Anyone interested in running Blue Iris with 14 cameras on an i3 at 25% CPU usage?

J

Jamie Ficken

n3wb
Apr 21, 2017
13
9
After months of tinkering I finally figured it out in the beginning of 2018 so I've been trying to share it when I see questions about CPU usage in Blue Iris.

Change the power mode from Balanced to High Performance.

Then change the Minimum CPU speed to 50% in the advanced options. Leave the maximum at 100%.

Bam! CPU usage reduces from 80% to 20% and the system is totally responsive now.

This is with a i3-4370 running Windows Server 2012. I have all cameras except one set to 1080P but all are at 10fps.

Direct to disk and all other optimizations have all been done and motion with zones and objects with highlighting is running.

The caveat is that instead of 12-14 watts of power it uses 20-24 watts now but it is worth every penny.

I'm so very happy about this discovery! What led me to it was that I installed Spiceworks Network Monitor tool for my switches so I turned SNMP on for the server and started watching it.

I kept getting warnings about the CPU Queue being high so I started messing around. It went from sometimes having 12 operations queued to a constant 0 with this change and runs like a top.

FSSVLC1.jpg


PowerOptions.png
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jrh and dathat
No can do: I am simply unwilling to give up animating windows when minimizing and maximizing (not to mention abandoning translucent selection rectangles!). smiley36.gif
 
  • Like
Reactions: dmiller
???

As soon as I install Windows on any computer, the first thing I do is select the High Performance power plan. This also puts the min. CPU at 100%, not 50%. I don't know why you'd put it any lower.
 
Walrus said:
???

As soon as I install Windows on any computer, the first thing I do is select the High Performance power plan. This also puts the min. CPU at 100%, not 50%. I don't know why you'd put it any lower.
Click to expand...


I just found that during testing on my system that 50% allowed me to stop seeing the CPU queue length rise while still allowing it to down clock and save a bit of power.

You can leave it at 100% though.
 
Jamie Ficken said:
I just found that during testing on my system that 50% allowed me to stop seeing the CPU queue length rise while still allowing it to down clock and save a bit of power.

You can leave it at 100% though.
Click to expand...
are you using "limit decoding"?
 
  • Like
Reactions: Walrus
Basically it just decodes keyframes with that checked right (1fps vs the 10fps the cameras are set to)?

If so I've been running with it enabled for 2 years now and am happy with the motion detection results so I guess for my use case it's fine.

Maybe I'll try turn it off on one of the cameras that looks under a tree and see what changes.
 
Jamie Ficken said:
Basically it just decodes keyframes with that checked right (1fps vs the 10fps the cameras are set to)?

If so I've been running with it enabled for 2 years now and am happy with the motion detection results so I guess for my use case it's fine.

Maybe I'll try turn it off on one of the cameras that looks under a tree and see what changes.
Click to expand...
It is explained in detail in the wiki by bp2008. Your motion detection is certainly not working properly unless you are using camera based motion detection.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Walrus
I read the Wiki on it.

I set the i-frame intervals on all of my cameras to match the FPS it appears so I must have read that suggestion before.

I only have Hikvision cameras and they all have that setting.

I did just learn how to disable the decoding while viewing in the app or on the web which is awesome! I must have missed that before. Now I can stop using the Remote for Blue Iris app and use the official app that I bought years ago.
 
Jamie Ficken said:
I read the Wiki on it.

I set the i-frame intervals on all of my cameras to match the FPS it appears so I must have read that suggestion before.

I only have Hikvision cameras and they all have that setting.

I did just learn how to disable the decoding while viewing in the app or on the web which is awesome! I must have missed that before. Now I can stop using the Remote for Blue Iris app and use the official app that I bought years ago.
Click to expand...
Matching the iframe interval will not eliminate the motion detection issues.
 
Can you give me a link to where these issues are described as I haven't had any issues?

The only possible issues I have encountered are shadows from trees and partly cloudy days causing more alerts than others.
 
I don't think that this negates my original post though because I have posted this elsewhere and many people have confirmed that it does significantly reduce CPU usage to go with High Performance Mode in Windows.
 
Jamie Ficken said:
I don't think that this negates my original post though because I have posted this elsewhere and many people have confirmed that it does significantly reduce CPU usage to go with High Performance Mode in Windows.
Click to expand...
There are threads discussing this as well, though I dont think they note that dramatic of a drop. My point simply was to clarify that under normal usage you cannot run that load and expect 25 percent cpu usage. It will be much higher without limit decoding which is what is normally the case.
 
Jamie Ficken said:
I don't think that this negates my original post though because I have posted this elsewhere and many people have confirmed that it does significantly reduce CPU usage to go with High Performance Mode in Windows.
Click to expand...

After reading your suggestions, I watched my cpu for a while, and then tried them. I then went back and forth a few times from my old settings to the ones you suggested. I see a 2% drop in CPU from 42 to 40 (obviously there is some movement in CPU usage). I'll leave it run as you suggested for a while, but honestly I'm not so sure that the minor change in CPU (for my setup) is worth "every penny". Possibly others will get a better percentage boost?
 
Ssayer said:
After reading your suggestions, I watched my cpu for a while, and then tried them. I then went back and forth a few times from my old settings to the ones you suggested. I see a 2% drop in CPU from 42 to 40 (obviously there is some movement in CPU usage). I'll leave it run as you suggested for a while, but honestly I'm not so sure that the minor change in CPU (for my setup) is worth "every penny". Possibly others will get a better percentage boost?
Click to expand...
It may be the server OS. There is another post somewhere where the server OS saw a drastic change.
 
On my Windows 10 PC, the options are "Balanced" or "Power Saver". Within the 'Balanced" there's some options for High Performance where I had to manually change the 'turn off HDD' default to Never, but I can't get the PC to save those settings.

Edit: Ah, found the link for 'Show additional plans'.
 
After turning this on, I'm getting a good 20% idle on i5 with 3 4MP cameras with hardware acceleration on, but playback makes it jump to like 80% to 90% at 4x playback speed. HW acceleration is on for BVR too. Any ideas?
 
m_listed said:
After turning this on, I'm getting a good 20% idle on i5 with 3 4MP cameras with hardware acceleration on, but playback makes it jump to like 80% to 90% at 4x playback speed. HW acceleration is on for BVR too. Any ideas?
Click to expand...
What did you turn on? high performance or limit decoding or both. what exact model i5, i5 itself is a meaningless term. What frame rates? Are you playing all 3 cameras at once?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom