randman

We have several DVR's that have a ton of storage (3 terabytes) on them. They are 16 camera units. We are getting 30 days storage, but only when we dial down the frame rate to 3 per second, and the compression level to Normal (3 on a scale of 1 to 5). Obviously, the quality we are getting is pretty bad. These are Point of Sale cameras, and we need to see more detail than we are getting. Does this seem right, or could there be another issue going on? What kind of storage should I expect to need to get 30 days at 6 frames with minimal compression?

Sorry it took me a while to find out. The units we use are branded from the supplier. A rebranded unit is the Toshiba Surveillax. The information I find for it says it uses Proprietary MJPEG compression. Does that help?

The units are made by OpenEye. Their lesser units are mpeg4. We are using their networkable systems.

These are very high end units, and we have additional external storage connected through raid assemblies. They will handle up to 12 terabytes of storage. My main concern is that my IT guy is telling me that in order to obtain 30 days of storage, with a decent frame rate (minimum of 6) and highest quality compression settings, we will need to upgrade all of the drives to 1 terabyte drives. I'm just having a problem believing that with the amount of storage we have right now, we have to dial the compression way up and the frame rate to 3 in order to get 30 days storage.

Ok, let's see. I have no idea on the resolution or compression scheme. The units we are using are like the Toshiba Surveillax (sorry but I can't post the website for the unit as I'm still too new to the forum). I couldn't find anything online about those unit specifications. We are not doing overlay, and are recording continuous. Our stores are open very long, varying hours, so schedule based recording doesn't work for us. Also, motion based doesn't work because even when closed, our locations have activity 24/7, so they would record continous anyway. Any help would be appreciated.