Retention time and storage of recordings and investigations (explained)

The retention time of video recordings is a setting in XProtect Management Client that defines how long the recordings are stored in the system database. By default, the retention time period is seven days. When the retention time expires, the recordings are deleted.

If you want to change the retention time or the maximum database size, contact your system administrator. For detailed feature descriptions and procedures for configuration and maintenance, see the administrator manual for XProtect VMS.

On the Views tab and the Investigations tab, you can play back video recordings not older than the number of days defined in the retention time settings.

If you want to prevent your recordings from being deleted, you must create an investigation on the Investigations tab. When you create this investigation, you can play back, export, and download the videos even if the recordings have been deleted from the system database.

In XProtect Management Client, the system administrator can also enable a setting for the investigation retention time that defines how long the investigations are stored on the mobile server. By default, the retention time period is seven days. When you enable this setting, all investigations that have been created before the retention time period are deleted.

To prevent your investigations from being deleted, you can prepare video exports and download the investigations on your computer.