Video Retention

Overview

If you have a lot of MV cameras to configure, consider using Quality and retention profiles and APIs to configure your settings.

MV Cloud Archive is an additional option available to license to extend and back-up video footage. 

Determining estimated retention time

To check the estimated retention time of a specific camera, please follow these steps:

1. From the Meraki Dashboard, navigate to Cameras > Monitor > Cameras. Select a camera

2. Go to the Settings tab and navigate to Quality and Retention.

3. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to see the estimated retention time.

Along with the estimated retention time, suggestions for improving the retention time of your video are also listed. Cloud Archive is available to enhance your retention time by up to 365 days.

Video Retention Expectations

For video retention estimations, various factors come into play like video resolution, video quality, motion-based retention, and cloud archive, to name a few. However, the below table provides details on the minimum achievable retention per setting for different MV models. 

Generation-2 MV Cameras:

Generation-3 MV Cameras:

Smart Codec

For cameras running MV4.15 and newer, Smart Codec will help enable up to 2x the retention by implementing a more efficient and dynamic codec for video recording. Read this knowledge base article for the list of support cameras and more details on Smart Codec.

Motion-based retention

By default, a Meraki security camera will record footage continuously 24/7. In some situations, only motion events are required to be recorded and stored for review. Motion-based retention covers this requirement and improves the video retention capabilities of the camera. You can toggle between different Motion Detector versions. Configure areas of interest for your Motion based retention, read more out here.

Also use our Motion Search feature to track people. Read more out here.

Video quality

we can alter the video quality of footage to increase the estimated video retention time. The MV12, MV22 and MV72 all have three modes for video quality which are as follows:

• Standard - 1024 kbps at eight fps

• Enhanced - 1562 kbps at 15 fps

• High -  3138 kbps at 24 fps

There are two video quality modes for MV21 and MV71, Standard Quality and Enhanced Quality. Standard Quality will capture 720p videos at 535 kbps/8 fps. Enhanced Quality will capture 720p videos at 765 kbps/15fps. The recording modes available are continuous, scheduled and motion-based retention. When the video quality is increased, the maximum retention time will decrease.

Setting a maximum retention time.

It is possible to set a maximum retention period for each camera. To do this, please complete the following steps:

1. Go to Camera > Monitor > Cameras. Select a camera.

2. Go to the Settings tab and select the Quality and Retention tab

3. From here, select the dropdown menu under Maximum Retention Limit > When the footage is older than <option>

Footage will be recorded and deleted in the same way as before, on a first-in-first-out basis, until the maximum retention time.

Disabling video retention (live video only)

In specific scenarios, recording any historical footage is disallowed. To enable "live video only" mode, apply a recording schedule that disables recording 24/7.

Deleting a video from the camera

When the camera nears the full capacity of the internal storage, it will start deleting the oldest video stored. To delete all footage, remove the camera from its network. We can do this by selecting the camera checkbox under camera> Monitor > Cameras and clicking the move or remove option.