Record Settings - Motion or Full Time

[WilliamA 0]

Forgive me if this has been asked, I did a search and didn't come up with anything.

 

What do most people do for a home system for record settings. I keep going back and forth on wether to run a full time looped recording, or to run motion detection.

 

I'm testing out running the driveway and front door cams on motion and the rest on loops.

 

The other thing I like about motion is the potential for alerts, such as audible alarm by DVR when motion is detected, as well as potential for email alert. Of course there is a potential for a TON of false alarms, and a ton of emails if something isn't set correctly, etc.

 

I'm leaning more twoards motion as I'd like to be able to come home, or once a week or so, review footage for anything off, or interesting. The flip side is, I don't want to set the motion to pick up EVERY car coming into our street (culd-e-sac) but I want to get that footage if something happened... i.e. UPS guy comes and throws package, breaking contents. I would want footage of him pulling in, and leaving, etc... to have the best possible chance of getting details, truck numbers, etc. Also just the other week I witnessed a neighbors car getting REPO'd, and we also have some people who come raid recycling cans on occasion... all things I would want to capture them coming in (vehicle ID) and leaving, as well as capturing the act.

 

The other reason I lean to motion is the review of footage. We have a professional DVR/Camera system at work (leased system, not owned, probably a $3000+ system, Honeywell brand, I actually am not impressed with it for how much it cost, anyways I digress). We've had several events at work, such as someone shooting out a window. That meant I had to review over 12hours of footage to TRY and find the culprit (which BTW I didn't, not partially due to lack of detail, and no time frame to know when it happened...

 

I think I know all the advantages/disadvantages of each, but maybe I missed some. Or didn't really think of something.

 

Thanks for the help and advice!

 

 

 

Motion Pros:

• Theoretically only records when there is something worth recording
  Can save time in locating footage since only events are recorded
  Saves Hard drive space and allows for more events to fit on the hard drive
  Likely to notice random obstructions of camera (flags, blowing spider webs, etc) due to false alarms created by events.
  

 

Motion Cons:

• Can be difficult to detect proper motion, may either be so sensitive it has false alarms, or not sensitive enough to detect actual events
  Potential to miss details because of possible lags or not detecting motion at the first hint of motion (not capture the full event)
  False Alarm potential from false motion
  More vigilance required in camera maintenance, making sure spiderwebs aren't near cameras, or things that can blow into view, or wave in view (flags, etc)
  

 

Loop Pros:

• Never miss a thing, everything is recorded
  no false alarms
  capture the most insignifigant amount of movement
  Camera maintenance still required, but don't need to be as proactive, blowing spider webs, flags, etc will obstruct view, but not cause alarm recordings.
  

 

Loop Cons:

• Constant recording takes maximum hard drive space, and allows for least amount of time frame to be saved (Fewer days/events)
  when something happens, requires more time to find event and pertinent footage since have to look through 8-24hours of footage at a time, even at 16x fast forward can take a while
  less prone to check if anything went on while away from home due to large amount of footage to review, likely will only review in the event of noticable event (break in, etc)
  Might not notice items like spiderwebs blowing into view, since there is no false alarm event for them.
  

[jxk716 0]

Seems like the only thing left to do is decide what you want. You have put some thought into the pros and cons; most DVRs are able to select the region and sensitivity of the motion area. A lot of it has to do with what the cams will look at.

 

In my case the attached picture shows about 20% of the FOV is covered because it is all I need on the front door/porch area. But, the side of the house faces a large parking lot with constant traffic and drug deals. I have resigned myself to switching both of them over to record 24/7 so I don't miss a trick. On one of them I set it to record on motion as well. This takes up more hard drive space since it creates 2 files on my 4 Ch Dahua but, then again, I have a 1TB drive in it so it isn't a big deal. The good part of that is I can search for motion only and let it ride. This is handy for playback over night to see if anyone messes around near our cars.

[SEANHAWG 1]

Some DVR's allow you to record continually while still searching motion events. This is what I recommend.

[Soundy 1]

When you're defining motion areas, BTW, keep in mind that you don't generally have to cover an ENTIRE area where something will be. In the case of a door stoop, for example... say you want to detect when someone is at your door. You could do this:

 

 

...but that's going to also detect anyone walking up to the stairs or along the grass at the bottom of the stairs or even a bird or squirrel on the porch railing.

 

Or, you could do this:

 

 

Because anyone standing at the front door, is going to be standing in the marked area, and you're still going to pick them up. Remember, you don't have to detect the ENTIRE object... you only need to detect SOME change within the area of interest.

[dvarapala 0]

It's definitely a matter of preference and your individual needs.

 

For example, suppose you were monitoring a parking lot for illicit activity at night. People pull in, park for an hour or so, and then leave; with motion-detection only, you'd capture the car pulling in and the car driving away, but you'd completely miss the hour of activity in between. You might not even know that these people were doing drugs, having sex, dumping trash, or whatever during that time because your CCTV system wouldn't capture it. You'd probably want to record the feed from this camera full-time.

 

P.S. I live on a cul-de-sac also, and I record full time to make sure I capture every car that comes in and out. While most of the time I don't bother to look at that footage, if something ever does happen it will be extremely valuable to be able to review everything that was happening on the street at the time of the incident.

Edited April 7, 2012 by Guest

[WilliamA 0]

Great points guys...

 

I didn't even think about the record full time with motion alarm.

 

I know the DVR logs the motion, and I'm pretty sure it will still alert, etc if motion is detected. Not sure it will create a seperate video file, or a super easy way to find it... but I know could at least check the logs and see if motion was detected.

 

I actually left for work, and noticed at the normal setting of 4 (1-8, 8 being most sensitve, and 4 being factory default) it didn't apparently pick up me pulling out of the driveway and leaving, which was odd... especially considering it was getting a few false recordings earlier this morning.

 

Sounds like I'll have to just play with it some, try it both ways, and also learn how the Alarm works when recording full time. Might just turn all the motion on for the time being with full time recording so I can see... I'll get a lot of alerts, but at least I can see what it does.

[jxk716 0]

Matt, is that off a Vigil? Mine is coming in a few days; can't wait.

[WilliamA 0]

P.S. I live on a cul-de-sac also, and I record full time to make sure I capture every car that comes in and out. While most of the time I don't bother to look at that footage, if something ever does happen it will be extremely valuable to be able to review everything that was happening on the street at the time of the incident.

 

Yeah... That's something I like to know... I can't see certain areas from inside the house, or very well... one of which is the main street since I live on the corner... If I leave windows open I can see the cars coming in and out, but I hate people seeing in to my living room.

 

I think I'm going to tweak or adjust cameras a bit more, to capture more of the cars coming in/out.

 

Right now I can see the main road (partly) from the 2 cameras covering that side, with a small hole in the middle of them (will be adjusting today) and the front camera looks over the street I live on (it's mounted high so looks down on the street) and overlaps some of one of the side cameras (which will be turned to the right to make that overlap smaller, and eliminate the gap between the other side camera which is currently about 2 paces on the sidewalk)

 

I still have 3 cameras yet to mount, one is for sure covering the backdoor/yard, the other the side yard (neighbor) and the last yet undetermined... I want to see what happens after a vehicle enters the culd-e-sac which might get covered by the side yard cam not yet installed, and probably just leave me a gap in front of my driveway. But the driveway itself is covered by a single camera.

[Soundy 1]

Matt, is that off a Vigil? Mine is coming in a few days; can't wait.

That is indeed a Vigil - the "Motion Alarm" section adds the extra "Motion Vector" settings that lets you define two areas and a direction of motion to trigger on - for example, to trigger on someone going up the stairs, but not down the stairs.

[WilliamA 0]

That Vigil looks awesome. I bet it's expensive though huh? Couldn't find an online price for them when I googled it.

 

Looks more down the line of what I'd like in a long term system or at least some of it...

 

I like that it can integrate CCTV with IP.

 

My current system is inteded to be upgraded as time/money allows... there are parts that probably won't ever need to be upgraded, and I will use the other peices in other places (such as taking the DVR and cameras to cover areas not as important, like a storage shed, inside the garage, etc.)

 

But I will be eventually upgrading the DVR for the primary cameras, then slowly upgrade a couple of the cameras where I want higher resolution (doors, etc) and eventauly augmenting with a couple megapixel IP cameras... I'd love a couple Megapixel PTZ cams (one on each side basically able to see 360 around the house) but doubt I'll ever be able to justify the cost of those.

[Soundy 1]

They are a REALLY nice system, but you're right, not cheap (MSRP generally runs in the $3,000-$4,000 range depending on channels and modules).

[the toss 0]

Motion Cons:

• Can be difficult to detect proper motion, may either be so sensitive it has false alarms, or not sensitive enough to detect actual events
  Potential to miss details because of possible lags or not detecting motion at the first hint of motion (not capture the full event)False Alarm potential from false motion
  More vigilance required in camera maintenance, making sure spiderwebs aren't near cameras, or things that can blow into view, or wave in view (flags, etc)
  

 

All DVRs that support motion detection will also have a settable pre -event & post-event time setting.

[Soundy 1]

Not ALL... but certainly most "decent" ones will.

[WilliamA 0]

Thanks again guys... Yeah that looks really nice... sounds like it's basically a dedicated computer with specialized software maybe... of course technically DVR's are computers... but it looked almost more like a real PC type computer running windows or similar.

Edited April 8, 2012 by Guest

[WilliamA 0]

Motion Cons:

• Can be difficult to detect proper motion, may either be so sensitive it has false alarms, or not sensitive enough to detect actual events
  Potential to miss details because of possible lags or not detecting motion at the first hint of motion (not capture the full event)False Alarm potential from false motion
  More vigilance required in camera maintenance, making sure spiderwebs aren't near cameras, or things that can blow into view, or wave in view (flags, etc)
  

 

All DVRs that support motion detection will also have a settable pre -event & post-event time setting.

 

BTW, yes mine does... no adjustment on the pre-record, other than enable/disable... post record there is some time adjustment... currently I've set it to 1min which might be too long, might drop it to 30s

[WilliamA 0]

Hmm... so motion detect is problematic at best once the sun goes down.

 

Being on a corner lot, the headlights cutting accross the lawn set it off... nothing is physically in the yard, but the massive change in the way the pixels are (from dark to bright rather quickly)

 

Any suggestions? I've disabled motion on the 4 that have street views because there going to end up alarming all night. I also cut back the detection zone on the porch because of the same... just had a car drive by and set it off, and I couldn't see where it was picking it up from.

 

Perhaps a lower sensitivity setting as well?

[mike_va 0]

I do a variant on both, using VitaminD analytics (greatly cuts down on false hits) you can get it to almost none - and those I get an email for based on rules (in area, entering etc). Distinguishes people vs objects pretty well. Use Axis Camera Station to record continuously. You could always start out with Milestone Go which is free (but limited to a week). But for most that is an expensive option, however it's nice knowing what is going on and I don't have the time or patience to review footage.

 

Sometimes you can find a good deal on used Axis encoders, I got a rack of 241S for $300. 241Q sometimes show up not too expensive ~$200 used, and Avigilon makes one new that is a bit more than that which might work (VitaminD works best with MJPEG). One of the nice things with that is you can get weeks if not over a month of clips on a small drive, depending on the number of cameras.

 

You could also play with the free version of VitaminD and just hook it up to a USB web cam.

[shockwave199 0]

BTW, yes mine does... no adjustment on the pre-record, other than enable/disable... post record there is some time adjustment... currently I've set it to 1min which might be too long, might drop it to 30s

Yes, try 30 seconds- if for no other reason than decreasing file size. Anything that is moving will keep the channel recording as long as it's moving anyway, so you won't miss anything shortening up post recording. The shortest post record time helps save a ton 'o hard drive space. And for that matter so does other adjustments as well, such as making less critical camera channels CIF or HD1 at lower frame rates and lower resolution. Just because your dvr supports D1 30 fps on every channel doesn't mean you have to choose that for every channel. That'll eat up a ton of room in a hurry with mostly false triggers anyway. Budget out reasonable settings per channel. Maybe not every channel even needs to record either. Does that camera way up on an eave really need to record full time at D1 30 fps? Mostly likely not. Good blocking per channel helps too. As Matt mentions, you can mask out a lot of bushes and shrubs causing false triggers and still catch a human torso walking right past the blocking. You can even set a daily schedule of off time as well and save a bunch of room. I started recording my system in June 2011. To date, I've used just over 250gb of a 500gb hard drive- all done the way I just suggested. But I also get to monitor my cameras live a serious amount of time per day too. I also have a short 30 second post record time. I have my sensitivity settings per channel set just so, after much testing. I understand that it's not so much about saving hard drive space as it is recording possible problems whenever they may happen. But with exterior residential cameras set to motion recording- a good thing btw, things can be done to help keep down the files sizes and increase the time your dvr has to double back and start again.

[WilliamA 0]

Thanks Shockwave.

 

I bumped it down to 30s post record, and also droppped the sensitivty on all cams one notch to level 3.

 

Wasn't too bad, but after reviewwing last nights footage most of the hits were bugs flying through the IR lights. Some of them were set to 3 last night and still were tripped, but not as much as the ones set to 4.

 

Also some spider decided to actualy build a web right in front of one camera last night... a couple of times you can see him in the frame... his creation will go down this morning... it blew in the wind last night and shined off the IR lights. I see advantages to NON IR light cameras now, less chance of that sort of thing. I might be able to get away with the front cameras going to low lux non-IR as there is a pretty good bit of light out there... but the back and side will need to be IR probably.

 

 

I get the idea of droping down one or even 2 record settings for resolution... not sure I like it or not. Granted some of the cameras are where they will never get great detail, but doesn't mean I don't want all the detail I can get. The DVR can only actually handle about 240frames total in CIF which means about 7.5 frames in D1. So I've got most set to 7frames, with the driveway and porch I just bumbed up to 9, which isn't much difference but I figured those are the 2 cameras I want the most detail... I might bump some of the overlook cameras down to HalfD1 or CIF, might have to let them record there for a bit just to see what I think of the lower quality and if it really will mater in the long run.

[Soundy 1]

Also some spider decided to actualy build a web right in front of one camera last night... a couple of times you can see him in the frame... his creation will go down this morning... it blew in the wind last night and shined off the IR lights. I see advantages to NON IR light cameras now, less chance of that sort of thing. I might be able to get away with the front cameras going to low lux non-IR as there is a pretty good bit of light out there... but the back and side will need to be IR probably.

 

Better yet: place good low-lux TDN cameras there (like the CNBs), but leave the old IR cameras in place to act as illuminators.

[jxk716 0]

Also some spider decided to actualy build a web right in front of one camera last night... a couple of times you can see him in the frame... his creation will go down this morning... it blew in the wind last night and shined off the IR lights. I see advantages to NON IR light cameras now, less chance of that sort of thing. I might be able to get away with the front cameras going to low lux non-IR as there is a pretty good bit of light out there... but the back and side will need to be IR probably.

 

Better yet: place good low-lux TDN cameras there (like the CNBs), but leave the old IR cameras in place to act as illuminators.

 

I did something similar but the old IR cam was just something laying around so the beam sucks. The flood light was ideal until the owner kept forgetting to turn it back on after going for a walk in the yard at night (night snapshot taken from Qvis Zeus over the LAN).

[shockwave199 0]

So I've got most set to 7frames, with the driveway and porch I just bumbed up to 9, which isn't much difference but I figured those are the 2 cameras I want the most detail... I might bump some of the overlook cameras down to HalfD1 or CIF, might have to let them record there for a bit just to see what I think of the lower quality and if it really will mater in the long run.

It's always a work in progress

 

My critical channels are set to D1 24fps @ highest resolution. Everything else is set to HD1 17 fps @ highest resolution. I don't have much choice in that matter- my dvr only offers D1 on the first two channels. But I balanced all eight channels in such a way that gives the D1 channels, which have the most important cameras of course, the lions share of highest settings. But the other channels remain high as well. It's so tight that if I bump up one frame rate on one channel, I have to bump one or two frame rates down on another to accomodate it. For recording and remote viewing, I prefer no less than 15fps even on less critical channels. Even though 7fps is fine, I try to balance it all so every channel has room for higher settings as well.

 

Far as bugs and motion, pain I know. That's why even though in some respects cameras close to lights is a good thing, it's mostly a pain for even non-IR cameras. Motion will be triggered. I find that flying insects aren't attracted to my IR cameras. Only spiders, and only a couple a cameras have it the worst. And it's not webs so much- they just park it right on the lens. That's where low light non-IR cameras rule outside- no spiders.

[groovyman 0]

I've been using the Aver Nano DVRs lately which have a feature called Smart Recording. It's a combination of Always and Motion recording that allows you to set different frame rates during periods of motion and no motion. For example, in a business from 7AM to 9PM I might set a channel to record 3fps, but 7fps when motion is detected. Then between 9PM to 7AM I might set it on motion only. Are there other DVRs have this "Smart Recording" feature?

[Soundy 1]

Vigil has something similar - you can set any combination of motion, constant, and alarm recording on a schedule. Alarm recording can be triggered by external source, by motion areas (set separately from regular motion recording), or by analytics.'

[thewireguys 3]

I've been using the Aver Nano DVRs lately which have a feature called Smart Recording. It's a combination of Always and Motion recording that allows you to set different frame rates during periods of motion and no motion. For example, in a business from 7AM to 9PM I might set a channel to record 3fps, but 7fps when motion is detected. Then between 9PM to 7AM I might set it on motion only. Are there other DVRs have this "Smart Recording" feature?

 

Yes other systems refer to it as "ramp up recording" or "reference image"

 

Avigilon can be setup to record a image say every second and when motion record 30fps with a pre/post record. You can also record on trigger inputs and/or alarms. You can setup multiple schedules per camera. 24/7 with motion is also a option.

Edited April 8, 2012 by Guest