Storage & retention
Recordings can use a lot of disk, so camera.ui gives you control over where they're stored and how long they're kept.
Where recordings are stored
By default, recordings live with the rest of camera.ui's data. For more than a couple of cameras, put them on a dedicated local disk, separate from the system disk. See System requirements.
A disk plugged into the machine is fine, and so is a storage path that is a symlink to one. A network share (NAS, SMB, NFS) is not, and the reason is worth knowing: the folder holds more than video. Detection events, the timeline markers and the search index sit next to the footage as databases, so they travel with it when you move the disk. Those databases need file locking that network filesystems do not provide reliably, so what breaks there is the event database, not a frame of video. If your storage lives on a NAS, run camera.ui on the NAS instead and record locally from there.
Moving recordings to another disk
Changing the storage path does not take your recordings with it. camera.ui starts fresh at the new location, and the old folder keeps its footage and its events where they are. Move the data yourself:
- Stop the server.
- Move the whole storage folder to the new disk, including the
eventsandclipfolders next to the footage. Those hold your events, the timeline markers and the search index, and they belong to that footage. - Start the server and set the new path in Settings → Recordings.
Nothing inside stores an absolute path, so the timeline, the events and the search work at the new location without a rebuild. Leave the events and clip folders behind and the footage arrives without any of them, with no way to recreate them from the video files. Enrolled faces are not affected either way, they live outside the recordings folder.
Rough sizing
Continuous recording writes the recorded stream to disk, so the size follows its bitrate. A rough guide:
GB per day, per camera ≈ bitrate in Mbit/s × 10.8
| Stream | Bitrate | Continuous, per day | Per camera, 7 days |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1080p H.264 | 4 Mbit/s | ~43 GB | ~300 GB |
| 4K H.264 | 8 Mbit/s | ~86 GB | ~600 GB |
| H.265 (HEVC) | about half the bitrate | roughly half the above | roughly half the above |
Event recording only writes around motion or detections, so it uses a fraction of that, depending on how busy the scene is. When in doubt, start with a retention window or a storage cap and watch the per-camera rate (below) for a week.
How long they're kept
Two limits decide when old footage is removed:
- Retention (Days). Keep footage for up to this many days (0 means no day limit).
- Max Storage (GB). Cap the total space recordings may use (0 means no cap).
When a limit is reached, what happens depends on the Retention Mode:
- Overwrite (default). The oldest recordings are deleted to make room, so recording never stops.
- Strict. Nothing is deleted beyond the retention window. If the disk fills, recording pauses until you free space.
Footage from removed cameras
If you delete a camera, or unassign the NVR from it, its recordings stay on disk. They still count towards Max Storage, and retention and cleanup still remove them when the disk gets tight, like an active camera's recordings.
To keep that footage instead, put an empty file named .cameraui-keep into the camera's folder in your recordings directory. camera.ui then leaves the folder alone: not counted, not aged out, not touched when space runs low.[1]
Keeping an eye on usage
Open Metrics → Storage. The Storage Overview shows how much disk is used and free, and the NVR's share of it. The Camera Storage table breaks it down per camera: size on disk, days of footage held, the recording rate per day, and the mode. This helps you size storage and spot a camera recording more than expected.
If the page warns that the storage volume is small, most of the volume is kept free as headroom, so recordings rotate out quickly. That usually means the larger disk you meant to use isn't mounted, so check the storage path. A separate warning appears when free disk space drops below 8%. Below 5%, recording pauses.
Uninstalling the NVR
Uninstalling the NVR plugin with Also delete stored data removes its settings, databases and caches, but leaves your recordings folder in place. The folder is protected by a .cameraui-keep file inside it. If the recordings should go with the plugin, delete that file first, then uninstall.
The marker only applies to cameras camera.ui no longer knows. The folder of an active camera follows retention and the storage cap either way. ↩︎