BI - 45 Cameras, I7 4790. 16gb, 250SSD - 100% CPU Usage

Hi,
I am currently using a Geovision Pro VMS System. It works well for my needs but is lacking after 10+ years of usage. My Ip cameras range from Geovision, Dahua, Hikvision, and a bunch of PIR Onvif cameras. I recently bought a USB “charger” style camera & couldn’t get it working with Geovision but 5 minutes of the BI trial and I had the camera working. The current 44 Cameras in geovision on the same hardware uses about 44% - 25fps. Cameras are mostly 2mp, a few 4mp, and 3 5mp

In the matrix view Geovision does (I think) 2nd stream for active preview, then when you click on the window it gives the full stream 1.

I shut down the server, then put the new 250GB SSD, installed Windows Server 2016, then installed BI (bought and registered from this site). I added about 35 cameras and the CPU usage was maxed out at 100%. Still far short of my 45 camera goal. At the 100% usage the web viewer was unusable.

I tried a number of things including:
Direct to Disk on all cameras
Hardware decode – intel
Limit live preview to 1 – makes it unusable for live watching
Run as service (and not as service)

Am I asking to much from the BI software & my current hardware? The Geovision VMS works just fine so I
figured BI would work fine also.

Now, I tried again with Windows 7, same everything
I added 10 cameras – all same settings as above.

Hardware decoding off – screen up= 50% CPU
Hardware decoding on intel – screen up = 35% CPU
Hardware decoding on intel – screen minimized = 29% CPU
Hardware decoding on intel – screen minimized – Logged from 2nd PC to web view = 35% CPU

In a perfect world I can move everything to BI & keep either the BI software open viewing at a decent FPS or the Web browser.

If not I can take the cheapie USB “Charger” camera keep it with BI, then run BI in a Windows Server VM (not as ideal but will work for a single or a few cameras.

Any suggestions on what I can try?

Thanks,
Rich

Most likely Geovision is only decoding sub streams most of the time. Blue Iris doesn't have such a capability.

Something you could try is run Blue Iris just to interface with cameras that Geovision doesn't work with natively, and use BI's web server to serve a stream for each camera to Geovision. Blue Iris can provide MJPEG streams as well as a number of H.264 formats (see the bottom of the "web server" section of BI's help file). This is essentially using Blue Iris as a live transcoder which is going to be a bit expensive on the CPU but workable if it is not for very many cameras. If you use Blue Iris in this manner, you could even run BI on a separate PC so it didn't overload the machine running Geovision.

The only way you'll get Blue Iris to work with all your cameras at once will be to reduce the number of frames per second that Blue Iris must decode. You can do this through Blue Iris's "Limit decoding" feature (read about it in BI's help file) or by reducing the frame rates of each camera individually via each camera's web interface. 15 FPS is a good balance between smoothness and efficiency.

Another option would be to build a much more powerful computer to run Blue Iris on. But that isn't going to be very cost-effective. A CPU with Quick Sync is usually recommended since it saves power and lets you process more video with a lesser CPU. But for extremely heavy loads like yours it can begin to make sense to forget about energy efficiency and buy a high-end AMD ThreadRipper or equivalent high-core-count Intel CPU, then throw in Nvidia graphics cards if necessary to offload some of the work from the CPU. This ends up being quite expensive, both initially and over the long term due to power consumption.

So for now I think your best bet is to stick with a more efficient VMS like the one you already have.

In my experience the blueiris demo does not effectively use direct to disc, and will show higher CPU consumption then the licensed version. As bp noted limit decoding will significantly reduce CPU consumption, but read about the issues it creates with motion detection, as well as bumping back up to 100% on remote viewing unless you disable the decoding for the remote view.

to see what other systems are doing take a look at this page.
Blue Iris Update Helper

Hi,

This would be very interesting - the using BI to send the image to Geovision.

Geovision allows Onvif, RTSP, & PISA (not sure about PISA). Is there a way for BI to send a stream in that manner?

Looking at this thread: H.264 live stream URL?

I am not sure if this will work.

I am adding a JPG to show what options i have in Geovision to add a camera.

bp2008 said:

Most likely Geovision is only decoding sub streams most of the time. Blue Iris doesn't have such a capability.

Something you could try is run Blue Iris just to interface with cameras that Geovision doesn't work with natively, and use BI's web server to serve a stream for each camera to Geovision. Blue Iris can provide MJPEG streams as well as a number of H.264 formats (see the bottom of the "web server" section of BI's help file). This is essentially using Blue Iris as a live transcoder which is going to be a bit expensive on the CPU but workable if it is not for very many cameras. If you use Blue Iris in this manner, you could even run BI on a separate PC so it didn't overload the machine running Geovision.

The only way you'll get Blue Iris to work with all your cameras at once will be to reduce the number of frames per second that Blue Iris must decode. You can do this through Blue Iris's "Limit decoding" feature (read about it in BI's help file) or by reducing the frame rates of each camera individually via each camera's web interface. 15 FPS is a good balance between smoothness and efficiency.

Another option would be to build a much more powerful computer to run Blue Iris on. But that isn't going to be very cost-effective. A CPU with Quick Sync is usually recommended since it saves power and lets you process more video with a lesser CPU. But for extremely heavy loads like yours it can begin to make sense to forget about energy efficiency and buy a high-end AMD ThreadRipper or equivalent high-core-count Intel CPU, then throw in Nvidia graphics cards if necessary to offload some of the work from the CPU. This ends up being quite expensive, both initially and over the long term due to power consumption.

So for now I think your best bet is to stick with a more efficient VMS like the one you already have.

Click to expand...

fenderman said:

In my experience the blueiris demo does not effectively use direct to disc, and will show higher CPU consumption then the licensed version. As bp noted limit decoding will significantly reduce CPU consumption, but read about the issues it creates with motion detection, as well as bumping back up to 100% on remote viewing unless you disable the decoding for the remote view.

Click to expand...

I started with the demo, added cameras, then changed it to direct to disk. I then added the license a few hours later. Is it possible setting the Direct to disk in demo mode made it not work when in full version mode?

All my cameras are set for BI to detect motion - not the cameras. Is that possibly causing an issue?

SouthernYankee said:

to see what other systems are doing take a look at this page.
Blue Iris Update Helper

Click to expand...

So what i dont fully understand is my old 'crappy' Geovision seems to handle 45 cameras fine & not many people are using that many in BI. Those that are are at very high CPU usage.

I find it shocking that Geovision could be more efficient in anything - they do updates once every blue moon. I guess I shouldnt knock it but the support for BI is leaps & bounds better than Geo.

richtj99 said:

I started with the demo, added cameras, then changed it to direct to disk. I then added the license a few hours later. Is it possible setting the Direct to disk in demo mode made it not work when in full version mode?

All my cameras are set for BI to detect motion - not the cameras. Is that possibly causing an issue?

Click to expand...

No. Lower your frame rates. Confirm ha is working with gpuz or in winsows 10 task manager. Set all your cams to 1080p 15fps.

richtj99 said:

So what i dont fully understand is my old 'crappy' Geovision seems to handle 45 cameras fine & not many people are using that many in BI. Those that are are at very high CPU usage.

I find it shocking that Geovision could be more efficient in anything - they do updates once every blue moon. I guess I shouldnt knock it but the support for BI is leaps & bounds better than Geo.

Click to expand...

Geo uses the in camera motion detection what you can do with blue iris, and then effectively does the same thing as limit frame rates would do.. if you did that your CPU usage would be very reasonable.

fenderman said:

No. Lower your frame rates. Confirm ha is working with gpuz or in winsows 10 task manager. Set all your cams to 1080p 15fps.

Click to expand...

Thank you - i did install GPU Z - I have used CPUID - Where would I see the Hardware Acceleration with GPUZ?

fenderman said:

Geo uses the in camera motion detection what you can do with blue iris, and then effectively does the same thing as limit frame rates would do.. if you did that your CPU usage would be very reasonable.

Click to expand...

So I should set all BI cameras to use Camera Motion detection & that will help with the CPU usage?

richtj99 said:

Thank you - i did install GPU Z - I have used CPUID - Where would I see the Hardware Acceleration with GPUZ?



So I should set all BI cameras to use Camera Motion detection & that will help with the CPU usage?

Click to expand...

No what will help motion detection is the limit decoding setting. however this will screw up bi motion detection. So use the cameras.

He meant what will help CPU usage is the limit decoding setting.

bp2008 said:

He meant what will help CPU usage is the limit decoding setting.

Click to expand...

yes

Thanks for all the responses.

To confirm, I can't use BI to stream a RTSP stream (from Blue Iris) to Geovision. Overall the suggestion is to keep Geovision & use Blue Iris only for the cameras that Geovision doesnt support?

Or buy a brand new super machine with a ton of cores & give that a shot.

However expecting an I7 4790 / 16GB PC to run 45 BI cameras with a live preview of 20FPS - 30 FPS is not a reasonable task of the software. Blue Iris streams only stream 1 higher res) not stream 2 (typically lower res). There is no way to have BI use stream 2 for the preview but record in stream 1 (possibly what Geovision VMS is doing).

For example, I am in my office with the Geovision screen open & the 'small' window preview is running close to 30FPS (guessing as it is fluid). I caught a glimps of my wife in the basement walking up the stairs - that movement was enough for me to see she was heading to the kitchen & then she popped into the screen.

I typically dont sit around watching the cameras live but if I hear activity in the driveway I might look at the outdoor cams to see what is happening.

Summary:
BI creates RTSP stream = NO
BI I7 4790 @ 25FPS @ 45 cameras = NO


Thanks,
Rich