Patent ID: 8548297

Claim:
A method, comprising: obtaining a current retention time of a storage associated with a digital recorder; obtaining current bitrates of channels used to transmit video captured by edge devices communicating with the digital recorder, wherein the current bitrates are actual bitrates detected at the digital recorder; obtaining bitrates of the edge devices over time; automatically determining change in compression rates and thereby change bitrates to be allocated to at least a portion of the channels according to the current retention time and the bitrates of the edge devices over time; transmitting the change in compression rates derived by the bitrates to be allocated to the channels to edge devices communicating with the digital recorder; wherein the method is performed in edge devices communicating with more than one digital recorders sharing the storage, wherein the storage capacity is shared between the more than one digital recorders, wherein bitrates obtained over time for one digital recorder compensate bitrate overload obtained over time in another digital recorder of the more than one digital recorders by another.