When designers want to minimize storage requirements in surveillance, they should use?

Choosing h.264 over Motion JPEG is the optimal decision for minimizing storage requirements in surveillance systems. H.264, also known as AVC (Advanced Video Coding), is a highly efficient video compression format. It reduces the size of video files significantly while maintaining a high level of video quality. This efficiency is particularly crucial in surveillance applications where high-resolution video can generate large amounts of data.

Motion JPEG, on the other hand, compresses each frame of video individually. This method results in larger file sizes compared to H.264, as it does not take advantage of inter-frame compression techniques that dynamically reference previous frames, a key feature of H.264. This difference in compression efficiency means that using H.264 can lead to substantial savings in storage space, which is a critical consideration in surveillance systems where continuous recording can quickly fill available storage.

In contrast, continuous recording does not differentiate storage usage strategies effectively, as it results in a constant stream of data regardless of the events being captured. Event-based recording is more efficient but does not necessarily relate to the choice of codec. Additionally, the choice between types of storage (external drives vs. cloud) isn’t a direct factor in the efficiency of the video compression itself, thus making these options less relevant for the