How Many Days of Recordings Your Recorder Can Save
If your recorder has been on for at least a month, the fastest way to gauge the number of days is to login to the DVR/NVR/NVW:
- Via TV/Monitor: Go to Menu > Search > General > Date > dates underlined in red have recordings
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In this example for 1 camera, there are 15 days of recordings stored. The number of days will depend on how many cameras you have, the capacity of your hard drive, number of triggered events per day, and other recording settings. |
Calculate days
In order to calculate the number of days accurately, do the following:
- Login to the recorder's Main Menu via TV/monitor.
- Take note of the Video Standard or Video Format used. Go to System > General (tab).
- Take note of the total hard drive capacity. Go to Device > HDD (tab). E.g. Total capacity is 931G.
- Take note of the Recorder Schedule per channel/camera. Go to Record > Record Schedule. Is it Normal (continuous 24/7) or Detection?
- Take note of the number of channels with cameras where Record is enabled. Go to Record > Record (tab). E.g. There are 8 cameras.
- Take note of the resolution, frame rate (fps), and bitrate (Kbps) per camera. Go to Record > Mainstream (tab). E.g. All 8 cameras have the same 1920x1080 resolution, 15 FPS, and bitrate of 4096 Kbps.
- Once you have all of the information above, go to this third-party website: HiTools Designer: Storage and Bandwidth Calculator for the online calculator.
NOTE: The number of days you get after considering given factors is 'estimation'. This gives you a rough idea of how long a recording can be stored.
Example 1 of Calculation:
Using HiTools Designer: Storage and Bandwidth Calculator, click on Add. The 8 cameras and information from above were entered once as follows:
- No. of Channels: 8
- Video Standard: PAL
- Encoding Mode: H264 is the default.
- Resolution: 1920x1080
- Frame Rate: 15
- Bitrate: 4096
- Disk Space: 931 GB
- Recordings per Day: 4 hrs (since the Recorder Schedule is set to PIR+Motion by default for ALL channels)
Result: 15 days or 2 weeks.
Example 2 of Calculation:
Using the same calculator but different camera settings, the result is different. For instance,
- Only 4 cameras have the same settings as in Example 1.
- 4 cameras have different bitrate.
Result: 20 days. Lowering the bitrate per camera extends days of storage without reducing the video resolution of the cameras.