Record modes and detection

Each camera has its own record mode. You can change it at any time in camera settings.

Events

Keeps footage only around motion: from 5 seconds before to 8 seconds after each event. This is the default and uses the least storage, typically 80–95% less than recording 24/7.

Smart 24/7

Records the camera’s low-resolution sub-stream around the clock and the full-quality main stream around events. Your timeline has no gaps, but events stay sharp. This is recommended when your camera has a sub-stream, which most do.

Continuous

Records the full-quality stream all the time. Best for a few critical cameras with plenty of storage, or a NAS.

How much space?

The hub never re-encodes, so file sizes depend on what your camera sends. As a rough guide, one 1080p camera recording 24/7 in H.264 produces about 43 GB a day (about half that in H.265). Events mode brings that down to a few GB. On Pro, older footage can also be recompressed to H.265 overnight, about 40% smaller.

Who detects motion?

In camera settings, Detection can be:

• Auto (default): use the camera’s own motion events if it offers them over ONVIF, and fall back to the hub otherwise.
• Camera: always use the camera’s on-chip detection. This saves hub CPU, which matters on a Raspberry Pi with many cameras.
• Hub: always detect on the hub.

Whichever detects the motion, the hub then classifies the event as a person, vehicle or animal before alerting you.

Retention

How long footage is kept is separate from the record mode. See Retention and disk space.