Your thoughts on 24x7 recording?

[ipmania]

Before I go down the wrong path on 24x7 recording, I'd like to ask what people's thoughts are on this topic.

I was thinking of doing this but today I was spurred on because my front IDENTIFY camera didn't catch some motion and thus didn't catch my neighbor nor his car leaving, even though my OBSERVATION camera got it. It was nothing serious, more a curiosity.

I am now thinking I should record the OBSERVATION cam on a 24x7 basis. This is because a kind member here suggested doing that in case of the very thing that happened today (a camera missed an event).

So my questions:
1) should I record the main stream or the substream?
2) should I try any of the technologies to try to reduce bandwidth and amount of data captured? e.g. for now, I'm running all cameras on H.264 even though I have an Intel+VPP capable I5-8500T CPU. Should I change to H.265 (as an example)? I'm not so worried about disk space as I am about overtaxing the CPU because I want to add more cameras in the future.
3) Should I record the data directly to the hard drive? Currently, because I'm only tinkering with BI, I have everything on the Windows 10 SSD. I think the default is to record data there always and then transfer longer-term storage to somewhere else (e.g. NAS or hard drive) and I think many people here are skipping the writing to the SSD part.
4) Which cameras? I am thinking that I don't need to record all of the cameras 24x7. For example, the anti-porch-pirating camera has nothing interesting nearly always. I'm thinking it's wasteful to record that 24x7. How about the IDENTIFY cameras? I am leaning towards "no" for those. I am leaning towards "yes" for both overview (OBSERVATION) cameras.

 

[fenderman]

Before I go down the wrong path on 24x7 recording, I'd like to ask what people's thoughts are on this topic.

I was thinking of doing this but today I was spurred on because my front IDENTIFY camera didn't catch some motion and thus didn't catch my neighbor nor his car leaving, even though my OBSERVATION camera got it. It was nothing serious, more a curiosity.

I am now thinking I should record the OBSERVATION cam on a 24x7 basis. This is because a kind member here suggested doing that in case of the very thing that happened today (a camera missed an event).

So my questions:
1) should I record the main stream or the substream?
2) should I try any of the technologies to try to reduce bandwidth and amount of data captured? e.g. for now, I'm running all cameras on H.264 even though I have an Intel+VPP capable I5-8500T CPU. Should I change to H.265 (as an example)? I'm not so worried about disk space as I am about overtaxing the CPU because I want to add more cameras in the future.
3) Should I record the data directly to the hard drive? Currently, because I'm only tinkering with BI, I have everything on the Windows 10 SSD. I think the default is to record data there always and then transfer longer-term storage to somewhere else (e.g. NAS or hard drive) and I think many people here are skipping the writing to the SSD part.
4) Which cameras? I am thinking that I don't need to record all of the cameras 24x7. For example, the anti-porch-pirating camera has nothing interesting nearly always. I'm thinking it's wasteful to record that 24x7. How about the IDENTIFY cameras? I am leaning towards "no" for those. I am leaning towards "yes" for both overview (OBSERVATION) cameras.

You should first examine your motion detection settings as well as your camera settings to figure out why you failed to detect the motion

 

[ipmania]

You should first examine your motion detection settings as well as your camera settings to figure out why you failed to detect the motion

I asked that question in another thread just now (I should have asked about that first). This thread was more about the philosophy of 24x7 recording and how people approach this.

 

[Flintstone61]

Record everything all the time. 29 cameras at the condo compliment each other by overlapping crossfire. ( in most cases)
I find more useful footage this way, and we have perps every couple of months.
I also find where my camera game is weak and i go to town adjust those cameres, and getting them tuned correctly
do better the next time.

 

[fenderman]

I asked that question in another thread just now (I should have asked about that first). This thread was more about the philosophy of 24x7 recording and how people approach this.

This has been discussed in detail several hundred times.

 

[Flintstone61]

I left grammar errors so you know I'm not Chot Bot GPT
7/42 maerts niaM no evah I smac emoS

 

[wittaj]

Your questions and answers are unique to every situation and has been asked here lots of times. Did you do a search?

Most here run 24/7 just in case. You can setup BI to record continuous+triggers which will record substream until triggered and then go to mainstream and then back when trigger is over. You can get decent resolution with a D1 at 1024 and be minimal usage on the CPU. Or you can set up just continuous and that records 24/7 mainstream.

Most have found that H264 is better due to the way H265 macroblocks. But again it is down to each field of view. Plus with later versions of BI, running hardware acceleration at Intel+VPP causes issues.

Most put all the video straight to a HDD designed for cameras. If you put to SSD, then have a good one or you will kill it in a year.

While having months of video 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.

So I have found 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.

The reality of it is 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.

 

[Flintstone61]

Rather than go motion only on a cam, If you have particularily dead area, you could cut the frame rate down to 8, and put on Subs.

 

[Flintstone61]

Also you need to hire fake bad guys to come and trip your cams, to help your wife agree on more cams, and the best cams

 

[Flintstone61]

at the Condo, I had real bad guys help sell the system.

 

[ipmania]

Your questions and answers are unique to every situation and has been asked here lots of times. Did you do a search?

Most here run 24/7 just in case. You can setup BI to record continuous+triggers which will record substream until triggered and then go to mainstream and then back when trigger is over. You can get decent resolution with a D1 at 1024 and be minimal usage on the CPU. Or you can set up just continuous and that records 24/7 mainstream.

Most have found that H264 is better due to the way H265 macroblocks. But again it is down to each field of view. Plus with later versions of BI, running hardware acceleration at Intel+VPP causes issues.

Most put all the video straight to a HDD designed for cameras. If you put to SSD, then have a good one or you will kill it in a year.

While having months of video 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.

So I have found 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.

The reality of it is 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.

I have been doing lots of reading here but I had not done a specific search on 24x7 recording. In fact, you were the person I referred to when I said that a kind member suggested 24x7 recording to capture data in case of missed camera events. I have seen some references to 24x7 in my travels here but have to admit my memory is no longer the best.

As I mentioned, I'm a beginner and am running BI at only the default settings. That "record continuous+triggers which will record substream until triggered and then go to mainstream and then back when trigger is over" that you talked about sounds very useful and could solve my situation nearly perfectly. I'll investigate that option.

I have read your explanation of H.265 macroblocks and that makes sense. That's why I changed everything to H.264 for all cameras. (See, I do read! --And sometimes even remember...!) I also remembered your warning about SSDs and limited life. Thus my pressing into service of an old HDD that I discovered lying around. However, and you'll hate me for this: it's a 12-year-old WD Green 5400 rpm drive! I know about the Purple series and will get one of those in the appropriate size once I get comfortable with using the HDD and the moving around of data that BI might or might not do.

Thanks also for the note on not storing a ton of video. We are lucky to be in a peaceful neighbourhood and thus there's normally nothing interesting to see.

 

[ipmania]

Also you need to hire fake bad guys to come and trip your cams, to help your wife agree on more cams, and the best cams

I've been tormenting my wife with footage of her comings and goings, startling her at the door with a greeting using the intercom before she sticks in the key because I happened to see her on the live view, etc.

I'm not sure whether I'm helping or hurting my cause!

 

[wittaj]

Hey give the drive and try and see what happens LOL. Doesn't hurt much trying stuff we have laying around LOL.

People have ran other drives fine. But if you see CPU spike or some other things, it is probably the drive.

Heck the drives that some of the lower end NVRs are crap and do just fine LOL.

 

[samplenhold]

Disk space is relatively cheap, compared to missing an important shot. When you do go to buy a proper HDD, don't skimp.

Yes 24/7 AKA continuous recording is the safest way to go. I don't bother with the continuous+triggers, I just record continuous.

See these threads as to why 24/7 is important.

This one demonstrates how recording on a cam that would never have been tripped allowed me to answer a question about someone that came to the door. Not a big deal, but was helpful.

Why I like Continuous Recording (aka 24/7)

So a guy came to the door yesterday, and while my wife did not open the door, it kind of spooked her out. She said he seem suspicious saying he found a driver's license on the lawn and wanted to know if it belonged to her. So when I got back from the range, I checked out the cams. This is one...

ipcamtalk.com

This one was a nighttime perp that the local police asked me for video. Without continuous recording, I never would be able to identify the situation.

Use of Overview and LPR Cams to Document Midnight Vehicle Distributing Offensive Flyers on Lawns

We were out of town and I was checking my cams remotely one morning and noticed one of the Deputies that regularly patrol my subdivision had been at my front door. She has come to me a few times requesting video as she knows I have fairly good coverage of the streets at my corner. I noticed that...

ipcamtalk.com

 

[ipmania]

Hey give the drive and try and see what happens LOL. Doesn't hurt much trying stuff we have laying around LOL.

People have ran other drives fine. But if you see CPU spike or some other things, it is probably the drive.

Heck the drives that some of the lower end NVRs are crap and do just fine LOL.

I remember people disparaging the WD Green series as "low performance". And that was 12 years ago! I actually liked them as they, being low power, were also low-noise. They only ran at 5400 rpm and are nearly silent compared to enterprise 7200 and 10,000 rpm screamers. The greens were also super cheap. How cheap were they, one might ask? It was cheaper to buy a 2TB WD Green drive than an LTO tape. I used those drives for backup. More effective than using LTO drives and tapes.

Geeks would flash firmware onto the Green drives for use in RAID arrays.

Re: my unearthed 2TB Green drive, I'm going to have to run it with the case of my little micro-form-factor HP open until my SATA drive extension cable shows up because only a laptop drive would fit with the lid closed. And when the extension cable arrives, I can close the lid but will have to drill a hole in it first to run the cable out to the hard drive, it being strapped onto the lid from the outside...

 

[Flintstone61]

My first experiance with a WD green was the Eyemax -Pc runnning a PCI-card adapter card with 16 channels of dongles hanging out the back. (Win7-32bit) 2GB ram,
The dam thin g actually worked fine. But this was 500 GB of storage, and lasted about 3 weeks on 12 cams that were less than 1MP.
The Born on dating on the WD label showed it to be fairly old. like 2010 or something. and this was in 2018.....So it had served well.
But then as HDD capacity and technology advanced, the disk mfr's starting employing SMR recording vs. CMR.
Low end systems might not reveal the slow playback response times, and lag, of SMR, when asked to multitask( record many channels and playback 1 or several)
they showed the problem.
But as the cam numbers climbed My System was getting shitty about reviewing footage.
Eventually I got a WD 8TB Purz drive, and that was noticeably better on video review.
The old WD green drive still works today.

 

[Perimeter]

I have considered the same question. From what I read, you seem to have two instances of recording available to you, one in the camera and one in your BI computer. I am in a similar situation, just that I opted for an NVR instead. I would expect BI to be able to fetch all detections with a click.

So I plan on using the recorder in 24/7 mode while I would use the SD cards only for detections. That way, I can use smaller cards and won't have to replace them as quickly. While I have a full record outside the immeadite access of a trespasser.

Not sure if this is a good solution.

 

[wittaj]

I have considered the same question. From what I read, you seem to have two instances of recording available to you, one in the camera and one in your BI computer. I am in a similar situation, just that I opted for an NVR instead. I would expect BI to be able to fetch all detections with a click.

So I plan on using the recorder in 24/7 mode while I would use the SD cards only for detections. That way, I can use smaller cards and won't have to replace them as quickly. While I have a full record outside the immeadite access of a trespasser.

Not sure if this is a good solution.

BI does not interact with the SD card, nor do most NVRs.

Watching playback on SD card is a royal pain and you have it there as a backup only.

You will want BI to log trigger events for easy finding of triggers. You can either have the camera send the trigger to BI or NVR or have BI do the heavy lifting on motion detection.

 

[Perimeter]

BI does not interact with the SD card, nor do most NVRs.

Watching playback on SD card is a royal pain and you have it there as a backup only.

You will want BI to log trigger events for easy finding of triggers. You can either have the camera send the trigger to BI or NVR or have BI do the heavy lifting on motion detection.

Yes, that is the plan. The recorder does 24/7 and does index the interesting moments (aka AI-search). Meanwhile, the cameras save only the triggered highlights in case something goes wrong with the recorder. I am likely going to settle for smaller cards which then hopefully last a very long time.

 

[samplenhold]

I am likely going to settle for smaller cards which then hopefully last a very long time.

Solid state recording devices, SD cards included, basically have a finite number of writes. A smaller card will have to overwrite more often that a larger card and will not last as long.