External storage drives

HrqU9LEmF3Zixv

I currently have a Mid 2010 Mac Pro (2 x 2.4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon with 6 GB ram) running around 15 camera's (directly runs ~13 of them and I have a second license for a Mini that runs two of them).

I have four internal drive bays on the Mac Pro. I don't allow any video to stored on the home drive. I am wanting to dedicate the maximum amount of space I can for on particular camera. 4 TB would be nice. I went out and purchased a USB 3.0 HDD (3.5") enclosure, a HDD, and have a USB 3.0 card coming for the Mac Pro.

Using USB 2.0 (experimenting before the 3.0 card arrives) the interface was not fast enough to write video to the external drive when motion was detected. Will USB 3.0 be fast enough to support one camera to an external drive connected directly to the Mac Pro?

A wish list item would be allow me to limit the size of a folder on a network storage unit as opposed to the drive as it is currently done.

Ben

With a reasonable amount of compression, an external USB 2.0 drive should be fast enough to support many cameras, especially if motion-detection is being used (so that recording isn't happening continuously for every camera). I would advise using MPEG-4 compression at 50-60% quality (as set in the Compression Settings window in SecuritySpy). Of, if your camera supports MPEG-4 or H.264 compression, this can be captured to disk directly by SecuritySpy if you follow these instructions.

However, USB 2.0 may not be able to cope with as many as 15 cameras, especially if the frame rate or resolution is high. USB 3.0, Thunderbolt or eSATA will certainly help with this.

HrqU9LEmF3Zixv

Thanks Ben. I use no compression to minimize CPU usage with that many cameras. That is most likely my problem.

I only plan to use one camera on the external drive. I need to store as many days as possible for this one camera.

Thanks. Love the product and support!

Ben

Ah that explains it - video files without compression will be huge and the data rate will be very high.

Whether your cameras are sending JPEG, MPEG-4, or H.264 video to SecuritySpy, you can tell SecuritySpy to record this video data directly to disk, making sure that the computer's CPU won't be burdened with any expensive video compression tasks. This behaviour is controlled by the "No recompression" options in the Video Device Settings window in SecuritySpy (see the link to instructions in my previous post). Even if your cameras are only capable of sending JEPG video, this setup will result in much smaller recorded files compared to using no compression at all, at no cost in quality or CPU usage.

HrqU9LEmF3Zixv

I am not at work today so I can't readily view the setup but would the settings you described above but I make use of the "text overlay" and I believe that means I can't take advantage of straight to disk.

I believe the USB 3 card and connection will clear this up for the one camera I want to keep as many days as possible on.

Ben

You are indeed correct that you wouldn't be able to use SecuritySpy's text overlay if you want to get it to record the data directly from the camera to disk.

The way around this is to disable the text overlay in SecuritySpy, and enable it in the camera(s) themselves. Ideally you would also supply each camera with a time server address (e.g. time.apple.com) so that they all keep perfect time, ensuring the accuracy of the time stamp in their text overlays.

If you don't like this idea, USB 3.0 may well be able to support the massive data rates you will get using uncompressed video, however I would still recommend using JPEG as a minimum to keep the file sizes reasonable!