Hi there,

I am looking for a videosurveillance application that would be upload-oriented, and able to do the following:

• Accept a mix of hardware: IP camera, USB camera, iOS-based IP cam software
• Reasonably simple to configure.
• Support for SFTP upload
• auto-delete oldest events when disk is nearing full. No manual review should ever be necessary (very important!)
• encryption of passwords used to access different servers
• works from encrypted HDD. Not necessary for storage HD or partition to be encrypted, as long as it is uploaded. May help with performance.
• Easily accessible start / stop button or command. It surely won't run 24 / 7.
• Records video in H264, as it gives smaller files, more suitable for uploading yet retaining quality.

Optional:
Emailing of alerts using remote SSL-connected SMTP

Why upload-oriented and encrypted applications disk? Simply because in case of a break-in, I assume the video recording computer to be sacrificial. So it must be able to complete its job before being destroyed or stolen, meaning, catch the face of the perpetrator. And if it gets stolen, it must not reveal anything about the accesses to SMTP or SFTP servers.

I already tried Motion, but upload saturated the router with connections until it crashed.
ZoneMinder 1.24 had much trouble running from an encrypted HDD. Camera configuration was awfully time-consuming, and it didn't like software-based IP cameras, couldn't upload to SFTP server, multiple modules failing at a time, etc. A nightmare.
BlueCherry looked nice, but is reserved to IP cameras-only, is paid-for (and expensive), and not FOSS.

It sounds to me like you need a dedicated hardware CCTV surveillance system, not an app that runs on a generic computer. But it's doubtful you will find a CCTV solution that supports all the different camera types you want (especially since you didn't mention CCTV cameras at all!)

I have some experience with low-end consumer-grade CCTV stuff. Lorex cameras and DVRs in particular. My guess is that since you appear to know much about surveillance already, and have pretty specific requirements, that you will not find anything that will satisfy you at the low-end consumer-grade level. The cameras, in particular, are pretty bad. Remote DVR operation is clunky. "Low-end consumer-grade" = "toys" pretty much. Prepare to spend a relatively large sum of money to move to "business-class" surveillance.

I had a glance there, but it seems no budget-minded CCTV system has built-in SFTP upload mechanisms. Plus, most of them aren't wireless, not in the budget-oriented at least. As I already pointed, I am definitely not looking to spend that much in a surveillance system, but I want it to be effective. Even one single, but powerful and stable camera could theoretically do the job, two being ideal, three covering it all, and four being overkill. As a backup, I run a similarly-spec'd MacBook, two cameras. CCTV software can easily be started and stopped, compresses in H264, uploads only in FTP but is fast. But it is running an expired shareware that's complicated to configure, and it doesn't foot the bill for an open-source model I wish to use (not a requirement, but definitely a large influence when I look for software).

Given these overall modest requirements (think, zone-differentiated motion capture, still snapshots, scheduled motion capture, PTZ, none of that is required, as I already seen on Windows-based software I don't want to use anymore because of shitty camera drivers. I want simple, reliable, secure), I believed a generic but sufficiently powerful laptop I don't use as often as before would see a nice repurpose that way. The point is, I don't know anything about surveillance further what I could find on the Internet, and my knowledge on cameras is cruelly lacking, for example. I am just using my own experience as a victim trying to make a checklist. It's just a matter of assembling the right parts, and it made sense to start with the core, e.g. recording application, but feel free to ask on specific requirements, or suggest addenda.