[Tutorial] Recording to an SD card on a Hikvision camera.

[Bob]

In this tutorial I will show you how you can record and playback surveillance footage straight to an on-board SD card.

In order to follow this tutorial you should be prepared with a hikvision camera which has an on-board SD card slot. The camera i'll be using will be the DS-2CD2432F-IW. you should also have an SD card with sufficient storage space. I would recommend at the very least 32GB, however I will be using a 128GB SD card (as a reference, 128 gb lasts around 5 days (130 hours and 40 minutes). I will also note that some older cameras may only be able to use SD cards up to 64GB, so you should check this first before buying anything larger.

First of all, place the SD card into your camera. There is a chance a loud (and annoying) alarm will be triggered, however this will be resolved easily (further into the tutorial).

Once the SD card is in the camera, locate the camera in SADP and then open it up in your browser. From here, navigate to advanced configuration, and click on the storage tab.

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Your options may look a little different, however you should be able to see the SD card in the list. In order to use the SD card, you will need to format it. Formatting the SD card should also stop the alarm going off.

After this, you can configure the amount of space for pictures and video within the SD card. Once the video partition is full, it will overwrite previous footage.

To start recording you will need to go over to the live view tab. in the bottom right hand corner, there is a camcorder icon. Clicking this will enable continuous recording.

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After this, your camera will be recording continuously onto the SD card you will be able to review all recorded footage on the timeline tab, meaning that there is no need to remove the SD card to check the footage.

 

[TaHzO]

Hi Bob,
thank you very much for this detailed manual. I'm wondering if it is possible to view the recorded files on the CD card directly without accessing the camera.
I have a use case where the customer wants to eject the sd card out of the camera and view the recording on his computer, putting the CD card in his slot on his computer. I tried it with mine but was no able to open the *.mp4 files ...

 

[Kieran]

Hi,
It's definitely possible. You'd need to open the .mp4 files in VLC or Hikvision's VSPlayer which you can download at that link.

They're not standard .mp4 files and so wouldn't be able to be opened via Windows Media Player, for example

 

[TaHzO]

I already tried with VLC and it is working great - thank you very much.

 

[ingand]

Hi Bob, I try to record on the sd card 32 GB but it only keep the recordings on my harddisk.
How can I force it to record on the sd card?
The card is already been formatted by the camera

 

[tester22]

hi, i tried this method but it is recording to my computer and not the sd card. and also when i want to check the footage i need to manually stop recording for it to save.

 

[Kieran]

Hi. It sounds like you might be trying to manually record footage using a web browser, rather than having the camera record to the microSD card.

Have a look at our guide on setting up a recording schedule. Once you've set an appropriate schedule and formatted the microSD card, the camera should record automatically the the microSD card and you'd be able to access recordings from the Playback tab in a web browser / iVMS 4200.

 

[tester22]

how do i take certain video footages from the sd card and save it in my computer with out removing the sd card?

 

[tester22]

i think I found the place to download the files to my computer but it keeps on saying failed. what could be the solution to this?

 

[Kieran]

how do i take certain video footages from the sd card and save it in my computer with out removing the sd card?

If you access the camera via a web browser, navigate to the Playback section and click on the download button, bottom right of the viewing area.

I've attached an image to show where it is.

 

[tester22]

how to i make my camera overwrite on the sd card? is there a setting i need to enable or does it automatically overwrite?

 

[Kieran]

By default, a Hikvision camera will automatically overwrite the oldest footage when the connected storage method becomes full.

You can verify / enable this setting by navigating to Configuration >> Storage >> Schedule Settings >> Advanced and ensuring Overwrite is ticked (via a web browser).

 

[tester22]

i have 2 hikvision cameras and I have 2 ddns accounts, I first tried to make them run with one ddns account but doesn't work and it works with 2 separate ddns accounts. is it possible to make my cameras run with 1 ddns account? or is there a simpler way to fix this problem?

I have these 2 cameras:

1)- Hikvision DS-2CD2532F-IWS 3MP Built-in MIC WiFi IR IP66 POE Network Dome Camera

2)- HIKVISION DS-2CD3132F-IWS HD 1080P POE 3MP 2.8mm IR Dome Network IP Camera

 

[Kieran]

Hi - wrong thread for this, would be a good idea to start a new thread with that topic next time.

You can have two (and indeed many more) Hikvision devices on the same DDNS account, you'll just need to make sure each device is using a unique access port otherwise the DDNS account will only take you to the one that was registered with this port first.

You may wish to enable UPnP on the camera to simplify this process, or alternatively you can disable UPnP and manually forward a unique port to each device.

 

[Oleksandr]

Hi everyone,
I have two Hikvision cameras, but only one of them has microSD for storage.
Can I store video from second camera to microSD of first one?
Thanks in advance

 

[Kieran]

No, that's not possible I'm afraid.

 

[Imran999]

My camera is set to record (motion triggered at only 8fps) to a 32GB microSD card.
But it only seems to store 3 days of footage.
It only seems to use about 2GB out of the 32GB total.

I have tried everything, but can't seem to find a setting to get it to record until full and then overwrite the oldest recordings.

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[Kieran]

To have the camera record until capacity and then overwrite the oldest footage, make sure you have Overwrite checked under Configuration >> Storage >> Schedule Settings >> Record Schedule >> Advanced

You might also want to check the capacity and free space of your microSD card under Configuration >> Storage >> Storage Management >> HDD Management and just double-check everything is as it should be. Whilst you're there, just make sure the Quota settings are set to something appropriate too - 25% for picture and 75% for record is default.

 

[Imran999]

Thank you Kieran - very helpful indeed.
I actually discovered that many days of footage is actually on the camera, but the viewing software (iVMS-4500 on iOS) only allows for browsing of 3 days at a time.

Thanks again!

 

[Lutz]

hi kieran,
i learned a lot from your posts..
but can you say to what destination the video records are getting downloaded on the PC from the SD-card when using the download function from accessing the camera via the browser ?
i found the files recorded and selected one for download. the download progress is a bit slow but goes up to 100%. the files on the SD card are called CH1_000*** - i cannot see an extension. when then searching on the PC for an file *CH1_*.* nothing is found. thanks in advance !