Even when compressed, storing video footage requires a large amount of hard drive space. This calculator will allow you to see how much storage you will require for a given number of units, at a given recording rate, and storing the footage for a given number of days.
Note: In addition to the video bitrate, there is a small overhead associated with the audio and container format - typically around 70kbit/s.
So a video bitrate of B Mbits/s will lead to an overall bitrate of EB Mbits/s.
| The average number of hours of footage collected per day will be: | H | hours per unit | H x D x U | hours total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| If collected footage is retained for RD days, the stored footage will be: | H x RD | hours per unit | H x RD x U | hours total |
| At EB Mbits/s the storage required for one hour of footage will be: | S | gigabytes per unit | S x U | gigabytes total |
| So the total for hours will be: | Total | |||
Terms: In this calculator we use the terms 'Megabyte', 'Gigabyte' and 'Terabyte' to represent 'one million bytes', 'one billion bytes' and 'one trillion bytes' respectively, as these are the definitions used by hard drive vendors.
Additional requirements: This calculation is for the footage only. Additional requirements include space for burned DVD images and the database structure; however this will generally amount to 20Gb or less.