Bosch FLEXIDOME IP starlight 8000i (4K) storage & retention

The storage driver here is the combination of 8MP resolution and a 9 Mbps H.265 bitrate at 30 fps, which works out to roughly 97 GB per camera per day of continuous recording. H.265's smart-codec efficiency is what keeps that figure in check - the same 8MP sensor encoded in plain H.264 would typically push meaningfully more data per day for a similar image quality, since H.265 compresses static scene detail more aggressively between motion frames.

Scaling from a single camera to a fleet is linear: 16 cameras times 30 days at ~97 GB/camera/day lands at approximately 47 TB of continuous-recording storage. Push retention to 60 or 90 days, or add more cameras, and the figure scales up in direct proportion. At 16 cameras and this bitrate, the recording head-end falls into the Entry NVR class - enough channel and throughput headroom for this fleet size without stepping up to a mid-tier or enterprise chassis.

Use the calculator by dragging the camera count and retention-period sliders and switching the recording schedule to see the storage total recompute instantly. Selecting a motion-only or scheduled-recording profile instead of always-on applies a duty factor that reduces the effective recording hours per day, which can meaningfully cut the total versus continuous 24/7 capture.

The calculator sizes storage capacity: it does not account for real-world scene-activity variance (a busy entrance will push past the 9 Mbps average more often than a quiet corridor), RAID or redundancy overhead on the physical drives, a separate failover or long-term archive tier, network write-bandwidth limits across the fleet, or the exact make, model and count of drives to fit in the NVR. Those decisions sit with the storage and network design, not this planning figure.