Are you getting a home security system, and have some preferences of what quality you want the recordings to be? If so, you have three major options that you need to make decisions about that will impact your video quality and how much video storage you have

1. Video Frame Rate

The frame rate of the video is going to play a huge role in how much footage you can save to your storage device, but it can also have the biggest impact on video quality. The frame rate is essentially how many images the camera captures in a single second, with a higher number resulting in a smoother security camera footage. 

Ever wonder why you see security camera footage on the news that looks incredibly choppy? This is done for a good reason. A typical camera will record video at 30 frames per second, but that may not be necessary for a security camera that records a static image for most of the day. By cutting the frame rate in half to 15 frames per second, you can double the amount of footage that you can save to your storage device. This can be the difference between being able to save additional days or weeks' worth of footage that you can call up when you need to see what happened in the past. The footage may not be as smooth at a lower frame rate, but it can get the job done to let you know what happened.

2. Video Bitrate

Even if you are recording video at the full frame rate, the video bit rate of the security camera footage is going to play a big role in how clear the footage actually is when played back from your storage device. If you pick a high bitrate, you'll have a video image that is exceptionally clear but will take up much more space on your storage device. Lower that bitrate and you can store more footage, but the footage will get to a point where it starts to look blurry. 

You want to find a good trade-off where the footage is clear enough to identify anybody that is on camera, but not overkill where it is causing the security camera footage to use more data than necessary. This is especially important if you have a desire to store several days' worth of video in order to review it later.

Work with a company that specializes in installing security camera systems to help configure the recording settings to meet your needs.