How To Make Your DVR Record Longer

How To Maximize Hard Disk Drive (HDD) Usage On Your Video Surveillance System

Most customers will ask how to extend the recording time of their system. These tips can help:

1)      Determine your current record time. Allow the system to run until the hard disk drive (HDD) is at 100% capacity. Once full, check to see how old the oldest video is. Note the number of days that you currently have.

2)      Record only on motion. We strongly recommend recording only on motion detection. Continuous recording makes it harder to search through your video and uses much, much more Hard Drive capacity than motion recording.

3)      ‘Mask’ your motion recording; look for areas with constant “background” motion, such as ceiling fans, trees, and highways (even outside a window) that cause false alarms. Our DVR systems allow you to ignore motion in parts of the camera image, greatly reducing the number of false alarms and your HDD usage. For example, a ceiling fan might cause a camera to constantly record; setting the system to ignore the area of the fan will extend your recording time.

4)      Reduce the picture quality on your less-important cameras. Some cameras are less important than others; set those cameras to a lower quality and you’ll see a savings in your HDD usage.

5)      Reduce the images per second you record per camera. We generally don’t recommend this, since your video will appear less smooth.

6)      Get more hard drives! When all else fails, an inexpensive solution is to add additional drives to your DVR system. For a few hundred dollars you can double or triple your recording time. Our PC systems are especially flexible, and can hold 4 terabytes (4000 GB!) or more.

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