Record Foscam IP camera live feed

recordCam.sh

#!/bin/bash
# recordCam.sh
# ------------
# This script saves the live video from the Foscam IP camera to a full-quality mp4 file.
# I chose to split the files every 15 minutes (900 seconds), to quickly find the time I need.
# Note: audio is not saved as my cameras don't have a microphone connected to them.
# -----------
# Author: @LucaTNT
# License: BSD

# Uncomment this line if you're having trouble with zero-sized files (tipically happens on low end cameras), thanks Eric! (https://lucatnt.com/2014/08/record-and-archive-video-from-ip-cameras/#comment-48019)
# killall -INT ffmpeg

# The file name. I use the date to make finding files easier.
name="`date +%Y-%m-%d_%H.%M`"

# Where the videos will be saved
BASEpath='/path/to/surveillance/folder'
RECpath=$BASEpath'/video'

# Save the streams using ffmpeg at 30 fps, stopping the capture after 900 seconds (15 minutes). Add more lines if you have more than 2 cameras
ffmpeg -i rtsp://username:[email protected]:80/videoMain -r 30  -vcodec copy -an -t 900 $RECpath/cam01/$name.mp4 </dev/null >/dev/null 2>/tmp/cam01.log &
ffmpeg -i rtsp://username:[email protected]:80/videoMain -r 30  -vcodec copy -an -t 900 $RECpath/cam02/$name.mp4 </dev/null >/dev/null 2>/tmp/cam02.log &

Great script -

this fills up my hard drive within a day or so which compression command do you suggest ?

You could compress by replacing -vcodec copy with -vcodec x264 -vb 500k (where 500k is your desired bitrate), but keep in mind this will stress your CPU way harder than just saving the stream as is.