Frames Per Second Captured/Displayed
FPS or Frames Per Second refers to the speed at which the camera records and plays back video. At 30fps, the live video display and playback is completely fluid just like a television show. Slower speeds mean less fluid video, resulting in "choppier" playback. For a system with a PC Card, the card controls how many FPS can be recorded at once, and these must be split evenly between the number of cameras plugged into the card.
For example, if you use a 20fps card and plug 16 cameras into it, each camera only records/plays back at 1.25fps (very choppy). If you use a 480fps card with 16 cameras, each camera gets 30fps and video playback is very smooth.
The more FPS, the more powerful the card will be, and the smoother the video will be. For best performance, we recommend selecting the system that has the highest total FPS and trying to get as close to 30fps per camera as your budget will allow.
