What is the relationship between Mbps and IP NVRs?
IP camera systems are sounding like alphabet soup.Mbps, MP, FPS, ONVIF, NVR.Today we will tackle Mbps and how it relates to NVRs and IP Cameras.
#1 Mbps: MegaBits Per Second – Basically the data through-put ability of your NVR and your network.
Our new NVR’s have the ability to move 160Mbps.We rate them at 128Mbps so that you will always have the headroom to view playback and live viewing at the same time.
How does the 128Mpbs relate to your IP cameras?
The IP cameras we will address are the most common we sell at 1.3MP, 2MP and 3MP.A 1.3MP camera at max frame rate will record at 15FPS (frames per second).Now you have the ability to adjust the Mbps for each camera on the NVR keeping in mind the total 128Mpbs of the NVR and the limits of your network.It is always recommended to put IP cameras on their own dedicated network and to run that network at Gigbit speeds (1000 Mbps or higher).Setting your 1.3MP camera at 15FPS and 2Mbps will give you a HD 1080P picture with excellent picture quality.
So a 16 camera system with all 1.3MP set at 2MP would have a total through put of 32MBPS.Now if you wanted full motion 30FPS on your 1.3MP cameras you would need to drop the record rate to 720P which is still and excellent picture.The 2Mbps would still be adequate for the setting.
Moving to a 2MP camera at a full 30FPS your Mbps would move to 4-6.Sixteen 2 MP cameras at 6Mbps is still well within your 128Mbps as it comes in at 96Mbps.
Going to 3MP at a full camera frame rate of 20FPS you would go to 8Mbps and with 16 your total comes to 128Mbps.
How does the Mbps relate to the recording time?I will get into this at more depth in another article but just quickly if you have 16 cameras at 1.3MP set at 2Mbps with a 2TB hard drive recording 24hrs/day you will record for 6 days. 3TB gets you 9 days. 4TB gets you 12days.Using motion sensing technology you can get your record time down to 12hrs/day per camera and double the record time per TB.
Recording time is affected by many variables – MP, FPS, Mbps, Hrs/day, Motion Sensing, and Hard Drive Size