DVR Security System Motion Detection Only or "Always On"?

[Carl]

For eight years I've had my 16 security cameras taping every second of the day and night giving me six days worth of history to have "on tape" until the hard drive is re-recorded onto and erased. My insurance's "Loss Control Representative" inspected the carwash recently and said that if I would change most if not all of my cameras to "record only upon motion detection" this would allow the hard drive to store many more days worth of video rather than just six?

Do you guys set your cameras to record only upon "motion detection"? I can't really think of any reason now why not to change a camera to record this way so I'm getting ready to reprogram mine unless you guys know of any big negatives to going away from recording "always"?

Thanks again,

Carl

 

[soapy]

All of my system are set on motion detect recording. I get several months of recording for each location. Most SS carwashes actually sit idle over 90% of the time so there is no reason to record continuous. Most of my camaras are set at 8.5 to 9 on motion sensitivity.

 

[washnvac]

I record continuous. I tried motion, and those gray screens drove me crazy. I like to see everything.

Hard drives are cheap right now. Why don't you add a 1TB harddrive to your system? Should only be 100 bucks or so.

 

[Carl]

DVR Recording Settings

Additional hard drive is a good option! I didn't know there were sensitivity settings but I see that now on the DVR's "Motion Recording Settings". Will see if this DVR has the same "grey screen" annoyance that you describe. All your input's been so helpful...thanks so much!

- Carl

 

[MEP001]

I set the DVR to record at a very low framerate all the time and an increased framerate with detected motion. I get about two weeks of video on an 80GB hard drive, and viewing video is easier without gaps. It's also easier to see where someone came from if they're mostly in just one camera doing something.

 

[bigleo48]

Mine is setup with the option to record on motion PLUS 15 seconds before and after the event. That way I get the whole event plus a little more so I don't miss anything.

Also with the right compression, variable frame rate and resolution, my 500G harddrive holds about 6 months for 16 cameras.

 

[Jeff_L]

Mine is setup with the option to record on motion PLUS 15 seconds before and after the event. That way I get the whole event plus a little more so I don't miss anything.

Also with the right compression, variable frame rate and resolution, my 500G harddrive holds about 6 months for 16 cameras.

I do the same. Motion only, but set it to record 10 seconds prior to the event. Works well and I keep many days on the DVR this way.

 

[I.B. Washincars]

How does it know to start recording 15 seconds before something happens

 

[Sequoia]

recording

It's recording all the time, regardless of what settings you choose. So there is no "15 seconds before ...."

The settings just control what is saved / retained.

 

[MEP001]

How does it know to start recording 15 seconds before something happens

The standalone Samsung DVR we use doesn't seem to do anything when I enable "pre-event recording," but I'm assuming the video is in memory and is supposed to get encoded and saved for ten seconds prior to a motion event. I never worried about it since it records everything anyway. I put together a PC-based DVR which saves events in separate video files from the regular recorded video, and it will include up to one minute of stepped-up framerate and bitrate video prior to the event that started it.

 

[Jeff_L]

How does it know to start recording 15 seconds before something happens

It's just like a DVR, everything is rolling through your hard drive. When it detects motion it marks the video at the predetermined pre-event time and starts retaining that data until the event stops. All other data before that and after that just rolls off the hard drive.

 

[JustClean]

With motion detection there has to be a certain amount of movement in your picture to trigger the recording. If you have a camera, for example that mainly records the scene in front of it that might work well. However, if you also want to see what is happening further back, the area within the picture might not be big enough to trigger the motion detection. For example, if you see the person walking in front of the camera triggering the recording then getting into the "background" of another camera you won't find any footage of him. Which could mean the person just disappeared. For me this is not good enough with storage being so cheap. I am getting about 11 days recording out of one cheap $95 TB hard disk. So, why bother.

I had to learn this when one day I was chasing a rat around my building. When I couldn't find it I checked the camera to see where it was hiding. Well, no footage! The rat was too small to trigger the camera (got the beast later anyway).

 

[Jeff_L]

With motion detection there has to be a certain amount of movement in your picture to trigger the recording....

Some systems have a sensitivity setting which is a numerical value between something like 1-10. You could adjust that as well. The more sensitive you make it, the more recording you'll do of silly things like tree shadows and such.

 

[2Biz]

The part I like about having the DVR set on motion detection is, you can easily scan the day/time graph to see when the activity was for each channel/camera. If I see something after midnight on the graph, (Its recorded as a dark blue bar on the graph) I click on the bar and it opens up to show you video of what was going on at that exact time of the night. To me, that is really nice so you don't have to fast forward thru a bunch of video that is set to record 24-7. Something to think about.

 

[MEP001]

Most I've seen have two settings: sensitivity and number of blocks needed to trigger. I wanted the self-serve bays to trigger an event only when a vehicle entered or left the bay - setting the sensitivity very low and the number of blocks very high achieved that. At the front of the building I wanted extra-high framerate at the changer when someone was there so I set only those blocks to trigger an event and set the sensitivity very high and the number of blocks low.