CCTV storage calculator
Find out how much hard drive space your cameras need, or how many days of recordings a drive will hold.
Formula: bitrate × seconds ÷ 8, in decimal units like hard drive labels (1 TB = 1000 GB). Quality presets are Hikvision’s recommended target bitrates at 30 fps. Litmus NVR records the camera’s stream as is, so the camera’s bitrate is what gets stored.
How the calculation works
- One camera, one day: bitrate (Mbps) × 86,400 seconds ÷ 8 = megabytes per day. 1 Mbps around the clock is about 10.8 GB a day.
- Recording only on detection stores only the hours with activity, so it needs far less than 24/7 recording.
- H.265 instead of H.264 usually needs a lower bitrate for similar quality, so the same drive holds more days.
- Add headroom. Real bitrates vary with scene, night and motion, so leave room on the drive.
Use the sub stream for detection
Litmus NVR can use the camera’s lower-resolution sub stream for detection while recording the main stream at full quality. Storage depends only on the main stream you record.
Questions
Why does my drive show less space than its label?
Drive makers count 1 TB as 1,000,000,000,000 bytes, while some operating systems show it in binary units, so a 2 TB drive appears as about 1.8 TB. This calculator uses the drive makers’ decimal units.
Where do I find my camera’s bitrate?
In the camera’s web page or app, under the video or encoding settings of the main stream. Divide kbps by 1000 to get Mbps.
Is Litmus NVR really free?
Yes. Every feature is free with no camera limit. Live View over a direct connection is unlimited.
Related
Record to your own drive, free
Litmus NVR records your cameras on your computer, with no camera limit.
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