Axis P3268-LVE — storage & retention planning

The Axis P3268-LVE is an 8MP fixed dome, and at its typical H.265 operating point of 8 Mbps and 30 fps that resolution is the dominant driver of the storage sum — roughly 86 GB per camera per day at continuous recording. H.265's smart-codec efficiency is doing real work here: the same 8MP sensor encoded in plain H.264 at a comparable frame rate would typically push meaningfully more data per day for a similar visual result, so the codec choice is not a footnote, it is a large share of the saving.

Scaling from one camera to a fleet is linear: 16 cameras across a 30-day retention window comes to roughly 41 TB (16 x 86 GB x 30 days, before overhead). Longer retention or a larger camera count scales the same way — doubling either input roughly doubles the storage figure. At 16 cameras and this data rate, the resulting head-end sits in the Entry NVR class rather than requiring a rack-mount or enterprise platform.

Use the calculator by dragging camera count, retention days and recording schedule and watching the storage total recompute live. Switching from an always-on schedule to a motion-only or scheduled-hours pattern applies a duty factor that reduces the effective recording time per day, which is usually the single largest lever available once the camera model and count are fixed.

The calculator does not decide real scene-activity bitrate variance (a busy loading bay or heavy foliage will push actual bitrate above the camera's typical figure, while a static, low-motion scene can sit below it), RAID or redundancy overhead, a separate failover or long-term archive tier, network write-bandwidth limits at the switch, or the exact drive make, count and capacity plan — those remain sizing decisions for the system design stage.