Recording video from security Wi-Fi web-cam: How Large An HD For Video Recording?

[vranswer]

Trying to figure out just what size external hard drive to buy in order to record security webcam video. My goal is to record video of the outside of the house using a wifi webcam and one of those shareware video screen capture programs. I would only need to keep the video if something happens around the house which we would want to see.

Is there a general rule of thumb for how many GB per hour a reasonably compressed 640X480 resolution video file uses? Would like to reset the recorder once per week and forget about it.

Actually I suggest you to test software before buying it as well as a hard drive. Depending on your computer performance you may wanna record videos to different formats like MPEG-2, WMV, MPEG-4. You may also wanna consider a web-cam that can compress videos to MPEG-4 format using hardware not software.

You might also consider web-cam recording software like Active Web-cam that has motion detection. The quality of such programs can vary significantly. But really goods ones in most cases record videos only when something happens. They can also send you an alert via e-mail or by some other methods.

[vranswer]

Well, I've looked at the Linksys Webcam for $119 that streams mpeg-4 video over a wireless network. I suppose I could get it and set up to find out the file sizes it produces. Motion detecting cams might not do the job.

Please make sure the video the Linksys webcam produces is good enough for you.

[vranswer]

Thanks, will do. Quality only needs to be good enough to see what's going on in the front yard. If a tire-slasher comes along for example, I'd like to be able to ID them. Long story for this requirement, which I won't go into here, but you get the idea.

That was what I was talking about. A face can be partially hidden. There might be a lack of light. And plus you get a video compression of a low resolution video.

[vranswer]

Originally Posted by Stream Recorder

That was what I was talking about. A face can be partially hidden. There might be a lack of light. And plus you get a video compression of a low resolution video.

Well, which software would you suggest?

Sorry, but the best thing I can suggest is to try what works for you better.

[vranswer]

Well, the Linksys Webcam came with software that is getting the job done, even if it's not a trivial task to make it work. There's a scheduler element that saves the video every day - just a little wierd though, I can't find/access the actual video file unless it is exported to an AVI. But the proprietary 'Playback' program does play it back, so I can review the video if I need to watch for something.