Can a NAS be used as a surveillance recorder? I stuffed six cameras in, wrote down the wrong address, and the whole night was completely empty

Last year, when we installed surveillance cameras at home, all six heads were aimed at POE. I didn't buy a finished NVR recorder and just stuffed it into that FeiNiu NAS (I wrote an article on how to choose POE wiring monitoring network planning). The idea is wonderful: the machine is ready-made, the hard drive is ready, and the mobile app is ready-made. On the day I actually added the camera, I spent the whole night on an RTSP address—the kit showed the addition was successful, the preview screen went black, and all the video files were 0KB. This article will explain the complete process and pitfalls of using a NAS as a video recorder.

clarify first: how is a NAS used as a video recorder compared to a finished NVR

What is the purpose of a finished

NVR? Plug in the power, connect the camera, connect the monitor—just turn it on and watch. Decode and upload to the wall in one go. The advantage is worry-free, but the downside is it's sealed—the hard drive must be installed according to its rules, and the capacity won't grow on its own, so you can't even connect with other documents at home.

NAS the opposite. Storage can be expanded freely; if 4TB isn't enough, switch to 8TB, and you can even share a machine with albums and download discs; Remote video streaming is free, and there's already an app. The trade-off is that adding cameras requires some understanding of protocols, decoding and wall installation is basically out of reach, and watching videos on TV requires installing apps on the box.

In short: If you already have a NAS at home that keeps running for a long time and doesn't have many heads, don't buy NVRs anymore; I just want to buy a set and just install it; the finished set is much more worry-free.

add cameras, take the ONVIF path first

Feiniu's monitoring center, click to add a camera, and it will first scan the local area network. This step is ONVIF, the industry-standard protocol, which basically recognizes wired cables from mainstream brands like Hikvision, Dahua, TP, and Mercury. After scanning, select the camera management password, and the screen will appear—two minutes in and out.

My family has six heads, four of whom came in like this, and it went so smoothly that I thought I could finish today. By the fifth time, it got stuck—those two indoor wireless connectors, reinstalled after renovation, and to avoid competing with the mainnet, I was connected to the 2.4G IoT private network. The surveillance center scanned three times and was empty. Later, I realized: automatic detection relies on LAN broadcasting, broadcast packets can't cross the subnet, NAS is on the mainnet, cameras are on the private network, and both sides can't see each other.

solution isn't complicated. Abandon auto-discovery and choose manual addition, fill in the camera address for IP, change the protocol from ONVIF to general RTSP, and it works the same way. If you want to avoid trouble later, you can tie the camera to a static IP so it doesn't reboot and change seats one day.

ONVIF can't recognize them, you can manually fill in RTSP, and the address format varies by company

RTSP is a universal channel for video streaming from cameras, but the challenge lies in the wide variety of address formats from brand to brand—copying a single wrong character can cause a black screen. The night I got down, this is exactly how it happened: the Hikvision firmware in the yard had been upgraded, and the stream fetch path was changed from the old format to the new one. I copied an old online tutorial, and the package actually showed it as a successful addition, but the actual stream wasn't pulled at all. The preview was spinning, and the recording was 0KB. I searched through official documentation late at night and only found out the firmware had changed the path.

two heartfelt reminders. First, if the camera password contains #, @For these symbols, before entering the address, you need to escape them. #在网址里是锚点记号, you have to write %23, otherwise no matter how you fill in, you won't connect—I spent an hour searching with a # number. Second, don't keep trying in the package. First, install VLC on your computer, open network streaming in the media menu, paste the address in, and if the screen shows the correct address, then fill it back into the monitoring center—one step and the solution.

there's an exception: Xiaomi cameras don't recognize these universal protocols, so the official team hasn't enabled RTSP. If you really want to connect to a NAS, you'll need tools like Go2RTC to run around a bit—it's a tinkering experience. If elderly or kids at home want to watch videos, using the Mijia app is much smoother.

video planning setup: separate main and sub-bitstreams, saving half the storage

successful addition is only halfway; the recording plan is the key to how many days the hard drive can last. Here's a setting many people don't know: the main stream and substream can be used separately. Video is streamed via main bitrate, around 4MB, with top-notch image quality; Phone preview uses sub-streams, less than 1MB, allowing remote viewing without lag and saving data. When adding cameras to the monitoring center, you can assign two streams—don't be lazy and just fill in one.

continuous recording or motion detection, by location: courtyard and entrances with three consecutive exits, no minute missing if something happens; Indoor with three heads on detection is enough, and the daily load drops from 260G to 75G. How many days can save? I calculated in another article. Set a separate directory for the storage location for recording, preferably on a separate monitoring drive—a 24×7 writing task. Don't crowd it with downloads or albums. On one hand, it to take space ; on the other, the surveillance keeps writing to the disk. The hard drive in the same pool is basically ruined, sleep check I spent an entire night checking the logs before catching it. When selecting a disk, also choose a dedicated surveillance drive. The write speed is designed to be continuous daily, so NAS choose a hard drive have a record.

Synology and Feiniu have different accounts: you need to calculate before buying an authorization code

use your own Flying Ox, the monitoring center is currently free, and you can add any number of heads you want. But my colleague Xiao Zhou's family is renovating a new house, and the NAS is Synology. Adding cameras is different in the story: the first two heads go smoothly, but when adding the third, a window pops up asking you to enter the camera authorization code.

Synology's Surveillance Station monitoring suite comes with two free licenses. Starting from the third end, you need to buy one license for each additional one. The official price is 400 yuan per route, and third-party channels can also get one for over 280 yuan. Xiao Zhou has three heads, so the ticket for the third head costs 400 yuan, almost as much as the price of a single camera.

So before buying Synology, count how many heads you need at home: up to two, the free credit just enough to cover it, so you can use it with your eyes closed; Above three, include the authorization fee in the budget in advance, or follow the style of 'I used Feiniu' and other uncountable methods. By the way, when watching remote footage and occasionally spinning and not opening, it's mostly a network-side issue. you can't watch surveillance when you go out I've written about the process, but it has nothing to do with the addition process.

After adding, don't rush to close the page: Three items self-check

the first item, check the timestamp in the corner of the screen. The camera's factory time is wrong. If you don't calibrate, you can spend half a day checking the recording by the time. I've suffered from being 11 minutes slower, having both the camera and NAS point to the same NTP server—a one-minute thing (the router side timing is a pitfall I've written about same principle).

second item: replay a video from last night. Don't trust preview; a normal preview doesn't mean the video is fine—that night, I used two configurations for preview and recording, and the wrong path quietly wrote a bunch of 0KB files. Casual replay at 3 a.m., just one minute at random—only if you can release it is it truly effective.

third, take a look at the write instructions in the storage pool. After the recording starts, the hard drive light should stay on or flash regularly, and the storage analyzer will show the recording directory growing day by day. If the directory is still empty after a few days, go back and look up the address.

Finish with a sequence: count the heads and select the system (if you have two channels for Synology, the authorization fee counts), → wired ones use ONVIF auto add→ if you can't find it, manually fill in RTSP (passwords with symbols are first escaped, VLC verifies before filling), → video paired with main bitstream preview, gamete bitstream preview→ video directory separately → replay the next day for one minute for acceptance. The difficulty of using a NAS as a video recorder is that one night you add it. Once properly paired, it is much better than a finished NVR.