Are you planning on installing a 24-hour security system? Wondering whether or not the CCTV footage gets deleted after every 24 hours? You’re in the right place! This article will explore factors that affect footage storage and how you can use them to increase the amount of footage your system can hold. Keep reading to learn how to increase the number of footage days your CCTV system can store.
Factors That Affect The Frequency Of Footage Deletion
There are several factors that influence how long the footage captured by your CCTV security system stays in the system. A few examples of these include:
1). Amount Of Storage
The number one factor that determines how often older footage is deleted is the storage size of your CCTV security system. Once your storage system is filled, it will simply overwrite the oldest footage and save the newest footage. This means that you’ll always have the latest footage up to the maximum storage capacity of the storage system.
Keep in mind that regulations regarding critical infrastructures, such as banks, may require institutions to store CCTV footage for longer.
For instance, if your CCTV storage system can store a maximum of a day’s worth of video footage, you’ll always have the last 24 hours of footage. Expanding your storage size will increase the number of video footage days you can store.
2). Type Of Storage
The type of storage your system uses will determine how long the video footage is stored. For instance, edge storage in the form of MicroSD will have a lower limit of storage capacity. You can typically store up to 256GB. This is why edge storage does not record continuously and will typically only record during events (such as line crossing detection and motion detection).
On the other hand, an IP system can store terabytes of footage based on your needs. You can invest in a hard drive with a storage capacity of up to 10 TB, doing away with storage issues in your business or home’s CCTV system.
3). Video Quality
The quality of your video will determine how much storage every day’s CCTV footage takes up and, ultimately, how far back the footage can go. CCTV cameras that record footage at a higher resolution with a fast frame rate will result in a few days of footage taking up more storage space. Additionally, aspects such as the compression type and the compression levels also influence the amount of storage space the CCTV footage takes up.
Conversely, low-quality footage takes up less space and can last longer in the storage system without self-deleting. As such, if your CCTV system deletes footage every 24 hours, tweaking the camera settings and lowering the quality of the footage may help you store the footage even longer.
With that said, it’s essential to note that lowering the quality of video footage too much might render the recorded footage useless. Given that you’re recording the footage for security reasons, you need the footage to be clear enough to make out certain elements, such as facial features and number plates. After all, you still want the footage to aid in any investigation should a security issue arise.
4). CCTV Footage Recording Mode
In certain environments, you do not have to record continuously. You can set your CCTV to record during events or during specific times. Scheduled or motion detection recording reduces your storage needs as you don’t have to record continuous footage. If your CCTV system deletes footage daily, consider implementing scheduled or motion detection footage recording.
All things considered, when your storage does fill up, the CCTV system will automatically start recording over your older footage. This means you’ll eventually lose some footage, whether that’s after 24 hours or after 6 months. If you need to keep certain a piece of footage for longer, you can export the footage to an external storage device for long-term storage, for instance, a computer or cloud storage.
Final Thoughts
In general terms, CCTV footage is not deleted every 24 hours. Security standards entail storing the footage for between 3 and 6 six months. However, the actual period that your CCTV system can store footage will depend on the storage size of the CCTV system, camera settings, and other factors. You can also choose to back up specific video footage you’re interested in if you need it to last longer.
Do you need to expand your video storage? Do you need to set the camera systems to enhance storage needs? Look no further than our experienced team here at Innertelligence Security.
Please give us a call at 1300 312 184 or leave an enquiry to learn more about CCTV security solutions today!
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