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Guide

How to configure cloud video backup

Video backup is a trade between storage cost and evidence coverage, and it is decided per camera rather than once for the account. This guide covers the four settings that determine both, and how to read the storage estimate without being surprised later. See also video retention requirements.

  1. 1

    Choose which cameras record at all

    Pick cameras individually, by site, or all at once. Not every camera needs recording: a camera that exists to trigger a detection, on a view nobody would ever review footage of, can run without backup. Deciding this first is the cheapest decision in the whole configuration.

  2. 2

    Pick continuous or scheduled recording

    Continuous records around the clock. Scheduled records only during hours you define per day of week. Continuous is right where an incident could happen at any hour or where an insurer expects unbroken coverage; scheduled is right for interior cameras watching space that is empty and locked overnight. Most sites run both.

  3. 3

    Set retention per camera, not per account

    Each camera keeps footage for its own retention window, and older recordings are deleted automatically once it passes. Per-camera is the point: a 4K entrance camera on a busy forecourt consumes storage far faster than a quiet stockroom at 1080p, and forcing both to the same window means overpaying for one or under-covering the other.

  4. 4

    Read the storage estimate as an estimate

    The figure shown during configuration is derived from each stream’s bitrate, the recording hours and the retention days. It is a planning number, not a guarantee: bitrate rises with scene activity and falls at night, so real consumption moves around it. Watch actual usage in Plan and Usage for the first full retention cycle, after which it stabilizes.

  5. 5

    Know how to get footage out before you need it

    Playback scrubs recordings; downloads export a clip for a chosen time range. Do this once as a drill rather than for the first time during an incident, when someone is asking for a specific two minutes and the clock is running.

Set retention against the worst realistic discovery delay, not the average one. Most incidents are noticed within a day or two, but the ones that end in a claim — stock shrinkage, a dispute over a delivery, an injury reported late — are routinely found weeks afterwards, and retention that expired is the same as no camera.

Related: video backup and retention, how long to keep footage, and working with alerts.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

It scales with bitrate, hours recorded and retention days, so the three levers are resolution, recording schedule and how long you keep footage. The estimate shown during configuration multiplies those out, but treat it as a planning figure, scene activity moves bitrate around, so a busy forecourt overshoots and a still corridor undershoots. Usage settles into a steady state after the first full retention cycle, because from then on old footage is deleted at the same rate new footage arrives.

Scheduled recording, usually, because it cuts hours rather than days and most sites have long predictable stretches with nothing to record. Halving the recording window roughly halves that camera’s storage. Shortening retention helps too, but it is the lever that costs you evidence, an incident discovered three weeks later is only recoverable if retention covers it.

Footage already stored under that camera is governed by its retention window rather than deleted with the camera record. If you need footage from a camera you are removing, export the clips you care about first.

Footage is written off-site as it is captured, so recordings already uploaded survive anything that happens to the hardware on site. That is the main argument for cloud backup over a local recorder: a stolen or smashed NVR takes its own evidence with it, and that is a common way footage disappears exactly when it matters.

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