the frame (such as kids riding bikes coming from the corner of the camera). The help file makes me think that this is irrelevant now that I'm recording "Continuous" (?).

I unchecked the JPEGs - after reading the Help file, I'm not sure what purpose they actually serve...

Here are the new settings - should I change anything?

1692421907650.png
 

Mike A.

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That looks OK to me given how you want it.

Quality I think is only for the JPEG files. Don't usually need it set higher than the default 50% but you're not capturing them now anyway so makes no difference. Same with the Include JPEGs on All Clips. May want that checked if capturing JPEGS but you're not. Just so you know if you have a case where you do want that.

You can try 1 hour for the cut time and see if you like that better. Easy to switch however you want it.

One last thing given what you said about all the other cams recording when triggered - with any important cams you should record continuously or continuous + triggers. Too many times you'll miss things otherwise or may want to see how something started that may have happened before the trigger, etc. Disk is cheap and you'll likely wish that you had more recorded vs less at some point.
 

perfect777

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On 2nd though - after experimenting for the last day with a few different cameras and configurations - it seems like it's actually better to enable the JPEGs (When Triggered) + "Include JPEGs on 'All clips' & timeline" instead of omitting them. Otherwise, my clips panel doesn't show all of the triggered points of interest like I thought it would. Instead, I would have to scroll through each 1hr long video trying to see anything that triggered the camera. Maybe I don't something configured correctly.

Enabling the JPEGs (when triggered) and showing them in the clips at least makes all of the triggered events really easy to view.
 

Mike A.

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You should have the previews in the alerts panel for each alert without those. Do you have Alerts selected vs New in the clips panel? Even then when playing back a clip you should have markers in the timeline and the selectors in the scrub bar where it was triggered. Unless I'm not understanding what you're missing.
 

perfect777

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Mark A. - I did NOT have "Alerts" selected in the clips pane - I typically just set it to "All" (before changing my camera recording settings, "All Clips" showed everything that I needed).

Always learning... I've never really messed with the "alerts" before.

Not I need to figure out how to enable/configure the "Person Alerts" and "Vehicle Alerts".

Thanks for all the advice and follow up!!
 
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