CPU going to 100% overnight

[JT Blue Iris]

looking to get the vast experience of the crowd since I am somewhat of a neophyte.

I have a BI system that's been working fine for a number of years and as of two weeks or so ago it started pegging the CPU overnight and staying there until I restarted Bi.
I have a lot of Hi-Rez cameras connected so it's been a battle to get the system balanced and not choking it.
running normally the CPU runs at average 85% and 5.5 GB RAM being used,
recording set direct to disc on all cameras.
Each camera set to maximum 15 FPS at full Res
limit live preview is set to 12 FPS to get it to 85%

here's my setup:
I7 – 7700K,16 GB RAM (motherboard has graphics outputs not being used)
Nvidia GTS 450 GC
two 30 inch Dell monitors running at 2560 x 1600 being driven DVI dual link from GC
six HIKvision 4 MP cameras and six HIKvision 8 MP cameras.
latest BI v5 software, Windows 10 PRO
BI set for record on motion.
I have tried a number of things including two other graphics cards and trying different hardware accelerated decodes.
doesn't seem to matter how I set the hardware acceleration (so I'm not sure if I'm even utilizing it at all?)
setting for no hardware acceleration and any of the other choices all seem to be the same.

In addition I have a second system (albeit with an i7 – 8700 CPU) looking at the same cameras and it is not experiencing the same problem..

thanks for reading all this and be safe!

 

[SouthernYankee]

read Optimizing Blue Iris's CPU Usage


1)have you disabled the disk defragmenter on all video drives
2) have you disabled the virus scans on all BI folders and video drives.

Please provide a screen shots. full frame (use windows 10 snip & sketch tool)
1) windows task manager process tab sorted by memory (most at the top),
2) windows task manager performance, GPU
3) Blue Iris Setting about tab
4) Blue iris status (lighting bolt graph) clip storage
5) blue Iris status cameras
6) Blue Iris on two of the camera properties the record tab.

 

[JT Blue Iris]

read Optimizing Blue Iris's CPU Usage

see below, reading the optimization doc now

1)have you disabled the disk defragmenter on all video drives
yes I previously disabled this

2) have you disabled the virus scans on all BI folders and video drives.
only Windows defender is installed, and the virus scan on schedule was disabled, but there were three other items alongside it in tasks scheduler that I disabled just now.

Please provide a screen shots. full frame (use windows 10 snip & sketch tool)
1) windows task manager process tab sorted by memory (most at the top),
2) windows task manager performance, GPU
3) Blue Iris Setting about tab
4) Blue iris status (lighting bolt graph) clip storage
5) blue Iris status cameras
6) Blue Iris on two of the camera properties the record tab.

I think this is all you're asking for, let me know if not

 

[JT Blue Iris]

as a side note, after reading the optimization document, I checked the video scaling, and it was set for fast.
Just goofing around, I set it for bicubic and it immediately drove the CPU to 100% but after changing back to fast CPU was stuck at 100% until I restarted BI...

 

[samplenhold]

Based on your TM process.png, you are not using your GPU for BI. Also your network utilization is at 85% using 80.7Mbps, which seems strange to me as mine is at 10% using 85Mbps. I have a mix of 2MP and 4MP cameras, 19 total recording 24/7 and my CPU is at 23% (i7-8700) for BI.



You state it was fine up until 2 weeks ago. What changed to your system/network at that time?

Do you have your cameras going through a router? Are you cameras isolated from the internet?

 

[JT Blue Iris]

thanks samplenhold,

The network numbers you mentioned above would suggest that I'm on 100 Mb network and you are a 1 Gb network, no? But as far as I know all the switches and routers are 1 Gb.
all the cameras and the 2 BI machines are on a 24 port 1 GB switch then also connected to that switch is a router that is connected to the Internet
the second BI machine I mention that does not have a problem has the same network traffic/utilization numbers as the one in question.
the second BI system is however utilizing the Nvidia GPU.
Why do you suppose mine is not using the GPU?
The only thing that changed from a couple weeks ago was that I uninstalled Malwarebytes, this is a dedicated machine for BI.
Attached is a video configuration page that is typical of my four megapixel cameras

 

[JT Blue Iris]

as it turns out, the BI machine in question was only negotiating 100 Mb connection, looks like it was maybe a bad cable, running at 1 GB now..
Not sure if that explains my problem but thanks for bringing it up.

 

[samplenhold]

Well one thing is that most folks here will tell you to set your I Frame equal to your Frame Rate. I only have Dahua cameras, but I would expect that you should set you I Frame = 15 to match your Frame Rate.

In BI under the video tab, select Nvidia CUDA under the Hardware acceleration option. Under GPU select any. Do it for one and then see in Task Manager if it shows an entry under GPU engine for BI. If so, change a few cameras and see if it lowers your CPU usage.



You really should consider isolating your cameras from the internet. There is no reason for the cameras to have a route through a router or the internet. Either physically isolate the cameras or use a switch that can set up VLAN for the cameras that is separate for the rest of your LAN.

 

[SouthernYankee]

look at what other cpus do for BI CPU STATS: Blue Iris Update Helper

A i7-7700k should process at 50% at 1100 MP/s. .

The I7-7700K process should support quick sync. I would look at how to enable the second GPU for video decode processing. I use two GPUs, the intel quicksync is used for video processing

 

[SouthernYankee]

Are you recording Just when you trigger or are you recording continuously direct to disk ?
I am not an expert in this area, but you may need to enable the Intel CPU in your BIOS.

 

[camviewer43]

You really should consider isolating your cameras from the internet. There is no reason for the cameras to have a route through a router or the internet. Either physically isolate the cameras or use a switch that can set up VLAN for the cameras that is separate for the rest of your LAN.

Forgive me for piggybacking on the OP's post. On my router, it's pretty easy to restrict internet access to devices. It's more difficult to fine-tune access restrictions. If you prevent internet access, do you run your own time server on your LAN so your cameras have something to connect to for NTP settings? Or do you fine-tune access so only a certain NTP server is accessible?

 

[looney2ns]

Forgive me for piggybacking on the OP's post. On my router, it's pretty easy to restrict internet access to devices. It's more difficult to fine-tune access restrictions. If you prevent internet access, do you run your own time server on your LAN so your cameras have something to connect to for NTP settings? Or do you fine-tune access so only a certain NTP server is accessible?

Install this: NetTime - Network Time Synchronization Tool
How to Secure Your Network (Don't Get Hacked!) | IP Cam Talk

 

[looney2ns]

looking to get the vast experience of the crowd since I am somewhat of a neophyte.

I have a BI system that's been working fine for a number of years and as of two weeks or so ago it started pegging the CPU overnight and staying there until I restarted Bi.
I have a lot of Hi-Rez cameras connected so it's been a battle to get the system balanced and not choking it.
running normally the CPU runs at average 85% and 5.5 GB RAM being used,
recording set direct to disc on all cameras.
Each camera set to maximum 15 FPS at full Res
limit live preview is set to 12 FPS to get it to 85%

here's my setup:
I7 – 7700K,16 GB RAM (motherboard has graphics outputs not being used)
Nvidia GTS 450 GC
two 30 inch Dell monitors running at 2560 x 1600 being driven DVI dual link from GC
six HIKvision 4 MP cameras and six HIKvision 8 MP cameras.
latest BI v5 software, Windows 10 PRO
BI set for record on motion.
I have tried a number of things including two other graphics cards and trying different hardware accelerated decodes.
doesn't seem to matter how I set the hardware acceleration (so I'm not sure if I'm even utilizing it at all?)
setting for no hardware acceleration and any of the other choices all seem to be the same.

In addition I have a second system (albeit with an i7 – 8700 CPU) looking at the same cameras and it is not experiencing the same problem..

thanks for reading all this and be safe!

Be sure you have excluded all BI folders from Windows Defender.

 

[JT Blue Iris]

thank you all for your varied advice, it's all good stuff, I will get to the networking/security issues next, but for right now I want to focus on the original CPU problem and fine-tuning of the system in that regard.
for testing purposes I have disabled Windows defender real-time protection and stopped all scheduled scans.
I am recording only upon motion and direct to disc.
I agree that BI is not utilizing the GPU's. (and really want to figure out why)
I was able to enable the onboard Intel GC, and connected a monitor to one of its outputs.
But no matter how I set the hardware acceleration in BI, it will not utilize either the Intel or the Nvidia GPU (I'm making this change within the BI/settings/cameras interface instead of each camera individually, then restarting BI)
attached are updated screenshots.
next I am going to change from Nvidia GTS 450 to GTX 1660 as a test..

 

[SouthernYankee]

As in my screen shots above do you show two GPUs ?
Did you restart BI / WIndows after the change ?

My configuration

 

[SouthernYankee]

after the restart the
Camera status should have a pound sign (#) next to the Mega pixels for each camera

 

[samplenhold]

Camera status should have a pound sign (#) next to the Mega pixels for each camera

What does the # indicate? Always wondered about that.

I will get to the networking/security issues ne

Realize that if the cameras are NOT isolated, they could be phoning home and that could slow your network.

 

[sebastiantombs]

# means hardware acceleration is active for that camera.

 

[JT Blue Iris]

okay, now we are getting somewhere…
First of all I admit my mistake by having the individual cameras set for no decode instead of default.. Changed that and now Intel decode is working (only when a monitor is connected to that GC however)
Nvidia decode is still not working with GTS 450, switched to GTX 950 and Nvidia decode is working. to the tune of 90%
also changing the I-frame interval to match the max encode of 15 frames changed the network traffic and the CPU load graphs from looking like a saw tooth to a very flat curve
CPU is now hovering around 35%!
only time will tell if these changes will fix the problem since it generally happened overnight, but by the looks of things my gut says this is going to do the trick! (I will let you know tomorrow or the next day)
thanks everybody for all that great advice and time you spent on this!

Now..
On to the network topology I should use..
the reason I have the camera network connected the Internet is because I like to use UI3 (and useful to download BI and Windows updates etc.) .so I think I want to continue this.
if you look at the attached simplistic drawing of my setup, I've used multiple routers to isolate all other computers from the camera network and vice versa thinking that if the computer on one network got attacked it would not jump the routers to the next.. maybe I am naïve?
I am open and interested to configure this the most secure way possible while still allowing remote access to BI.
Any ideas?

 

[SouthernYankee]

Progress
1) get a hdmi dummy plug from amazon.
2) set the intel graphics to max power and never sleep.

Getting Intel Quick Sync to work with Blue Iris (Settings & Troubleshooting)

This is a good place to start figuring out what system you want to purchase if you do not already have one: Choosing Hardware for Blue Iris | IP Cam Talk First, you can check if your system has Quick Sync. Follow this link: Intel product specifications...

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