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Old news – Maximum recording time on a DVR is directly related to the overall hard drive storage space. Bad news – archiving vast amounts of video to CD or DVD is not practical due to the relatively limited amount of recordable space. Good news – Full featured DVRs (such as the PC-Witness Pro) can automatically backup vast amounts of recorded video to a networked or off-site location. However, this may even be a moot concern as DVRs featuring large multi Terra Byte storage arrays will most likely satisfy even the most demanding video surveillance applications.

Considering their low cost, recordable CDs and DVDs are perfect solution to archiving important events involving a crime, accident, or employee indiscretion that may lead to termination of employment or suspension. While CD-Rs can only record CDs, DVD-Rs can record to either CDs or DVDs. Contrary to popular opinion, DVDs do not offer better resolution to CDs, although DVDs do offer greatly increased storage space that allows for greater storage of video.

When exporting a recorded video event for law enforcement purposes, we greatly recommend that a CD disk (and not a DVD disk) be used, as DVDs can only be played back on a PC that offers a DVD drive. As such, exporting to a DVD disk greatly reduces the number of PCs that the video may easily be played back on, while recording to CD helps insure that video may be played back on most any Windows-based PC considering that virtually all computers feature a CD drive. CDs may also be played back on personal computers that have a DVD drive.

Our recommendation – Ensure that the export process on the DVR you are considering is easy to use. Make sure that you can either burn directly to CD-R or DVD-R, or that video may be exported via USB or network to another PC. When ultimately burning to removable media, we highly recommend the exclusive use of CD-Rs and not DVD-Rs considering overall PC compatibility and the slightly higher cost of DVDs. For exporting entire days, weeks, or months of recorded video, we highly recommend selecting a DVR such as the PC-Witness Pro, which features automated scheduled archiving to a second or off-site PC or storage server.

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