Saving parts of clips in UI3 web interface?

[Frankenscript]

Hi folks,

Like many of you, I store my BI PC in a closet somewhere; I rarely actually touch it. It runs mostly headless and I access it either via Remote Desktop or via the UI3 web interface.

I've figured out how to save interesting sections of clips in a standard format (as opposed to the .bvr format) if I'm working directly in the BI software. No problem. But, if I'm working in the web interface, I haven't figured out how to mark start/end points and download to the local machine (the one I'm using the browser on). I have found the control to download the entire clip bvr file to the local machine, but that's useless since no software will touch those bvr files.

So, is there a way to select relevant parts of clips while using the web interface, and download them locally, as regular files (like .mp4 or the like)? Or must I do the remote desktop routine which works but is a bit clumsy?

Thanks in advance. I've searched a bit but all my hits were for other things; my google-fu is off tonight, clearly.

 

[bp2008]

The old default.htm page can do that in Internet Explorer, but it was implemented in the ActiveX plugin so it isn't usable on any other platform. Currently your best option is the remote desktop routine.

 

[aristobrat]

Or must I do the remote desktop routine which works but is a bit clumsy?

My BI box is also in a closet! I know not everyone uses an iOS device, but for me, that's turned into being the easiest way for me to pull/edit/share clips from BI.

I'll use the BI iOS app to grab the video clip I'm after. I don't worry about getting the precise start/end frames at this step. The BI app will export the movie into Photos on the iOS device.

Using the Photos app, it's super-quick/easy to precisely trim the beginning and end of the video clip.

At that point, the video is ready to share (or ready to further edit in iMovie on the device, where you can combine it with others, speed it up, add text, etc). I use iCloud Photo Sharing, so the video will automatically sync over to my other iOS devices, as well as my Mac. I've read where other folks use Dropbox to get the video back to their main computer.

The video below is an example of this process (inc. using iMovie). I woke up to see several BI alerts from someone door checking one of the cars in my driveway, and the neighborhood Facebook page was blowing up from others finding their cars rummaged through. I had to get to work ASAP, so no time to remote into the BI box and export video. After I got to work and had a few moments, I used the BI app on my iPad to look at the footage. There was no clear shot of the guys face, but I thought creating a "timeline" video from multiple cameras (to share on the Facebook page) would be good for the neighbors to see what happened, and maybe emphasize the importance of locking car doors at night. The video ended up getting forwarded to the police, who were able to identify the guy.

Anyhow, I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to create this away from the house with only an iOS device.

:42 to 1:02 seems redundant, but there's more new stuff after that.

 

[Frankenscript]

Thanks @aristobrat for a great post. I will have to investigate if the Android app and related system supports a similar process. I'm an Android guy (my wife uses iOS).

But, these clips are gigabytes in size, so working remotely via phone is probably a no go for me. Unless I was somewhere with Wi-Fi (for me this means "not at work").

It's a shame the web interface doesn't support the select clip timeframe and export functions.

Is there a PC program that will convert a .bvr file to something more standard? If so, then using the download clip feature and using standard tools would be easy. Otherwise I'm consigned to remote desktop.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk

 

[aristobrat]

Good point about the size. I'm not sure if this is what you mean, but I'm not downloading the entire multi-GB clip from BI. I just set the BI app to start playing a few seconds before the part that I'm interested, then I click the "start" button on the app (to start local recording), let the video play, and then I click "stop" (which ends the local recording). The end result is usually a pretty small export. For me (with 2MP Starlights), a 30 second export takes up around 60 MB.

 

[looney2ns]

@aristobrat method can be accomplished on Android as well. I just tried it.

 

[Frankenscript]

@aristobrat and @looney2ns thanks for this. I figured out the "export to Android photos" feature by pressing the little film icon while watching a clip. Worked like a charm; really easy.

One other little question: when on the android app and watching live video from the cameras, I can "pinch zoom" to zoom into an area of interest. While watching a clip in the app I can't seem to get away from a view that has a calendar on the left, and a smallish camera window on the right, not zoomable as far as I can tell. Is there a way to make the video go full screen in the app, and zoom into areas of interest while watching clips?

 

[kicker50]

I second an enhancement to Ui3 to export video to a more mainstream format. But if that requires installation of an active x plugin then maybe not....

 

[bp2008]

I second an enhancement to Ui3 to export video to a more mainstream format. But if that requires installation of an active x plugin then maybe not....

Quite some time ago I asked Ken if he could give Blue Iris a remote export API and he thought it was a good idea, but there's been no progress that I'm aware of on that.

In the meantime I am learning the AVI file format and may be able to have UI3 export clips or sections of clips as AVI. There are downsides to doing it this way (not the least of which is removing incentive for Ken to implement a better export method).

 

[looney2ns]

@aristobrat and @looney2ns thanks for this. I figured out the "export to Android photos" feature by pressing the little film icon while watching a clip. Worked like a charm; really easy.

One other little question: when on the android app and watching live video from the cameras, I can "pinch zoom" to zoom into an area of interest. While watching a clip in the app I can't seem to get away from a view that has a calendar on the left, and a smallish camera window on the right, not zoomable as far as I can tell. Is there a way to make the video go full screen in the app, and zoom into areas of interest while watching clips?

I suggest you read the help in the BI app. Many features that you may miss out on otherwise. But yes, I can pinch zoom just fine on mine.

 

[Frankenscript]

Already started! Lots of great stuff there. Oddly for me thpinch zoon works for me on one Android device but not a different one. Wierd!

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk

 

[bp2008]

UI3 version 15 has the ability to export clips or parts of clips in AVI format. I'd appreciate any testing anyone is willing to do on this feature in the next few days, since this is a weekend and Ken probably isn't going to be pushing this out in a BI update for a few days.

You can get version 15 from here: https://github.com/bp2008/ui3/releases/download/15/UI3-15.zip

Simply extract the zip into your "Blue Iris 4/www" folder and overwrite everything.

 

[kicker50]

Thank You! AVI Export Works Great!

 

[Frankenscript]

So, I've got the ability to save as avi from UI3, but I can't figure out how to change the time coordinates for start and stop. I've done all manner of clicking on the arrow things, and it always starts at a 13 second clip, sometimes if I click in just the right place it goes to -1 minute and change... click some more and it goes to 0 seconds.

I made sure to update the software today to latest, and applied the version 15 UI3 from above thread, no change.

What maneuvering do I need to do to adjust the timing?

 

[bp2008]

It is a simple matter of dragging the red and green handles. It works on every device I have tried it on...

 

[fenderman]

So, I've got the ability to save as avi from UI3, but I can't figure out how to change the time coordinates for start and stop. I've done all manner of clicking on the arrow things, and it always starts at a 13 second clip, sometimes if I click in just the right place it goes to -1 minute and change... click some more and it goes to 0 seconds.

I made sure to update the software today to latest, and applied the version 15 UI3 from above thread, no change.

What maneuvering do I need to do to adjust the timing?

you are going backwards, hes already on v29 or so.

 

[Frankenscript]

Oops. I guess I should reinstall.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk

 

[Frankenscript]

Is there an easy way to get the zip of the bits I need to replace? I visited the Github page but didn't see a specific download for it.

 

[awsum140]

If you update BI you'll get all the "bits". Alternately, Tte first post in the UI3 thread has a link to download all the files. Just unzip that into the \Program Files\Blue Iris\WWW folder and you're good to go.

 

[Frankenscript]

OK, I downloaded the latest and did a re-install; it noticed some old bits and brought me back to current as far as I can tell.

Still have the problem. When I go to export as AVI (using Chrome browser, works same in other browsers), it initially offers to do a short clip of a few seconds (<20secs). If I click on the arrows it might change to zero seconds:



and clicking a few more times might make it have a negative size:



OK, it's probably something silly I'm doing. What am I doing wrong?