I have mine set to record when there is motion. You can playback and review any day in the calendar month, starting from 12:00am onward. If you have an idea what time you want to review, you just click on that time stamp and move forward or back in 30sec intervals, speed up, slow down, pause and zoom. If you want to review all of the recording, you can speed it up to bypass all of the non-activity...otherwise, you can set it to motion activated recording and review what you have.