Know the Important Features in Your Security Camera Recorder

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Houston is fortunate to have a vast selection of security companies and security equipment suppliers. This makes it easy to talk to experts and get hands on demonstrations of equipment. Many times people forget to know the important features that are vital to security camera recorders before they purchase their DVR.

If you don’t know how a security camera recorder works, you might choose the wrong one for your current and future security needs. After all, you put great care in choosing the best cameras for your budget. But what use is a camera in event of a break-in if your DVR can’t capture all the action?

Important features you should consider when choosing a DVR recorder to go along with your security system are the number of channels, frame rate, memory, playback, and offload capabilities. You should understand and know the importance of these features, because they may have significance if you ever need to share your recordings with your security company and/or law enforcement officials.

Security Camera DVR Channels

The number of channels (camera ports) that a DVR has determines the number of cameras you can hook up. You shouldn’t make the mistake of buying a DVR recorder with too few channels.

People usually buy DVRs with four ports. The important thing is to assess your property, determine the location of the security cameras and how many you’ll need, and then buy a DVR with more channels (ports) than you’ll need. That way, if you need to add cameras in the future, you will have expansion room.  You’ll only have to plug in the cameras, and not buy a whole new DVR.

Security DVR Frame Rate

With the super-fast processing chips, today’s security camera DVRs allow for real-time video recording. Most DVRs will list a frame rate in the specifications as a number of frames per second (FPS). If you want to make sure that your camera will record in real time, simply divide the number of FPS by the number of channels. For instance, if your DVR lists 500 FPS and you have 10 channels on your DVR, each camera will record at 50 FPS. For NTSC, real time is 30 FPS; PAL (European) is 25 FPS. The higher the fps, the greater your time (temporal) resolution will be.

Security Camera DVR Memory

When deciding how much memory, or video storage, you should have in your camera, you must consider several factors.

  • How many days of video do you plan to store
  • How many cameras are recording
  • The FPS set on each camera
  • How many hours each day you will record
  • How many days each weeks the your video cameras operate
  • The camera type in terms of resolution which affects the size of the video file
  • The video format such as MPEG4 or H264 compression
  • Audio recording

You can best make use of your video’s memory (storage) capability if you set each camera to record motion only.

Security DVR Playback

A DVR’s playback capability is often overlooked. You will want a security camera DVR that has Jog and Shuttle. Jog and Shuttle allows you to playback recorded video frame by frame. Frame by frame viewing is important if you need to identify a person, a license plate of a moving car, or what was taken if you are a victim of theft.

DVR Offload

Think of offload as the downloading of the video to a disc or USB device. You should be able to download in .AVI format or something similar. You, the police, or your security company won’t need special software to playback the video on a computer.

These are the primary features of security camera DVR recorders that you must consider. Remember that Safeguard Home Security served Houston’s security needs for over 30 years and are ready to help you. You can call us (832) 469-4054.