39 Camera system - questions on cameras and Blue Iris server hardware

[Ian Romero]

Good morning,

I've used Blue Iris a few times now and I love it. However I've never setup anything as big as a project I am scoping out right now. The system will have 39 cameras. I have a few questions:

- What kind of specs should my server have? I am looking at using an existing server that has a 8 core hyper-threaded Xeon E-series processor (can't remember the exact model, cores are about 1.7Ghz.) It current has 8 gigs of ram but is expandable. 3 or so TB of hard drive space, but if more is required for their recording and history requirements, i'm planning on adding an external hard drive or NAS. I am thinking this will be more than enough, but thought someone here may have experience with a system of this level and might know off hand if I need to build something heavier duty.
- Can anyone give me recommendations on 180 degree field of view POE IP cameras? They need to be indoor/outdoor and some of them will be in pipe coating plant environments. I also need recommendations on 360 degree field of view cameras.
- Any other suggestions for me while I'm scoping this project out?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

 

[wcrowder]

You will probably have to look at a more "enterprise" grade solution with an integrator for what you have described. A system that will work with door controls and alarms.

 

[bp2008]

I don't think any single Blue Iris server will handle 39 multi-megapixel cameras well. If your Xeon 8 core is about 1.7 Ghz, it is probably underpowered and inefficient, and probably lacks Quick Sync Video so you couldn't use hardware acceleration. Nobody should be building BI servers without Quick Sync anymore, and that rules out most Xeons, particularly the older ones.

I can't recommend any 180/360 degree cams, especially for use with Blue Iris because Blue Iris does not support dewarping the fisheye image. There are a number of cheap chinese fisheye cameras as well as some more expensive ones from manufacturers like Dahua and Hikvision. If you want less hassle, you should probably go with the Dahua or Hikvision options, because there is no telling what kind of instabilities or missing features you might find in random Chinese models.

 

[wcrowder]

Like BP says... In a factory environment as you describe the cameras will have to be a little more robust. Also, you need to look at access control integration into your system, your management will be looking at that in the future. You will look like a "hero" if you are already prepared. Researching this quickly, Axis has turn key solutions that fills the small footprint you describe, and they will be around for a while. Good thing is their CMS will use cheaper Hikvision cameras (Better then the Pelco and Axis cameras). Axis has COEX camera solutions for the factory floor that are probably manufactured by either Hikvision or Dahua. Don't you love OEM's? LOL.

COEX stands for environmentally safe in fumes, dust and won't blow things up.

Axis is not one of my favorites, but for what you need, you might look into them. The large installation systems like Dallmeier, Pelco and Synectics would be over kill.

http://www.axis.com/us/en/products/axis-camera-station/overview

 

[adi78]

Yesterday I tried Blue Iris with 21 cameras (4.1MP LTS, each streaming at 2688x1520P@20fps) on my Supermicro Server: X10DAC motherboard with dual socket LGA2011 v3. Single 12 core Xeon 2.4 GHz, 32GB RAM.
CPU usage was at 90-99% most of the time. Few seconds video delay on live preview.
I do like Blue Iris too but for larger projects It probably won't work (as my test proved)...

 

[fenderman]

Yesterday I tried Blue Iris with 21 cameras (4.1MP LTS, each streaming at 2688x1520P@20fps) on my Supermicro Server: X10DAC motherboard with dual socket LGA2011 v3. Single 12 core Xeon 2.4 GHz, 32GB RAM.
CPU usage was at 90-99% most of the time. Few seconds video delay on live preview.
I do like Blue Iris too but for larger projects It probably won't work (as my test proved)...

Were you running the demo version? If so direct to disk is not working, which is a must for 4mp cameras.
Also that xeon does not support quciksync which would substantially improve performance.

 

[adi78]

Were you running the demo version? If so direct to disk is not working, which is a must for 4mp cameras.
Also that xeon does not support quciksync which would substantially improve performance.

Nope - I run full, purchased version. I didn't play a lot with Blue Iris settings so it run pretty much on defaults. Where is that option to enable "direct to disk" writes ?

I know that most Xeons does not support Quick Sync - this server was not built to be a NVR but it is powerful enough to test things 24 virtual processors + 32Gb ECC memory + fast SAS hard drives on Adaptec controller.

fenderman - any suggestions how to convert such a nice server into NVR, if possible ?
I'm in the process of replacing 48 old TVL cameras but I still haven't decided on NVR (or PC-based NVR) - I will probably use embedded NVR from LTS because it is still less expensive than PC-based NVR + software license.
NVR for 48 cameras cost $3000 - $3500 and similar PC-based NVR will be twice as much...

 

[fenderman]

Nope - I run full, purchased version. I didn't play a lot with Blue Iris settings so it run pretty much on defaults. Where is that option to enable "direct to disk" writes ?

I know that most Xeons does not support Quick Sync - this server was not built to be a NVR but it is powerful enough to test things 12 core CPU (24 virtual processors) + 32Gb ECC memory.

fenderman - any suggestions how to convert such a nice server into NVR, if possible ?
I'm in the process of replacing 48 old TVL cameras but I still haven't decided on NVR (or PC-based NVR) - I will probably use embedded NVR from LTS because it is still less expensive than PC-based NVR + software license.
NVR for 48 cameras cost $3000 - $3500 and simila PC-based NVR will be twice as much...

In each cameras properties settings you need to go to the record tab>file format and select direct to disk. This will result in a dramatic drop in cpu consumption.
48 cams running at 4mp is alot for BI even with a powerful server you will likely have issues. IF you run them at 2mp and 10fps its doable...though for an enterprise setup like that you are likely better off with something like exacq. It will cost you 100 per cam - though im sure you can get a deal on a bulk purchase.

 

[bp2008]

Yesterday I tried Blue Iris with 21 cameras...

Interesting results. Thanks for sharing. Based on "12 core" and "2.4GHz", I'm guessing that was a Xeon E5-2695 v2, which indeed does not have Quick Sync Video so no hardware accelerated decoding is available. While that is a powerful CPU (scores 15502 at cpubenchmark.net), the camera load is tremendous. I bet even with direct to disk and the local viewer closed (Blue Iris running as a background service only) you would still overload that system and would have to reduce streaming frame rates on the cameras to bring down the CPU usage. It is questionable whether it would work even with reduced frame rates, as I recall a similar test with dual CPUs and 8 MP cameras and the guy hit some other bottleneck which destroyed system performance long before the CPU usage reached 100%. Your current configuration is a load of 4 MP * 21 cams * 20 FPS = 1680 megapixels of video per second.

For comparison, my Blue Iris system is an i7-3770k which scores 9568 and my camera load is 527 megapixels per second. If I disable hardware acceleration and close all live views of any kind, it runs at 50-60% CPU. Enabling hardware acceleration, I get 15-21% CPU usage. Hardware acceleration is a must-have feature for Blue Iris.

 

[adi78]

@bp2008 Thanks for responding to my post.
CPU on this server is actually Xeon E5-2690 V3 2.6GHz (on system properties page it is showing as 2.4GHz)

I just changed all the camera's to use direct-to-disk writes as I'm writing here and I see no changes in CPU usage... 90-99% all the time

 

[fenderman]

@bp2008 Thanks for responding to my post.
CPU on this server is actually Xeon E5-2690 V3 2.6GHz (on system properties page it is showing as 2.4GHz)

I just changed all the camera's to use direct-to-disk writes as I'm writing here and I see no changes in CPU usage... 90-99% all the time

I would lower the frame rates to 15 or 10..and also lower live preview fps to 8 ...are you remoting in to the system or using a monitor directly connected?

 

[adi78]

I would lower the frame rates to 15 or 10..and also lower live preview fps to 8 ...are you remoting in to the system or using a monitor directly connected?

I will try that too in a minute. At the moment I'm remoting and I noticed that 20% of CPU usage is consumed by TeamViewer - 78% by BI if I use Task Manager. BI is showing 99% so I assume it is using summary CPU usage of the system - not just BI usage.

 

[fenderman]

I will try that too in a minute. At the moment I'm remoting and I noticed that 20% of CPU usage is consumed by TeamViewer - 78% by BI if I use Task Manager. BI is showing 99% so I assume it is using summary CPU usage of the system - not just BI usage.

Okay TeamViewer is your problem it's actually using more than the 20% that the task manager shows. Your numbers are going to be way off. Test it directly connected and you will see.

 

[adi78]

I will on site tomorrow afternoon to continue replacing old cameras - I will post the real numbers from server console...

What do you guys think about this idea:
- use iVMS4200 from Hikvision and convert this server into "Media Storage Server"
- set all 48 cameras to write directly into this storage server using camera's build-in motion detection
- use iVMS Client to display Live Preview and Remote Playback

 

[wcrowder]

Team Viewer is a CPU hog. That server should have Intel AMT KVM, if you set that up and use Real VNC+ you won't be using any CPU on the server when you remote in. You can port forward the KVM and have hardware access down to the bios...

 

[melabum]

Originally Posted by melabum
Dear All, we have a similar situation with 12 nos.of 2MP cameras. The server is HP DL380 G8, Intel Xeon E5-2620-V2,
6-core (Virtual, 12-core), 16GB. All the cameras are set to "direct to Disk". However, we are surprise that the CPU usage is
constantly 90 -98% and this really a huge hug on the server. As result we constantly observe delay of up to 3 to 4 second
on the live video streams. Again, the delay is pronounced on the PC -monitor (through web interface) with level of image jerking.
It is obvious that E5-2620V2 does not support QSV (quick Sync Video). However, what can I possibly do to improve the the system
functionality and reduce the CPU usage?

 

[melabum]

Originally Posted by melabum
Dear All, we have a similar situation with 12 nos.of 2MP cameras. The server is HP DL380 G8, Intel Xeon E5-2620-V2,
6-core (Virtual, 12-core), 16GB. All the cameras are set to "direct to Disk". However, we are surprise that the CPU usage is
constantly 90 -98% and this really a huge hug on the server. As result we constantly observe delay of up to 3 to 4 second
on the live video streams. Again, the delay is pronounced on the PC -monitor (through web interface) with level of image jerking.
It is obvious that E5-2620V2 does not support QSV (quick Sync Video). However, what can I possibly do to improve the the system
functionality and reduce the CPU usage?

Hi Fenderman: I decided to move my posting to the related postings. The current frame rate is 10fps on all the 12 2MP cameras.

 

[mikeduncan]

As was said earlier Team Viewer is terrible for remote desktop viewing with all those video feeds on the screen. I ended up using Splashtop for this purpose, even over the internet it is like being in front of the server. It was $16.99 for a year subscription to be able to use it over the internet, if you use it on a LAN it is free.

 

[ItechashardasIcanbro]

As was said earlier Team Viewer is terrible for remote desktop viewing with all those video feeds on the screen. I ended up using Splashtop for this purpose, even over the internet it is like being in front of the server. It was $16.99 for a year subscription to be able to use it over the internet, if you use it on a LAN it is free.

I agree with MilkDuncan^, splash>TeamViewer. Considering Splashtop gives the option to download Host and/or Remote apps. I do recall from personal experiences that Splashtop required more video processing power, although I couldn't provide specifics. maybe when I build out my new NVR I can bench mark CPU via Performance Monitor or something similar. Even the use of a single attached to the NVR uses a bit of CPU.

My idealized NVR (actually really need to make a move on it)

45-60 camera setup BI

GL fran!~



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