[India] Planning a dedicated long-term CCTV archival setup and wanted feedback before purchasing.
Use case:
- Hikvision CCTV system
- Nightly batch export using Hikvision software
- Automatic FFmpeg compression after export
- Long-term archival retention (~10 years)
- Auto-delete old raw footage after compression
- 24/7 operation
- Priority is storage efficiency, reliability and low power usage
Current planned setup:
Compute:
- MSI Cubi N ADL S Mini PC
- Intel N100
- 16GB RAM
- 1TB NVMe SSD for staging/export/compression
Storage:
- TerraMaster F4-212 4-bay NAS
Drives:
- Starting with 1×18TB WD Purple
- Expanding later to RAID/mirror setup
Compression pipeline:
- FFmpeg
- HEVC NVENC/QSV
- Aggressive archival settings
- Lower FPS + lower resolution archival copies
Typical command:
ffmpeg -hwaccel cuda -hwaccel_output_format cuda -i input.mp4 -vf "fps=1,scale_cuda=320:-2" -c hevc_nvenc -preset p1 -rc constqp -qp 45 -an output.mkv
Questions:
- Is N100 sufficient for this long-term workflow?
- Any reliability concerns with TerraMaster for decade-scale archival?
- Better HDD recommendations for cold CCTV storage?
- Better architecture under ~₹1 lakh budget?
- Any filesystem or automation recommendations?
- Anyone running similar automated FFmpeg archival pipelines 24/7?
Goal is not high-quality playback, only event/timeline archival while minimizing storage footprint. Please note I want to build this setup in India.
u/vkku — 7 days ago