New Hikvision NVR - Terrible performance

[jamesf]

New Hikvision NVR - Poor performance - SOLVED

Hi all! First post outside of my introduction. Been reading for about a month now.
I already have a Y-Cam camera but wanted to step it up..

I just received a Hikvision 7608 NI SE 8P with a 1 TB drive installed.
I bought it from B&H Photo since that is where we buy a lot of our gear for my business.
Happens to be an authorized reseller.

I also bought 2 Hikvision cameras from them.

Item	Qty	Item Description
HI2CD2212I54	1	BULLT/IP66/1.3MP/4mm/EXIR/30C
HI2CD2332I4M	1	3MP 4MM DN IR TUR POE

I just got back from a job in Philadelphia and spent the afternoon setting 1 camera and the NVR up to see what I have here.
I have not accessed the camera directly yet. Working only with the NVR at this point. I managed to figure out most of the features and menu options.

A few questions.

1- Why is the response of the user interface on the NVR so incredible slow....?
For example; Just now I am Clicking on Camera Setup / Image - It took ~50 seconds before the preview image appeared. 6 seconds before the Page appeared..
Changes to a setting such as Brightness takes ~15 seconds to appear in the preview after hitting Apply.
I understand these are not INTEL powered devices but with others saying "The NVR works great" I cannot imagine they are seeing what I am..

I checked the version of the firmware and it is the most recent Hikvision has listed
V2.3.10 Build 141128
Is there some basic setting or method of operation, or "trick" that I have not read about in my weeks of research?

2- What settings should I use to record to provide smooth playback within the NVR Playback?
When I playback now, Hitting the "Play" arrow gives me about 5 frames a minute..... it takes about 20 seconds to change from one frame to another skipping 15-20 or more frames between each..

Right now I am using:

Continuous
Recording Mode: Continuous
Stream Type: Video
Resolution: 1280 x 720P
BitRate Type: Variable Bit rate
Video Quality: Highest Quality
Frame Rate: 20FPS
Max BitRate mode: General
Max BitRate(Kbps): 2048
Max BitRate Recommended: 4096 (Kbps)

EVENT
Recording Mode: Continuous
Stream Type: Video
Resolution: 1280 x 720P
BitRate Type: Variable Bit rate
Video Quality: Highest Quality
Frame Rate: Full Frame
Max BitRate mode: General
Max BitRate(Kbps): 4096
Max BitRate Recommended: 6144 (Kbps)

I was going to work on remote access next.
Any advice would be great. If I need to provide more info please ask
Thanks!

 

[alastairstevenson]

We generally don't see posts complaining about NVR GUI performance, which suggests yours is anomalous in some way.
Admittedly my Hikvision NVR is a different model (7816) and firmware (3.0.8) but from the outset I was impressed by the responsiveness of the GUI, generally about 1-2 seconds between menus.
The NVR has a dual-core 2GHz ArmV7 CPU with DSP and 500MB RAM, with Linux running in RAM, so quite a respectable computing resource.

On your first example, a common factor is that the NVR needs to communicate with the camera before it can respond to your request.
I'm wondering if there is a communications bottleneck to the cameras. And by the way - what's the rationale for operating them at their lowest main stream resolution?
What's the NVR response like using menu selections where the camera is not in play?

It might be interesting to check how the NVR hardware is performing.
Here are some examples from my 7816 (8 cameras attached, 1080p, plus 3 streams being supplied to QNAP NAS Surveillance Centre) you can try on your own NVR:

dvrdvs login: root
Password:

BusyBox v1.16.1 (2014-05-19 09:41:10 CST) built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.
can not change to guest!
[root@dvrdvs /] # cat /proc/cpuinfo
Processor : ARMv7 Processor rev 1 (v7l)
processor : 0
BogoMIPS : 1987.37
processor : 1
BogoMIPS : 1993.93
Features : swp half fastmult edsp tls
CPU implementer : 0x41
CPU architecture: 7
CPU variant : 0x4
CPU part : 0xc09
CPU revision : 1
Hardware : hi3535
Revision : 0000
Serial : 0000000000000000

[root@dvrdvs /] # free
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 526256 482220 44036 0 286600
Swap: 0 0 0
Total: 526256 482220 44036
[root@dvrdvs /] # top
Mem: 482284K used, 43972K free, 0K shrd, 286600K buff, 24736K cached
CPU0: 1.3% usr 5.1% sys 0.0% nic 85.2% idle 0.0% io 0.0% irq 8.1% sirq
CPU1: 0.5% usr 1.5% sys 0.0% nic 97.4% idle 0.3% io 0.0% irq 0.0% sirq
Load average: 43.59 49.07 48.28 3/243 28862
PID PPID USER STAT VSZ %MEM CPU %CPU COMMAND
908 1 root S 1233m239.9 0 6.8 [hicore]
1416 2 root SW 0 0.0 1 1.4 [HI_VFMW_VideoDe]
9596 2 root SW 0 0.0 0 0.1 [kworker/u:2]
926 2 root DW 0 0.0 0 0.0 [HDMI_kthread]
906 1 root S < 1388 0.2 1 0.0 [iscsid]
28788 28354 root R 1200 0.2 0 0.0 [top]
28354 7518 root S 1200 0.2 0 0.0 [sh]
911 910 guest S 1200 0.2 0 0.0 [sh]
910 1 root S 1196 0.2 0 0.0 [sh]
1 0 root S 1192 0.2 1 0.0 [init]
7518 1 root S 1192 0.2 0 0.0 [telnetd]
589 1 root S < 872 0.1 1 0.0 [udevd]
295 2 root SW 0 0.0 0 0.0 [kswapd0]
169 2 root SW 0 0.0 0 0.0 [sync_supers]
15820 2 root SW 0 0.0 0 0.0 [kworker/0:0]
3 2 root SW 0 0.0 0 0.0 [ksoftirqd/0]
23783 2 root SW 0 0.0 1 0.0 [kworker/1:2]
24170 2 root SW 0 0.0 0 0.0 [kworker/0:1]
9 2 root SW 0 0.0 1 0.0 [ksoftirqd/1]
[root@dvrdvs /] #

 

[alastairstevenson]

On your second example - there is something very much amiss. Playback performance should be much like real time.
What type of device are you using to connect to the NVR?
Do you get the same results using the HDMI output as the web GUI, for both your examples?
Do you get the same results on the web GUI from another PC?
What's the spec of the PC - is it capable of showing full HD video without being over-run?
The webcomponents browser plug-in will pace the playback frames according to the video capabilities of the viewing device. The video will show without missing frames on a slow PC, but will be lower than real-time.
What's the LAN connection for both the NVR and the PC?

 

[jamesf]

Thanks for the thoughtful replies!

I am at work and will reply with specifics on the device tonight.
That's good to know I should be seeing much better performance. It has to be something in my setup then.

I was wondering if there could be a LAN issue with the communication.

I will test this theory with the other camera which is yet to be installed. I can connect it directly to the NVR and have it in front of me.
I first tested the current camera connection to the NVR with a short patch cable as I poked around in the GUI and read the manual. I don't recall trying the playback or image settings at that point as there is a bit of a learning curve there and the manual is rather simple.. I did try to set motion and recording but again I wasn't familiar enough yet with the operation to know if i was doing something right or wrong in some cases.
Some operations are not intuitive, especially picking or finding the 1 camera that is active from the dropdowns or lists....

I then installed the camera in it's final location using the same pair of POWERLINE adapters which I used to use to power my Y-Cam. I moved that camera and set it to Wi-Fi which has worked well and that worked well on the Powerline adapters for the last 5 months I've had it. I tested that connection and got 6 up 17 down.
I "THINK" I recalled watching the Live View with this same setup through the window as I was installing it to orient it properly, and seeing that work well in real time. Now my Live View is very laggy and at a very low frame rate.
My setup has no PC. It is:

NVR
=Mouse used for all operations at this point
=NVR VGA cable to a LCD monitor where I am performing all operations
=Cat 5E Cable from NVR LAN port to Uverse NGV589 router port
=Camera is connected to Powerline adapter "A" and coming from Powerline adapter "B" to a port on the NVR
=HDMI out to my Yamaha HDMI switching receiver which we use for our Uverse, Roku, BluRay and FireTV stick with out problem. That feeds my Panasonic Plasma TV HDMI in.
"And by the way - what's the rationale for operating them at their lowest main stream resolution?"
As far as the settings. That was what I was hoping to get advice on. I lowered it to see if it would affect the operation.

I can get HDMI out to the TV using the 1080P Display choice in the NVR.
Menu works but I did not compare the responsiveness because I was unable to get the Camera Views to display on the HDMI out to the TV so I set it back to a lower resolution that will not display on the HDMI TV.

I will test the data connection as that very well could be it. The other options seem to work well. but anything dealing with the camera is very poor. Thanks for the idea.
If connecting it directly and testing still results in poor response could there be something I edited in the Network Settings?
I followed instructions I found in a few places as well as at Hikvisions site and manual to see what settings I get using DHCP then deselect DHCP.

We'll learn more tonight.
Thanks again.

 

[jamesf]

It was the quality of the connection. I tested with a cable and saw the immediate improvement. I then moved the powerline adapter I had the Camera running through which was at the NVR end off of a power strip, plugged that into the wall plug and now I get perfect playback. Live view still skips a few frames. Thanks Alistair!
I am getting more familiar with the interface. I will tackle port forwarding for remote viewing now and try to connect to the camera.
I have other questions but I'll start a new thread and mark this one SOLVED.

 

[alastairstevenson]

Well done, you fixed it!
I'm not that familiar with powerline adaptors, but know enough that you should get upwards of 150Mbps throughput.
It sounds like yours were being blocked somehow.

 

[MrCourtney]

Be careful with powerline connections. They depend heavily on the quality of your building wiring and the signal can vary greatly throughout the day depending what else might be on the same electrical "leg".
Some days can be good, some terrible.

Also if a refrigerator or other noisy appliance is on the same circuit that can adversely affect the signal. I had one go south every time the wife plugged in her iPhone charger.

Power over Ethernet (POE) is really the best way. If you have an Ethernet cable running to your camera, POE makes much more sense.
POE injectors can be purchased on places like AMAZON for under $30 or so.

 

[jamesf]

Thanks, In this case I am trying to not have to run an ethernet cable. I'll see how this works out. Thanks for the heads up!