Clip Limits With Alarm.com Video Service

Hi, DIYers. This is Michael from Alarm Grid. And today, I'm going to talk about video clip limits and camera limits, that are included in alarm.com video service. So we have a lot of information to cover. So I'll just jump right into it. The first thing you need to understand is that there are both monthly clip limits and total clip limits. For the base value, by the way, you get 1,000 total clip limits and 1,000 monthly clip limits. And you also get support for cameras and one SVR device. That's with an alarm.com-- a true alarm.com video plan. So if you have alarm.com video service, such as an Alarm Grid Platinum Plan or an Alarm Grid Self-Platinum Plan. Then, that's what you'll be getting, 1,000 monthly and total clips, four cameras, and one SVR device. That's what supported at the base value. So just to give you a little bit of information about what monthly and total clips are. Let me start with monthly clips. That's how many clips are saved to alarm.com each month. Once you reach your monthly clip limit, no new clips will be saved or stored on alarm.com. You have to increase the clip limit, if you want to keep storing clips. Deleting clips won't help you in this case. And once you reach the max limit you can delete clips all you want for the month, but you're not going to be recording anymore, unless you increase your monthly limit. And one important thing to note is that, when you reach your clip limit. Then, non-alarm recording rules are automatically paused. That happens once you reach your limit. And so to resume recording, you must manually unpack those rules on your alarm.com account. That's true whether you've increased your clip limit sense or the month has ended and your click on it has reset. You will have to go in and you will have to resume the non-alarm recording rules. So make sure to do that if you reach your clip limit. Alarm recording rules are not paused, just so you know. But like I said, once you reach your monthly clip limit, you're only going to be able to keep storing new clips if you increase that limit. You can delete clips, that won't help you. But that's not to be confused with total clip limits. Total clip limits refer to clips stored on alarm.com across any time period. Now, when you reach your total quote limit. Then, it won't stop recording clips. It'll still record and save new clips. However, what it will do, is it will automatically delete the oldest clips to make room for the new ones. So let's say, you're at that base limit of 1,000 total clips and you get your 1,000-- excuse me, 1,000 first clip. Then, your oldest clip will be deleted. Now, you do have the option of protecting clips. So that would mean that you can go and protect a clip that you don't want to be deleted. Basically, alarm.com will delete the oldest unprotected clip. Now, If you go and you protect as many clips as you have for your total clip limit. Then, no new clips will be stored. Then you'll be out of luck. So as long as you don't protect that many clips. You'd literally be protecting at least 1,000 clips, if you were doing that. But it will just delete the oldest unprotected clip to make room for the next clip coming in. So it's FIFO, First In First Out, if you want to look at it that way. So those are the clip limits, like I said monthly in total. Now, your options for increasing clip limits and also for increasing camera limits. Remember, at the base, you have 1,000 total clips, 1,000 monthly clips, four cameras, and one SVR device, but you can increase those limits. So if you enable video analytics, that includes all the great video analytics features, which we've discussed in the past. And it will also increase your base clip limit. So when you have video analytics enabled on your accounts, it increases the base limit from 1,000 clips, that's monthly and total, to 3,000 monthly and total clips. So it'll go from 1,000 to 3,000 as your base. And so we'll enable video analytics at no charge for any customer with alarm.com video service, who asks for it. The reason we don't enable it by default, it's just because it costs us a little bit more, but we're happy to enable it at no additional charge. So if you have alarm.com video service, then, feel free to ask us to enable all alarm.com video analytics. If you have the cameras that support the video analytics features, you'll get to take advantage of those features. And like I said, your clip limit will increase from 1,000 monthly in total to 3,000 monthly in total for your base levels. That won't affect your camera limit support or your SVR support. You'll still have four cameras, as your base, and one SVR device as your base. Now, if that's not enough, upgrading the clip limit hasn't gotten to where you need to be. Or you need to add cameras beyond the four, or an additional SVR device, whatever. Then, you can add what we refer to as-- what alarm.com refers to as, video expansion packs. So each expansion pack will provide 5,000 more monthly and total clips, in addition to the base, and four more cameras, and one more SVR device. So just to give you an example. Let's say you have alarm.com with video analytics. Your base is 3,000 monthly in total, for cameras, and one SVR device. And then, you go and you add a video expansion pack. So that would increase it by the aforementioned values. So then, your monthly and total clip limits would both be at 8,000, they're increased by 5,000. You would go from four cameras to eight cameras being supported. And you would go from one SVR device to two SVR devices. So it increased it by 5,000 monthly and total clips, four more cameras, and one more SVR device. And you can keep adding video expansion packs. There is a limit to the number of video expansion packs that you can add, but it's pretty high up there. I'm not actually sure of the exact values, but we've never encountered a customer who's actually needed-- who's ever maxed out their possible video expansion packs. So it's very unlikely you would do that. We could discuss that with you if that became the case, but really in almost every scenario, there's no way you would max out the video expansion packs. You just keep adding more ones. But you will have to pay more monthly. Your monthly fee will increase, when you add video expansion packs. So definitely, keep that in mind. We can discuss that with you if that's something you need to add, but that's the way to increase both the clip limits, monthly in total, the camera limits, and SVR are limits. And one last thing I do want to talk about, you can use alarm.com Skybell, a single alarm.com Skybell device, one alarm.com Skybell device, even if you don't have alarm.com video service at all. So if you just have an Alarm Grid plan, Alarm Grid Gold Plan, for instance, with access to alarm.com, but you don't have true video surveillance. You don't have alarm.com cameras. You don't have support for alarm.com cameras. You just have base access to alarm.com. You can still add one single alarm.com Skybell device to your account. Now, with that, you will get 400 monthly clips and 400 total clips. So your limit will be 400 monthly in total. And there's no way to increase that clip limit, either the monthly or the total. And there is no way to increase the number of Skybell devices supported. The only way to do that would be to upgrade to a true video monitoring plan. So if you're just on base alarm.com with no video surveillance. You get 400 monthly total clips for your single Skybell device. And like I said, it's one sky bell device. If you want more, then, you would have to get alarm.com video plan-- an alarm.com video plan. And just keep in mind that the Skybell device-- if you do have alarm.com video surveillance, the Skybell device that you add, will count towards your camera limit. So while you don't need an alarm.com plan-- a video plan to support one single Skybell, that sky bell will count towards your camera limit. If you do get the alarm.com video surveillance. So just keep that in mind. So that covers everything you need to know about alarm.com video clip limits, camera limits, and SVR limits. If you have questions about alarm.com, or you're interested in signing up for service, whether that be, alarm.com video surveillance, or just monitoring service in general. Send an email to support@alarmgrid.com. If you found this video helpful, make sure to give it a thumbs up, below to like the video. And remember to subscribe to our channel for updates on future videos. We hope you enjoyed the video. Thank you.