Interested In An IPVM Bandwidth And Storage Calculator?

Sean, one item that will always happen when an estimator is used is that its results will be compared to another estimator.  One of the choices to be made is to decide if you want to present a 'CYA' bit rate, which will cause the result to demand more storage and other resources, or a middle of the road one which will tend to give a better answer concerning the points just mentioned. 

How about adding amperage calculations based upon cameras used in the camera calculator.

To be honest, there are quite a few out there.  I am not sure it is worth your while.  There is no harm in it.

Probably yes, along with couple more, to get average result.

As a server and storage vendor, we are absolutely interested in the bandwidth calculator.

This is a great topic! So misunderstood when it comes to the details and so difficult to discern differences from one calculator to another.

If you can, in scientific method, do a comparison between the numerous calculators out there and their comparative results, it would be a lot of work but exceptionally informational.

We out here in the video design world don't really need another calculator. We need to know why one calculator shows significantly different results from a different calculator based on "supposedly" similar or identical parameters. That is a fairly monumental task given the occlusion of raw deterministic data on a video stream.

There are knowns such as recording rate and recording resolution. 

There are so many variables to precisely verify/compare such as "scene complexity," "actual smart codec efficiency," "estimated motion hours per day, "I frame interval setting," and others.

Really tough task but you guys are smart enough and have the resources to prepare a scientific or nearly scientific comparison of some of the primary calculators out there.

Go for it. What would be exceptional if you decide to do your own calculator is to provide results from other calculators side by side with same parameters.

Yes, monumental request but hey, might as well ask! I suspect legal will have a problem with this as well. Brown water is clear to some and black to others.

One, there are a lot of calculators, yes, but I would prefer a vendor agnostic one and one from someone who doesn't sell stuff. Sometimes I need to refer people, potential clients, to a bandwidth calculator. But I don't deal in March Networks, as one example from Mark Jones, so I don't want to send clients to a product page I don't deal in. And I don't want clients going to "Joe's online CCTV shop", either.

Second, you're worried about people people putting too faith much into the "accuracy" of a storage calculator if you did one. But isn't it the same concern if someone puts too much faith into the accuracy of the example pictures you display for PPF in the Camera Calculator?

A lot of variables can affect the clarity in the above sample picture; quality of lens, air density, light levels, light direction, quality of the imager, codec, compression level, etc.

So to me, if you're willing to display the possible results of one calculation that could have wide variances in the real world, there shouldn't be a problem with another calculation that could have wide variances.

I will say the same thing as Mark says, it would be a nice like to have, but it wouldn't be a deal breaker if you declined to do one.

First of all, let's call them "estimators", not "calculators".  Also, from the comments, above, there is a risk of a conservative result negatively impacting sales.  Suggest the storage "estimator" produce a range of results..."low-middle-high", explaining the differences between best and worst case scenarios.

We once lost a project because our storage estimate was too high compared to a competitor.  Doing our lost-project analysis, we discovered that the spec called for 24 TB of storage. The spec also called for the storage to utilize RAID 5.  The competitor bid the entire drive system as available storage, whereas we increased the storage to provide the required net storage available under the RAID configuration. This caused us to include verbiage about RAID overhead in all future quotes.

Suggest any storage estimator include considerations for the various RAID overhead requirements.