How to Configure Motion Detection on Hikvision Cameras

Introduction

Storage is one of the largest ongoing costs in a CCTV system. H.265+ (also called HEVC+) is Hikvision’s enhanced video compression codec that dramatically reduces file sizes compared to older H.264 encoding—meaning you need fewer and smaller hard drives to store the same amount of footage.

How H.265+ Works

H.265+ analyses the background of each scene and only encodes the pixels that change between frames. In a typical surveillance scenario where the background is mostly static, this approach reduces bandwidth and storage by up to 80% compared to H.264 and up to 50% compared to standard H.265.

Storage Savings in Practice

A single 4 MP camera recording 24/7 in H.264 uses roughly 35 GB per day. With H.265+, that drops to around 7–10 GB per day. Over 30 days, one camera saves over 750 GB—multiply that by 16 cameras and the HDD savings are enormous.

Compatibility

H.265+ is supported on virtually all current Hikvision cameras and NVRs. Older devices may only support H.264 or standard H.265. When upgrading, ensure both the camera and the NVR support H.265+ to take full advantage of the compression.

Quality Trade-offs

In most real-world scenes, H.265+ produces footage visually indistinguishable from H.264 recordings. In rare cases with very fast, unpredictable motion, some minor artefacts may appear. For 99% of surveillance applications, the quality is excellent.

FastEgy Recommendation

We enable H.265+ by default on all our installations. It is one of the easiest ways to cut system costs without sacrificing quality. Contact FastEgy for advice on upgrading older H.264 systems to H.265+ capable hardware.