Recording Video: Managing storage capacity and recording resolution

The amount of recording time available on your DVR / NVR System is partially determined by the type Recording resolution you are using.

Recording resolution is the number of pixels (dots) used to create an image. Higher resolutions use more pixels to create an image. This means that greater amounts of detail can be expressed in the image, but larger files sizes are required to save the images or video. Setting a higher recording resolution will take more Hard Disk Drive (HDD) space. See the example below.

The resolution is increasing from left to right

Recording resolution is measured as the number of horizontal pixels by the number of vertical pixels (width x height).

Here are some common recording resolutions supported by Lorex by FLIR DVR / NVR Systems:

• CIF: 360 x 240, 86 400 total pixels
• 2CIF: 720 x 240, 172 800 total pixels
• VGA: 640 x 240, 307 200 total pixels
• D1: 720 x 480, 345 600 total pixels
• 720p: 1280 x 720, 921 600 total pixels
• 1080p: 1920 x 1080, 2 073 600 total pixels
• 2K: 2048 x 1536, 3 145 728 total pixels
• 4K: 4096 x 2160, 8 847 360 total pixels

The total number of pixels is determined by the number of horizontal pixels times the number of vertical pixels, if both horizontal and vertical pixels are doubled, the total number of pixels increases by a factor of 4. This means that the amount of HDD space needed to store an image or a given duration of video will also increase by a factor of 4 (given factors such as the Frame Rate remain equal). It is recommended to try different configurations on your system to balance image quality against the amount of storage space available.