Recording
Recording modes, per-camera settings, and where footage goes.
Recording is configured per camera, from the camera's settings on the Cameras page.
Recording modes
Each camera runs in one of four modes:
| Mode | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Off | Nothing is recorded for this camera. |
| Always | Continuous 24/7 recording. |
| Scheduled | Continuous recording during time windows you define (e.g. nights and weekends). |
| Motion | Recording is triggered by motion detection, with configurable pre-roll and post-roll — footage from shortly before the motion started and after it ended is included, so you never miss the lead-in. |
A camera that is actively recording shows the red REC dot on its live tile.
A camera records only if it has a stream URL and an available storage pool. If you set a mode other than Off and the REC dot never appears, see Troubleshooting.
How footage is written
CoreSight records by copying the camera's own video stream to disk in short, crash-safe segments — no re-encoding, so recording adds minimal CPU load and preserves original quality. If the box loses power mid-segment, at most the single open segment (a few seconds) is affected; everything already closed is safe.
Because segments are written continuously and independently of the rest of the system, software updates and service restarts do not stop recording in progress.
Per-camera recording settings
Beyond the mode, each camera can override:
- Segment length — how long each recorded file segment is. Shorter segments mean finer-grained retention and recovery; the default suits most sites.
- Storage pool — pin this camera's footage to a specific pool (for example, keep critical cameras on local RAID and bulk cameras on the NAS). Cameras without a pin are balanced across pools automatically.
- Redundancy — mirror this camera's footage to a second pool so a failed disk or share does not lose it.
- Stream profile — which of the camera's streams to record (e.g. the full-resolution main stream), independent of what live view displays.
Where recordings go
Footage lands in storage pools — local directories or network shares (SMB/NFS/iSCSI) managed on the Storage page. Pools handle balancing, capacity, retention by age/size/capacity, and legal hold. See Storage for the full picture.
Verifying recording works
- Set the camera's mode to Always (simplest to verify).
- Watch for the red REC dot on the camera's live tile.
- After a minute, open Playback, select the camera and today's date — the timeline should show recorded video up to the current time.
- Check the Health page: the storage pool should be online with free space.