CALCULATOR / RETENTION
Video Retention Calculator: Days, Bitrate and Storage
Video retention is a storage planning variable, not automatically a legal requirement. Change retention days, recording hours, bitrate, and camera count to see the engineering effect, then apply the organization’s policy and applicable law separately.
INTERACTIVE PLANNING TOOL
ESTIMATED DECIMAL CAPACITY
12,441.6 GB
≈ 12.44 TB before platform-specific usable-capacity checks.
Planning equation: cameras × Mbps × hours × days × 0.45, then the selected headroom. Codec, motion recording, RAID, filesystem, exports, and recorder limits can change the result.
Separate policy from capacity
A business or privacy policy may define a target retention period, but the calculator only estimates the capacity needed for the chosen assumptions. It does not decide what should be kept or for how long.
Document continuous, scheduled, event, and motion recording separately because their average data rates can differ substantially.
Plan the exception path
Define what happens when storage is full, a legal hold is placed, an incident clip is exported, or the recorder is offline. Check that deletion, export, and audit behavior matches the approved process.
FIELD CHECKLIST
Record the result, not only the intention
- Record the approved retention rationale outside the calculator.
- Choose recording mode and estimate its average bitrate.
- Include headroom, redundancy, export, and legal-hold assumptions.
- Test full-storage and recorder-offline behavior.
- Review deletion and access logs with the policy owner.
FAQ / LONG-TAIL QUESTIONS
Frequently asked questions
How do CCTV retention days change storage capacity?
With the other assumptions held constant, increasing CCTV retention days increases the storage estimate. Record the policy rationale separately from the engineering capacity calculation.
How is CCTV storage calculation related to retention policy?
Storage calculation estimates capacity from bitrate, hours, cameras, and days. A retention policy also needs purpose, legal or privacy review, access, deletion, exceptions, and accountable ownership.
How many days of IP camera recording should be retained?
There is no universal number. Set the period from the documented purpose, risk, legal or privacy review, operational need, and tested deletion behavior for the applicable site.