Recording 4K cameras.
4K gives you detail you can crop into afterwards, which is exactly what matters when you need to identify somebody. It also costs about four times as much of everything, so it is worth putting it where it earns that.
Roughly four times the pixels of 1080p. In practice that means you can zoom into a recording after the event and still have something usable — a face at the far end of a yard, a plate in the corner of a wide view. It is the difference between knowing somebody was there and knowing who.
- Storage, roughly fourfoldIf 4 or 5 cameras on motion fill 500 GB in 3 to 4 months at 1080p, plan accordingly. Storage planning.
- ProcessingDecoding and analysing four times the pixels is real work, and it is the main thing that limits how many cameras one PC will take.
- BandwidthFine on a wired LAN, painful over Wi-Fi or a remote link.
- LightSmaller pixels gather less light. A cheap 4K camera can be worse at night than a good 1080p one — the sensor matters more than the number.
- Record the main stream, display the sub streamFull resolution in the archive, cheap tiles on screen. This one change transforms how many cameras a PC will carry.
- 4K where you identify, 1080p where you observeEntrances, tills and lanes in 4K; corridors and general awareness do not need it.
- Drop the frame rate before the resolutionMost scenes are fine well under 30 fps, and it scales almost linearly.
- H.265 if both ends support itMeaningfully smaller than H.264 for the same picture.
Resolution helps, but placement, lens and infrared decide whether plates read at all — a well-aimed 1080p camera beats a badly-aimed 4K one every time. The LPR setup guide covers it.
Quick answers.
Will VISEC record 4K?
Yes. It records what the camera streams, and 4K ONVIF cameras are found by a scan like any other.
How many 4K cameras can one PC run?
Fewer than 1080p cameras, and how many depends on the machine and how much recognition is on — see how many cameras one PC handles.
Is 4K better for night?
Not automatically. Sensor quality and lens matter more; a 4K camera with a small sensor can be worse in low light than a good 1080p one.
Do I need 4K for plate recognition?
No. VISEC reads plates from ordinary ONVIF cameras. Aim, lens and infrared matter far more than the pixel count.
Find out on one camera, free.
The free license is the complete program — recording, alerts, plate recognition, QR reading and access control. It does not expire.