Hi everyone.
I am currently looking for a DVR or NVR (standalone or PC-based), where i would be able to backup the footage/database. This footage/database would then be manually reviewed at a different location, to create a log/history of the events. This review will happen on a regular (weekly/monthly) basis. The system that we are looking for ideally would let us review the footage with PC software, as if we were standing in front of the DVR and doing the usual view/search of the footage.
We currently have a standalone DVR with backup. However, the backup is split up into 1 file per 10 minutes. So to review a week's worth of video, we have to run through and open about a thousand files one at a time. As you can imagine this takes a lot of time, and the review process becomes very tedious and eventually irrelevant.
I think there are also systems where we can backup one file per camera. From what i've seen though this backup process takes time because each camera's file would need to be re-encoded upon backup. Also, we would need to do the review on all cameras (8 or 16) so this isn't workable.
One solution that i've read about and thought of is to take out the whole hard drive of the DVR and plug it into an identical DVR to review from there. This would require always opening up the on-site DVR though. Another possible solution is to regularly swap the whole DVR. But we'd need to remove cables constantly, so i am not sure what this would do to the reliability of the DVR and connections. So we are trying to find alternatives to these two possible solutions.
Thank you very much and sorry for the long-winded explanation.