¶ Getting started with WebDisk CVR
This page walks you from the moment you buy the service to the moment you see the first recording from your own cameras in the panel. The whole journey usually takes a single afternoon: you buy the service, set a password, connect storage, add a recorder and wait a quarter of an hour or so for the first files.
¶ What you need before you start
CVR is a second copy of your recordings, kept off site. It does not replace your recorder and it does not control your cameras — your own equipment still decides what gets recorded and when, and we simply collect the finished footage and put it somewhere safe.
Get four things ready:
| What | Why | Whose |
|---|---|---|
| A working recorder (NVR) and cameras | they do the recording; CVR only collects the finished files | yours |
| An internet connection at the site | the recordings have to be pushed out of the building — what matters is upload speed, not download | yours |
| Storage in WebDisk Files | the place your recordings live; you buy it separately and the footage stays on your own account | yours, bought in Files |
| A WebDisk account | one account for both CVR and Files — same e-mail address, same password | created when you buy |
⚠️ Storage is not included in the price of CVR, and without it the service has nowhere to save your recordings. You can buy CVR first and add storage later — the panel will point you to Files at the right moment.
💡 Also make sure the clock in your recorder and cameras is correct. The timeline in the archive comes from the footage itself, so a device with a clock that is out will place its recordings in the wrong spot on the timeline.
¶ Step 1. Buy CVR
- Go to
cvr.webdisk.ioand click Buy. - Enter your e-mail address and the number of recorders you want to archive. One recorder means one device sending us footage. You can change the number later.
- Click Go to payment and complete the payment.
Price: 45 zł net per connected recorder, per month (55.35 zł gross at the 23% VAT rate). That price covers:
- receiving recordings from your recorder into your storage,
- an index of recordings and a timeline in the panel,
- playback in the browser (where the format allows it), downloading clips and packing up a selected range,
- sharing a recording via a link valid for 3 days,
- automatic monitoring of free space in your storage, with an e-mail warning before it starts running out.
What the price does not cover: storage capacity (bought separately in WebDisk Files), installing and configuring cameras, controlling what gets recorded, and any kind of footage analysis — we do not recognise faces, number plates or people, and we do not look inside your material.
Once the payment goes through, you will receive an e-mail titled "WebDisk CVR — set your account password".
¶ Step 2. Set a password and sign in to the panel
- Open the e-mail and click Set password.
- Enter a password (at least 12 characters) and repeat it. This is the password for your whole WebDisk account — you will use it to sign in to Files as well, which is where storage is bought.
- Click Set password, then Go to the panel.
- Next time, go to
cvr.webdisk.ioand click Sign in.
In the panel, under your e-mail address in the top right corner, you can turn on two-factor authentication (2FA) using an app such as Google Authenticator. It is optional, but well worth it for a CCTV archive — access to the recordings means access to the personal data of everyone who walked into shot.
The panel has four tiles: Subscription, Storage, Recorder and Site. Clicking a tile opens the matching section; below them you can always see your sites and the way into the archive.
¶ Step 3. Connect your storage
Storage is a bucket in WebDisk Files — a space for data that belongs to you. CVR writes to it only under its own cvr/ prefix and neither sees nor touches the rest of your files.
- In the panel, click the Storage tile.
- If you do not have space in Files yet, click Buy storage in Files — the purchase opens in a second tab. Come back to the panel afterwards.
- From the Already have storage? Enter its name list, pick your storage. If the list fails to load, click I will type the name myself and enter the bucket name by hand.
- Click Connect storage.
After a moment a row appears in the table with the bucket name and prefix, plus a working badge. An unverified badge means we are still checking access — refresh the page in a minute.
The statistics button next to your storage shows how much footage arrives per day, how far back the archive reaches and how full the storage is. Statistics appear after the first full day of recording — at the start you will see a message saying there are none yet.
⚠️ It is the size of your storage that decides how far back your archive reaches — not some "retention period" setting. When space starts running low, we delete the oldest recordings to make room for new ones, and we warn you by e-mail beforehand. For how to match capacity to the number of days you want to keep, see Retention and storage space.
You can connect several storage buckets (the Connect another storage button) and assign different buckets to different sites — useful, for example, when you do not want busy traffic at one site to shorten the archive of another.
¶ Step 4. Add a recorder and choose a route
A "route" is the way your recordings reach your storage. You pick it once, when you add the device.
¶ Which route is right for me
| Route | Choose it when | How it works |
|---|---|---|
| SFTP | you have an ordinary recorder (Dahua, Hikvision and most others) that can send files | the recorder sends the recordings itself to an account we create for it, over an encrypted connection — this is the default and recommended choice |
| FTP | your device does not support SFTP (for example it only sends single JPEG frames) | the same as SFTP, but without encryption: the password and the recordings travel across the network in plain text |
| UniFi Protect | you have Ubiquiti equipment running UniFi Protect | we set up an encrypted tunnel to your gateway and we pull the recordings from Protect ourselves |
| Footage already in storage (NAS) | your NAS already replicates recordings to your storage in Files | we collect nothing — we only index the folder you point us at and give you a viewer for it |
Step-by-step instructions: Recorder over SFTP or FTP and UniFi Protect recorder.
¶ Adding the device
- Click the Recorder tile.
- In the Recorders section, enter a recorder name (for example "Warehouse — gate"), optionally the make and model, and pick a protocol from the list.
- Click Add recorder.
If you pick FTP, the panel will warn you that the connection is not encrypted. The FTP account has write access only — it cannot download or delete anything — but the transfer itself stays unencrypted, and it is for you to judge whether that is acceptable for your recordings.
If you pick Footage already in storage (NAS), you also give the prefix in the bucket, meaning the folder your recordings sit in. We have read-only access to that folder.
If you pick UniFi Protect, you first generate a tunnel (the Generate configuration button in the UniFi connection section) and then enter the username and password of a local account created in Protect — the panel walks you through it step by step.
¶ Place the recorder at a site
A device only starts working once you assign it to a site, because that is when it gets storage, its own folder and an account to send to.
- Click the Site tile.
- Enter a site name (for example "Green Street shop"), pick the storage for this site and a recorder from the devices you have just added.
- Click Add site. You add further devices from the site card using the Place here button.
On the SFTP and FTP routes you will now see a Settings to enter in your recorder section: address, protocol, username and password.
⚠️ We show the password once. We do not keep it on our side and we cannot recover it. Enter it in your recorder straight away or save it in a password manager. If you lose it, delete the recorder and add it again.
¶ Step 5. 🔴 UniFi: one decision before the first pull
This applies only to the UniFi Protect route. Protect keeps its own archive on your device, so when you add the recorder we ask, in the First run field, where we should start:
| Choice | What we do | What to expect |
|---|---|---|
| New recordings only, from now on (default) | we start from the moment the device is added and do not reach back | first clips in the archive after a quarter of an hour or so; your connection and storage only carry current traffic |
| Everything Protect still has | we pull the entire history Protect still holds, starting with the newest recordings | the pull may take all night and fill your storage before you see a single recording; the connection at the site is heavily loaded throughout |
Why this is a decision rather than a setting: afterwards there is nothing left to change. Either the history is already with us, or it has dropped out of Protect — and then there is nowhere left to get it from. The only way back is to delete the recorder and add it again with the other setting, which for "everything" means repeating the whole pull.
⚠️ Before you choose Everything Protect still has, check in Files how much capacity you have. In the first few days we do not yet know the pace of your cameras, so we watch your storage against fixed percentage thresholds: from 90% full we warn you by e-mail, and from 97% we start deleting the oldest footage. A history uploaded all at once can cross those thresholds immediately — and then part of what we have just pulled will be deleted to make room for current recordings. For how to work this out, see Retention and storage space.
In practice: choose "new recordings only" unless you have specific footage from before you bought the service that you must keep, and you are confident your storage will hold it.
¶ What you will see when it works — and how soon
We look for new files in storage every 10 minutes, so a recording that has just arrived waits a little while before it shows up in the panel.
| When | What happens |
|---|---|
| a few to fifteen minutes | a date appears next to the recorder in the Last seen field — a sign that the device has connected to us |
| within about 20 minutes | the first clips appear in the archive; an empty archive before that is normal, not a fault |
| after the first full day | the Storage card, under the statistics button, shows the daily growth and the date the archive reaches back to |
To check the result, click Archive next to the recorder. You will see a date picker and a timeline of recordings — click a clip and you get Play and Download clip, while dragging across the timeline selects a range to download or to share via a link.
💡 Not everything will play in the browser. Footage in MP4/H.264 (UniFi Protect among others) plays straight in the panel. Proprietary formats — such as
.davfrom Dahua recorders — as well as.mkv,.aviand.tsare available for download only; we do not transcode footage. The panel says so plainly: "This format will not play in the browser — download the file".
¶ If the archive is still empty after an hour
- Check in the Storage card that your storage has the working badge rather than "unverified" or "intake suspended" — the panel lists the reason for a suspension below the table.
- Check that the recorder is placed at a site. A device labelled not yet assigned sends nothing.
- On the SFTP/FTP route, check in the recorder that the address, username and password were entered exactly as the panel showed them, and that sending is switched on at all — Recorder over SFTP or FTP.
- On the UniFi route, check in the UniFi connection section whether the gateway has made contact, and whether the route and firewall rule from the instructions are set on the gateway — UniFi Protect recorder.
- Still nothing? Write to support@webdisk.io, giving the make and model of your recorder — that usually decides the answer. You can also send a report straight from the panel with the Report a problem button.
¶ Before you go live — two formal matters
- CCTV recordings are personal data, and you are the controller of that data, not WebDisk. The signs at the entrance, the privacy notice, the legal basis and the retention period are all yours to handle. What exactly needs doing is set out in CCTV controller obligations (Polish only).
- The terms of the service — including how the oldest recordings are deleted, the limits on links and what happens in a failure — are in the CVR Terms of Service (Polish only), and the processing of personal data on your behalf is governed by the data processing agreement (DPA) (Polish only).
💡 Cancelling CVR does not delete your recordings. The storage belongs to your Files account, so the footage stays where it is — all that ends is the archiving and your access to the panel.