Avigilon H6A Dome (8MP) storage & retention

The H6A Dome's 8MP sensor is the reason storage adds up quickly: at a typical 8 Mbps encode rate (30 fps, H.265) it works out to roughly 86 GB of video per camera per day. H.265's smart-codec efficiency is doing real work here — the same scene at plain H.264 would typically need a meaningfully higher bitrate to hold equivalent detail, so the H.265 figure already reflects a leaner file than an older-codec camera of the same resolution would produce.

Scaling is linear and predictable: 16 cameras x 86 GB/day x 30 days works out to roughly 41 TB of raw capacity. Add cameras or stretch retention and the figure moves in direct proportion — doubling either one roughly doubles the number. At 16 cameras this preset sits in the Entry NVR class, the architecture band the calculator assigns before a deployment needs mid-tier or enterprise-class recording infrastructure.

Use the calculator by dragging the camera count and retention-days sliders and switching the recording schedule — the storage total recomputes live as you move each control. Switching from an always-on schedule to a motion-only schedule applies a duty factor that reduces the effective recording hours per day, which can noticeably shrink the total without changing camera count or retention.

The calculator does not decide real-world scene-activity bitrate variance (a busy entrance encodes differently to a quiet corridor even on the same camera model), RAID or redundancy overhead, failover or long-term archive tiering, network write-throughput limits at the switch or NVR, or the exact drive model and count to populate a bay with. Those remain a design step for a qualified installer working from the site's actual footage profile.