NAS storage devices are prevalent and relatively inexpensive these days. They can not only be used to store your personal or business documents, pictures, and videos, but they can also be used as a redundant backup point for your security camera system. The videos below shows you how to configure settings for your FTP on our digital video recorders (both NVR or DVR) so you can commit live video backups via FTP.

The prerequisite for this is that you have FTP enabled on your NAS and that you have dedicated user/password for an account on the FTP server with its home directory being the directory you would like the recorder to upload to. We do not recommend adding folders in the recorders configuration settings as that poses issues with certain FTP server configurations. Our recorders have the ability to upload either video or still images (snapshots).

By uploading to FTP our security camera recorders provide Live Video or Image Snapshot backups. That is video or images are uploaded to FTP in Live mode as the action happens, not based on a schedule. Video recording has a pack time associated with it. When the video pack interval is completed, the video is uploaded to FTP. Images are uploaded instantaneously.

When video or images are uploaded, our security video recorders will automatically split video files by day, and channel numbers that is intelligible to the recorder.

Video is uploaded in a proprietary DAV file format which is H.264 or H.265 encoded video (depending on source video) with some meta-data. We have a DAV file converter and DAV player as well to play the stored files; you can find more information about it here.

Images can be uploaded from the desired camera channels based on fixed time intervals, or based on motion or other event detection methods offered by our IP cameras connected to it.

Here are some tips to guarantee success for configuring:

  • Have a FTP server with user-name and password
  • The user-name and password must be alphanumeric characters no more than 8 characters
  • Make sure the user has read/write access to the target directory
  • Make sure the target folder or directory is the user's home directory
  • Make sure your FTP server has proper ports open to allow proper data transfer at a sufficient speed for video or images to upload

 

How to upload image snapshots from your DVR or NVR

In the video below we show you how to upload images to FTP by configuring settings using the web interface of the recorder. Having correct credentials for your FTP server it is very easy to input the settings into the recorder. As we show in the video we can set a time interval of our choice to have the recorder upload snapshots in a few easy steps with a proper FTP server that is already configured.

 

How to backup live video from your DVR or NVR

If you are more interested in live video backups as a method of redundancy in case the camera DVR or NVR is stolen or damaged, then the video below is the one for you to watch. Simply enter the configuration credentials for your FTP server and the recorder will upload video based on the same recording settings as it is recording internally. For example, if you are recording on motion on select channels, video for those channels will be uploaded when motion is triggered.

If you have an NVR or DVR with the latest interface you can learn how to set up the FTP server settings by watching the video below.

If you are looking to do the same sort of setup but you are using only one PoE camera from us as a webcam, then our guides on how to record ip cameras to the cloud and recording snapshots to FTP from an IP camera may interest you.

Matt Rossi is a Technical Support Manager at CCTV Camera World, a leading CCTV Camera distributor located in Buffalo, NY. He is a technical support expert for everything video surveillance related.

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