Camera Storage & Bitrate Calculator

Works out the recording storage a camera system needs from the camera count, bitrate, retention days, codec and recording duty. It runs entirely in your browser and shows the working, so you can check every step against your own figures.

How the camera storage & bitrate calculator works

Each camera writes its bitrate every second, so a day’s footage is the bitrate times the seconds in a day. Multiplying by the retention days, the codec factor (H.265 stores about half the size of H.264) and the recording duty gives the per-camera size; times the camera count and converted to terabytes gives the total storage.

What you enter

Enter the camera count, bitrate, retention days, codec and recording duty; the calculator returns the storage in TB. Every field is editable, and the result recalculates the moment you change a value.

Reading the result

Buy the next drive size up: firmware overhead, overwrite margin and the odd bitrate spike all eat capacity. Motion-only recording and an efficient codec are the two biggest levers on the total.

Safe by design

This tool plans coverage, storage and cable length. It never specifies conductor gauge or PoE circuit sizing — the electrical side is a qualified installer’s responsibility.

Assumptions and limits

This uses a flat bitrate. Real bitrate varies with scene motion and lighting, and variable-bitrate encoding swings well above and below the average. Retention on motion-only recording depends entirely on how busy the scene is.

Using it with the rest of BuildMetricLab

This calculator is one step in planning the job. Pair it with the related tools in this category and across BuildMetricLab to go from a single figure to a full costed plan — a sizing figure feeds a cost estimate, a cost estimate feeds a project budget, and each result carries straight into the next tool. Every BuildMetricLab tool runs entirely in your browser — no sign-up, nothing sent to a server, and the formula is shown on the page so the maths can be audited.