- Mar 9, 2017
- 37
- 22
I am running 8 cameras 2 of which are 1080, 4 are 720 and the other 2 are 640x480. ALL of them are wireless IP.
I am running Blue Iris on an 8+ year old Intel DX58SO motherboard with an Intel i7 Extreme 965, 8 core processor, with 16gb memory (now) and an old old ATI Radeon HD3800 video card.
For the last 4 years at least, I was running this exact system on 3gb total system memory and I just recently upgraded to 16gb RAM. I will probably send 8GB of it back because it simply is not needed. For the ENTIRE time I have owned and been running Blue Iris, the machine it lives on, is also a machine that I conduct daily business on several times a day. It is not, nor has it EVER been a dedicated Blue Iris machine....
The following will describe the nothing short of miraculous increase in performance I obtained by simply optimizing some things with both the cameras and BI.
Prior to upgrading the memory, I had all of the cameras set to stream their max frame rates within the camera UI. So for the 1080 and 720 cameras, that was 30 FPS, and for the 640x480 cams, I also forced them to 30 fps because I just didn't know any better. In BI I also had each camera profile set to 30 FPS, and was completely unaware of why BI would change those settings on it's own to some obscure setting like 31fps or something like that. I should also note, that NONE of teh cameras were set to "direct to disk recording". The system rarely lets me down, and has experienced nearly 95% up time, with very few incidents that required intervention. Pretty amazing really, now that I know what I know.
After deciding to do some reading here on this forum, I discovered that having the cameras and BI set to anything more than 15 FPS was fruitless and resulted in extremely high resources use, so I went through every camera and set the frame rate on the 1080 and 720 cams to 15 FPS, and the 640 cams to 10 FPS. I then matched those settings in the BI cam profiles. I also switched all of the cameras that do H264 to direct to disk recording. The 640 cams do not do H264, so they are the only ones that are decoding on the fly.
Now for the miraculous part...... Prior to optimizing the cameras and BI, my CPU usage was at a minimum 76% and spiked to 97% if I did ANYTHING else on that computer, like open a web browser, or if I had the BI web app open on another machine while ALSO having the BI user interface open on the server machine. The results were that when I launched the BI android app, I would see about 1 frame every 10 seconds for some cams and other cams were just frozen on whatever image they grabbed when I launched the app.
AFTER the optimization, I can have all of the above listed circumstances in play, and my CPU utilization has yet to exceed 70%. If it does, it only does it briefly, and then drops down into the 62-65% range. If I close the web app on another machine, the CPU use drops to 45-55%. If I have BI closed on the server (It runs as a service), and I have the web UI open on another machine, the CPU use hovers around 28-33%.
None of my cams are set to full time record. They are all combinations of zone crossing, or trigger recording, and 2 of the cams are cloned, so that they each record any movement, and both send alerts when triggered.
Prior to optimization, I had to disable 3 or 4 cameras to be able to make changes or adjustments in Blue Iris, remotely via team viewer, otherwise, while in team viewer with BI open, 3 or 4 cameras would simply show no signal in the UI, the UI or team viewer would become clunky and unresponsive, and I would barely make it out alive without having to force a restart.
Moral of the story, optimizing the cameras to take advantage of the available resources on YOUR system, is the single most important task a user of BI has in my opinion. My biggest regret, is that I did not take the time to learn this stuff 4 years ago when I bought BI in the first place. I was just so stoked to have it up and running, knowing that I could remotely view my cameras from anywhere, that I just gave up and assumed that was as good as it was going to get. Big BIG mistake.
Having now spent the better part of 4 days, non stop, testing and retesting different settings, zones, alerts and frame rates, I can EASILY say that this is the most amazing piece of sub $100.00 software I have EVER purchased, but like any software, there are limitations and necessities. In this case, proper set up for YOUR system is the single most important necessity.
Now that I know what I know, I am exploring the option to buy a dedicated HP EliteDesk or Dell Optiplex for Blue Iris. I have read the wiki at least twice. There seems to be some confusion with regards to using onboard Intel graphics now. I would REALLY like to buy a computer ASAP and get it up and running while all of this is fresh in my head, so that the transition will be a relatively easy one.
Can someone please help me decide which (exact) used/refurb computer up to $400.00 (before WD purple) would be the best choice for me? I would like the buy the PC NOW....My ultimate goal is to phase out the wifi cameras, and go exclusively to PoE cams. I plan on doing that over the next couple of months.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. I hope someone gets something out of my post and my personal experience.
Thanks.
I am running Blue Iris on an 8+ year old Intel DX58SO motherboard with an Intel i7 Extreme 965, 8 core processor, with 16gb memory (now) and an old old ATI Radeon HD3800 video card.
For the last 4 years at least, I was running this exact system on 3gb total system memory and I just recently upgraded to 16gb RAM. I will probably send 8GB of it back because it simply is not needed. For the ENTIRE time I have owned and been running Blue Iris, the machine it lives on, is also a machine that I conduct daily business on several times a day. It is not, nor has it EVER been a dedicated Blue Iris machine....
The following will describe the nothing short of miraculous increase in performance I obtained by simply optimizing some things with both the cameras and BI.
Prior to upgrading the memory, I had all of the cameras set to stream their max frame rates within the camera UI. So for the 1080 and 720 cameras, that was 30 FPS, and for the 640x480 cams, I also forced them to 30 fps because I just didn't know any better. In BI I also had each camera profile set to 30 FPS, and was completely unaware of why BI would change those settings on it's own to some obscure setting like 31fps or something like that. I should also note, that NONE of teh cameras were set to "direct to disk recording". The system rarely lets me down, and has experienced nearly 95% up time, with very few incidents that required intervention. Pretty amazing really, now that I know what I know.
After deciding to do some reading here on this forum, I discovered that having the cameras and BI set to anything more than 15 FPS was fruitless and resulted in extremely high resources use, so I went through every camera and set the frame rate on the 1080 and 720 cams to 15 FPS, and the 640 cams to 10 FPS. I then matched those settings in the BI cam profiles. I also switched all of the cameras that do H264 to direct to disk recording. The 640 cams do not do H264, so they are the only ones that are decoding on the fly.
Now for the miraculous part...... Prior to optimizing the cameras and BI, my CPU usage was at a minimum 76% and spiked to 97% if I did ANYTHING else on that computer, like open a web browser, or if I had the BI web app open on another machine while ALSO having the BI user interface open on the server machine. The results were that when I launched the BI android app, I would see about 1 frame every 10 seconds for some cams and other cams were just frozen on whatever image they grabbed when I launched the app.
AFTER the optimization, I can have all of the above listed circumstances in play, and my CPU utilization has yet to exceed 70%. If it does, it only does it briefly, and then drops down into the 62-65% range. If I close the web app on another machine, the CPU use drops to 45-55%. If I have BI closed on the server (It runs as a service), and I have the web UI open on another machine, the CPU use hovers around 28-33%.
None of my cams are set to full time record. They are all combinations of zone crossing, or trigger recording, and 2 of the cams are cloned, so that they each record any movement, and both send alerts when triggered.
Prior to optimization, I had to disable 3 or 4 cameras to be able to make changes or adjustments in Blue Iris, remotely via team viewer, otherwise, while in team viewer with BI open, 3 or 4 cameras would simply show no signal in the UI, the UI or team viewer would become clunky and unresponsive, and I would barely make it out alive without having to force a restart.
Moral of the story, optimizing the cameras to take advantage of the available resources on YOUR system, is the single most important task a user of BI has in my opinion. My biggest regret, is that I did not take the time to learn this stuff 4 years ago when I bought BI in the first place. I was just so stoked to have it up and running, knowing that I could remotely view my cameras from anywhere, that I just gave up and assumed that was as good as it was going to get. Big BIG mistake.
Having now spent the better part of 4 days, non stop, testing and retesting different settings, zones, alerts and frame rates, I can EASILY say that this is the most amazing piece of sub $100.00 software I have EVER purchased, but like any software, there are limitations and necessities. In this case, proper set up for YOUR system is the single most important necessity.
Now that I know what I know, I am exploring the option to buy a dedicated HP EliteDesk or Dell Optiplex for Blue Iris. I have read the wiki at least twice. There seems to be some confusion with regards to using onboard Intel graphics now. I would REALLY like to buy a computer ASAP and get it up and running while all of this is fresh in my head, so that the transition will be a relatively easy one.
Can someone please help me decide which (exact) used/refurb computer up to $400.00 (before WD purple) would be the best choice for me? I would like the buy the PC NOW....My ultimate goal is to phase out the wifi cameras, and go exclusively to PoE cams. I plan on doing that over the next couple of months.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. I hope someone gets something out of my post and my personal experience.
Thanks.
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