TBH reverting back to v4 sounds like the best idea as its the most stable. and there are hardly any reason to really update unless your running and want to join multiple sessions together or use the new AI services. to me the new ui in v5 is a downgrade and has no new features, looks terrible and you cant control hardly anything about the layout still
Please dont lie claiming no new features. Here is a list of new features and keep in mind new features are added monthly.
Blue iris 5 is 100 percent stable on my 20+ systems. No one has the issue you have. This is an issue on your particular system. Figure it out.
OR sit there using old software for the next 10 years because you are too cheap to spend 30 bux on the upgrade.
W H AT ’ S N E W
With hundreds of updates, so much has changed since version 4 was first released in
December 2014. But 4.5 years later, it’s time to take Blue Iris to the next level with this
major upgrade to version 5. Here’s what you can expect to find:
UI refresh
Every element was redesigned and re-rendered for a consistent, high-contrast, high-
resolution and modern aesthetic. Buttons and other
tools have been more intuitively
grouped and sized. A new font has been selected for improved antialiasing and readability.
Help documentation refresh
It’s been awhile! The Help may now be read in book format as well as in-context via Adobe
Acrobat bookmarks throughout the UI. Major topics previously neglected have been re-
written to reflect all that has been added to this software over the years.
High DPI display awareness
Windows and UI elements will be scaled automatically to match your Windows Display
control panel selections. UI elements were designed to look sharp at up to 300 DPI. No
more tiny icons on 4K monitors and beyond.
Remote management
This is perhaps the most significant upgrade in terms of software power and flexibility—you
may now use one Blue Iris installation to manage many others simultaneously.
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When connected to one or more remote systems via the new remote management control
panel, you get a concise view of each system’s status. You may then make any remote Blue
Iris server ‘active’ in the UI, giving you complete virtual control of that remote Blue Iris
installation without the hassle or many shortcomings of an otherwise “remote desktop”
solution. BVR clips are opened using progressive download management so that only the
portions of the file of interest are transferred. Status pages, the timeline and clips lists are
refreshed as they are updated on the server. Sounds are played and popups may be
displayed locally from all remote connected systems. Configuration changes are made
seamlessly by uploading any edits.
Alert action set lists
Every possible action that’s supported by Blue Iris may now be applied to camera alerts as
well as many other conditions such as user account login, status messages, digital input
signals, and more. You may create a list of these actions to be executed in any order or
combination. Each action has an associated profile selector to allow you to manage actions
for all profiles together on one page.
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New alert action types
There are also new action types. These include toaster pop-up messages in the lower-right
corner of the Windows display, FTP transfers, and simply the ability to wait an arbitrary
time between consecutive actions. You now may specify the devices and text for push
notifications. Support for legacy Android GCM push notifications was added.
Clip management updates
In addition to its own UI refresh, the timeline view receives a couple of other interesting
updates—the ability to zoom in further and have alert images displayed directly on the clip
tracks.
The clip view list may be “unfolded” to fill the display with clip images. Days are delimited
by a solid color bar.
Viewer playback controls
In place of generic play/pause/stop buttons, a more interactive speed control has been
designed and implemented. For BVR content, you may now slide the speed control left to
slow down or reverse, or right to speed up and go forward. Click the horizontal control
anywhere to set the speed directly, or slide and release to return to the previous setting.
Camera configuration synchronization
On several camera settings pages you will find the option to synchronize that page with
another camera’s settings. This allows you to make changes to one camera’s settings and
have that affect one or more other cameras’ behavior. This will come in handy if you find
yourself setting (and then having to later adjust) the same alerts or other settings across
multiple cameras.
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Global volume control
You may now use the mute and volume controls to adjust the live volume on all cameras
simultaneously. For mixing levels, use the gain control found on each camera’s audio
settings page. The same mute and volume control is used by the clip viewer window as
well.
Technology
The time is right with a major software upgrade to also update development and runtime
environments. The latest Microsoft technologies, video processing and runtime libraries are
now used and redistributed. While we lose support for the oldest operating systems (dating
back to 2001!) we gain support for many emergent technologies which will be further
leveraged in the 5.x series.
As we are all interested in getting the most out of our CPU clock cycles, these newer
development tools combined with new code optimizations will combine to contribute to a
more efficiently running system. Work will continue with Intel and Nvidia to further
leverage graphics hardware assistance.
And that’s not all!
Unlike other software which is released just once, or which sees an update only every one or
two years, this is just the beginning for Blue Iris 5. As with versions past, improvement and
innovation will continue over the coming years. The client apps for iOS and Android, as
well as the UI3 browser interface all will receive major updates as well.
Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming the major focus for all video security software, and
this includes Blue Iris 5. In conjunction with Sentry Smart Alerts, a solution is already in
place to reduce false triggers when human recognition is ideal. These options will be
expanded to also include free services as well as LPR and facial recognition technologies.
Please keep the suggestions coming, and we thank you for your continued support of Blue
Iris.
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U P DAT E N OT E S
As major changes are made to version 5, they will be documented in this section.
5.1.0 - February 16, 2020
A clip “export” command has been added to the JSON web services. This allows the UI3 to
offer a more powerful experience managing video
downloads.
Once the evaluation period is over, the software will continue to run as a “viewer only.”
This allows BVR files to be opened and exported without a software license.
Copy and Paste buttons have been added to the motion detector mask editing window.
Masks may only be pasted when the target image size matches the copied image size.
Using the Shield icon or camera “pause” commands you may now cancel a camera alert in-
progress.
5.0.9 - January 31, 2020
Video encoder options now include an audio bitrate selection. This and the audio codec
setting are now honored for convert/export.
The /admin?sendkeys interface may now be used to emulate keyboard input. This addition
supports integration with HA software requirements.
The Plate Recognizer option from the camera AI settings page now has a minimum
confidence setting before a plate number is written to the database.
When using HTTPS for both WAN and LAN, the secure flag is added to the HTTP Set-Cookie
response header. This is required for PCI compliance in some organizations.
When using the option to log all web server connections, failed authentication attempts also
now are logged.
5.0.8 - January 10, 2020
The auto-cycle option to Only cycle when at least one camera is triggered will now display all
triggered cameras together at once
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It is now possible to change the selected camera group during timeline playback. This
makes is easier to follow motion events without having to exit playback.
The camera settings window now loads tabs as they are visited, allowing this window to
open and close more quickly.
Many updates to make Remote Management more reliable when live updates are made to
camera and other configuration
UTC timestamps for Alert images now reflect any pre-trigger time that’s recorded;
previously this was the video frame at the time of trigger. This change helps with alert-to-
alert navigation in the timeline view.
The Sound alert may be specified to continue through the duration of a camera trigger.
The daily automatic database compact & repair may be ran on specific days of the week.
The camera red border when recording is now optional.
5.0.7 - December 15, 2019
The web server will now send an “image not found” JPEG in reply to an /alerts/ request for
a non-existent database record. Previously there was either no response or a file not found
error returned and these both confused the iOS app.
The use of HTTP keep-alive semantics is now optional on the Advanced page from Settings/
Web server.
The Plate Recognizer AI integration now pulls a status on the Trigger/AI page. This serves
to both validate the token entry as well as to provide usage statistics for the current period.
Camera source triggers (via ONVIF) were previously handled as “external” triggers but are
now labeled more appropriately as ONVIF triggers. A new check box on the Alerts tab in
camera settings determines whether alerts will fire for ONVIF triggers. The trigger state in
Blue Iris now is also maintained until a trigger reset event is received from the camera
(previously this was ignored and the trigger ended after the break time only).
One headache from the use of Intel hardware decoding has been the ambiguity between
1088 and 1080 line resolution. The Intel decoder will take a 1080 line source and force an
output of 1088 lines. This is because 1080 is not a multiple of 16, yet 1088 is, and that’s
required by the decoder. This has caused confusion as a new resolution forces a new zone
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map in the motion detector. Beginning with this version, the output size is cropped at 1080
lines. This will eliminate “garbage” lines from appearing at the bottom of the decoded
frames. However, this may result in the need to redesign your zone maps, sorry for that
inconvenience.
5.0.6 - November 11, 2019
Camera frame windows now operate more independently. Each frame window now may
have its own settings for Temporary full screen (double click), Auto-cycle, Show camera
names, and Solo selected camera. This provides much more flexibility for systems with
multiple monitors.
Improved audio/video synchronization from timed sources (RTSP, HLS, analog devices)—
timing information will be stored to the BVR file and although efforts have been made to
improve live and BVR playback synchronization, this timing information is most valuable
when exporting to MP4 format.
Improved responsiveness to motion with managed decoding (limit decoding unless required
on camera settings Video tab).
5.0.5 - October 23, 2019
You may now select to use the Time-Lapse feature during automatic export configured on
the Settings/Clips page or for bulk/background export configured by right-clicking clips.
Previously this was only available when exporting from the clip viewer window.
The web server now makes more extensive use of the HTTP connection “keep alive” header
to reduce the number of connections to the server. This will help with overall efficiency, but
especially when using NGROK and some AT&T routers which have recently introduced a
“TCP flooding” prevention mechanism, potentially breaking web services.
The code-signing certificate used to verify secure binary deliverables has been renewed for
another three years and all executables have been re-signed.
The architecture used to create group images for streaming has been redesigned and coded
to allow for higher frame rate throughput. While it’s now possible to get 30 fps from a
group stream, this may still not be practical for most users with dozens of cameras due to
the CPU resources required. Flickering of borders and timecode under high system demand
should be mitigated as well.
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Inter-process communication between service and console has been revised to allow the
service to better control the console when required.
The email alert configuration now isolates the “alert image” from the other image types
which may be attached.
The full log may now be downloaded from the Status/Messages page during remote
administration.
The push notification “rich push” and GIF options have been moved from the Settings/Web
server/Advanced page to the push notification alert configuration page. And for even more
flexibility you may now choose to use the camera’s current image instead of the alert image.
5.0.4 - September 16, 2019
A new “folder” icon at the top of the Clips window allows you to select special database
views. Notably, Sentry Smart Alert views may be found here, for either confirmed or
cancelled alerts. Only newly added alerts will appear in these views unless you repair the
database.
A new option on the AI page from Trigger in camera settings allows you to automatically
“flag” confirmed Sentry alerts. Until dedicated views can be added to the client phone apps,
this may be useful.
5.0.3 - September 15, 2019
With a continued focus on AI for version 5, it was time to upgrade one of the most critical of
algorithms in the software—the motion detector. You will find a third choice has been
added to the algorithm selection box found on the Motion configuration page from the
Trigger tab in camera settings—Edge vector. This will eventually replace simple as the default.
The algorithm discerns between leading edge and trailing edge motion and uses this
information to compute a motion vector (magnitude and angle). The goal for this new
algorithm is to reduce false positives (a consistent vector is required over the make time in
order to trigger) and to feed more advanced AI with more relevant frames. Please provide
feedback on effectiveness (in the form of BVR video clips for analysis).
5.0.2 - August 12, 2019
Blue Iris now honors the Windows preference to move the cursor to the default button
(usually OK) on pop-up message dialogs.
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The code to create and alert images has been moved to its own thread—this makes the video
capture thread more efficient and allows for alert image post-processing. Also, the trigger/
alerts thread has been re-written to work most effectively with Sentry Smart Alerts.
Sentry Smart Alert configuration has been moved to a new page “Artificial Intelligence” from
the Trigger tab in camera settings. ALPR support using Plate Recognizer has been added to
this page as well. Sentry works to filter false-alarms via person-detection. ALPR works by
analyzing the alert image—if a license tag is found, the number is added to the database and
visible on the alerts list.
5.0.1 - August 1, 2019
After a couple of months spent focusing solely on bug fixes and minor usability
enhancements, we have reached a point of stability that now allows us to continue with
more significant development.
The console now recognizes when the service has crashed and has been restarted. An
automatic reconnection is attempted for seamless use of the console window.
The latest version of the Intel MFX library (2019R1) is now being used. This update was
made in an attempt to bring stability to systems experiencing memory leaks with some
versions of the Intel drivers, and to possibly offer H.265 decoding and (eventually) hardware
encoding using Intel QuickSync.