Before We Price a Camera System, We Build the Storage Math
How we size video storage per camera before quoting, so a 30-day retention promise is still 30 days after the system goes live.
It is the least glamorous page in our design package and the one that saves the most arguments later. A retention promise is a budget item. If nobody does the arithmetic up front, the shortfall shows up after install, when the owner asks why 30 days of video is really 11.
Our working basis
For a typical interior 1080p H.264 stream at 15 fps and 4 Mbps, recording on motion about 75 percent of the day, we plan roughly 1 TB per camera per 30 days, plus overhead for the file system and headroom. H.265 cuts that close to half.
Change any one input (resolution, frame rate, scene motion, retention) and the number moves fast.
Per camera, in writing
So we do it per camera, not as a site average, and we hand the client the assumptions in writing. Then the recorder, the drives and the uplink get sized to the promise instead of the hope.
If your last surveillance quote had no storage sheet behind it, ask for one.
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