Who Actually Asks for Your Footage, and What They Need
Most cameras are bought to deter, but that is not when they earn their keep. They earn it weeks later, when somebody official asks a question and the answer has to come out of a recorder in the back office. It is worth knowing, before that day, who asks, what they need, and how long you have.
Three parties, one request
The insurer. After a break-in or a loss, your carrier wants documentation. The Insurance Information Institute's guidance is specific: for a crime loss, “contact the police and obtain a copy of the police report”, prepare an inventory of what was damaged or taken, and be ready for a signed, sworn proof of loss, generally due within 60 days of the insurer's request. Photos and video support the inventory; they do not replace it. The claim is a written account with evidence attached.
The police, and then a prosecutor. The Department of Justice's own primer for prosecutors lists security cameras and DVRs at businesses first among sources of video evidence and notes that “some estimate that video evidence is involved in about 80 percent of crimes”. It also sets out the requirement that catches stores out: video has to be authenticated. Under Federal Rule of Evidence 901, “the proponent must produce evidence sufficient to support a finding that the item is what the proponent claims it is” - in practice, someone testifying that the camera was working, that the timestamp is right, and that this clip is a fair and accurate representation of what happened. A file on a USB stick with no one able to say where it came from is worth much less than the same file with a clear account behind it.
How this looks in a real city: Boston's annual surveillance report describes a May 2024 Roxbury robbery where the store owner handed over his own video, detectives pulled better footage from a business next door, and an arrest followed; in another convenience-store robbery the same year, the suspect was “identified and arrested within days” using private cameras. The report also notes that the city's own camera footage is kept 30 days and then automatically overwritten - the same clock that runs on your recorder.
Your own dispute with an employee. This one surprises owners most. If you terminate someone and they file for unemployment, the burden is on you. Michigan's official guide to unemployment appeal hearings states that in misconduct cases “the burden is always on the employer”, that documents, pictures and videos can be offered as evidence, and that a person with first-hand knowledge must attend to explain them. Exhibits generally have to be sent to the other side and the tribunal days before the hearing. Hearsay gets rejected. A clip with nobody to speak to it is not much of an exhibit.
The clock nobody mentions at the point of sale
Every one of those requests arrives after the fact, and the recorder does not wait. Thirty days is the industry norm - one vendor's own blog gives retention options from 15 to 365 days and calls 30 days the figure used for “most of our deployments”. Some regulated businesses have a longer floor written into law: Massachusetts requires licensed cannabis establishments to keep 24-hour recordings “available for immediate viewing by the Commission on request for at least the preceding 90 calendar days”, with a synchronised date and time stamp embedded in every recording. For everyone else, the default is whatever the installer set, and it is usually thirty days or less.
That is the trap. The insurer's proof of loss can take weeks. An unemployment hearing can be scheduled a month out. The prosecutor's charging window is 24 to 48 hours, which is fast in the other direction. By the time you know exactly which forty seconds matter, the recorder may have written over them.
What to do about it, whatever system you use
Three habits cover most of it, and none requires new equipment.
Know your retention number. Open the recorder's settings and find out how many days you actually keep, then write it on a label on the box. Everything below depends on it.
Export the same day, not the same month. When anything happens that could become a claim, a police report or a termination, pull the clip immediately and put it somewhere that is not the recorder. Include a wider window than you think you need - the ten minutes before and after, not just the moment.
Write down what happened while you remember. Date, time, camera, who was present, what you saw, what you did. This is the part that turns a video file into evidence, and it is the part that is missing in almost every case. It is also, conveniently, the same document all three parties are asking for.
Where our system fits
The written record is the product, not a by-product. The first AI watches every camera and writes down what happens in plain English as it happens, so the account exists before anyone asks for it. When something matters, you get a text with a short clip and a sentence explaining what it saw and why it was sent - which is, almost word for word, what an adjuster, a detective or a hearing officer is going to ask you to produce.
The video itself stays where it belongs, on your recorder: it is not stored in the cloud, and the clip attached to an alert expires within 24 hours. That keeps the export habit important. We tell you where to look and give you the sentence to go with it; the recorder is still the copy of record, and it is still running its thirty-day clock.
Shobdo VideoRAG is an AI agent for the security cameras your store already owns. It writes down what it sees and texts you only when something matters. Learn more or book a conversation.