Can Blue Iris do Intel (QuickSync) hardware accelerated ENcoding?

pov2

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I am in the process of migrating Blue Iris from a PC that had NVidia hardware to a PC with an Intel GPU. I am not transferring the settings via .reg files but configuring the new install from scratch. On the old PC I was used to seeing the "use CUDA hardware encoding" checkbox on encoding settings tabs. The new PC doesn't have any NVidia hardware but it used to have an NVidia GPU but I uninstalled all drivers and cleaned the system from all NVidia stuff with a special cleaner. I was expecting to see a "use Intel QuickSync hardware encoding" checkbox but I still see that "use CUDA hardware encoding" checkbox.

I know Blue Iris can utilize the Intel QS hardware decoding but can it do HW encoding? It can sure do CUDA HW encoding. Or maybe it somehow sensed that my PC used to have an NVidia card and thinks that I still have it? I made sure to remove all traces of it.

I wanted to use it to H.264 re-encode clips for storage and alerts from a few old MJPEG cameras in unimportant places, and for direct streaming. I know I should use D2D but still the question.
 

looney2ns

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I am in the process of migrating Blue Iris from a PC that had NVidia hardware to a PC with an Intel GPU. I am not transferring the settings via .reg files but configuring the new install from scratch. On the old PC I was used to seeing the "use CUDA hardware encoding" checkbox on encoding settings tabs. The new PC doesn't have any NVidia hardware but it used to have an NVidia GPU but I uninstalled all drivers and cleaned the system from all NVidia stuff with a special cleaner. I was expecting to see a "use Intel QuickSync hardware encoding" checkbox but I still see that "use CUDA hardware encoding" checkbox.

I know Blue Iris can utilize the Intel QS hardware decoding but can it do HW encoding? It can sure do CUDA HW encoding. Or maybe it somehow sensed that my PC used to have an NVidia card and thinks that I still have it? I made sure to remove all traces of it.

I wanted to use it to H.264 re-encode clips for storage and alerts from a few old MJPEG cameras in unimportant places, and for direct streaming. I know I should use D2D but still the question.
You don't say what exact processor you have in the new PC.
If its quicksync capable, then BI can use it.
The cuda check box is going to be there no matter what.
If the new PC is running Win10, then use the MS Media Creation tool to do a clean install of Windows.
Optimizing Blue Iris's CPU Usage | IP Cam Talk
 

pov2

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You don't say what exact processor you have in the new PC.
If its quicksync capable, then BI can use it.
The cuda check box is going to be there no matter what.
If the new PC is running Win10, then use the MS Media Creation tool to do a clean install of Windows.
Optimizing Blue Iris's CPU Usage | IP Cam Talk
The processor is i7-4790K with the Intel® HD Graphics 4600. I am talking about HW encoding, not decoding. I know it can do decoding. But there is no where a checkbox to enable Intel HW encoding while it is there for CUDA.
The cuda check box is going to be there no matter what.
Thanks. That's reassuring. I don't think there is anything wrong with my Win10 installation then. I suppose this checkbox is ignored if there is no NVidia GPU. Most software provides interface customization depending on the hardware. I am used to that. I thought I would see an Intel QuickSync checkbox instead of CUDA in the encoder tab.

Does it mean that BI doesn't do HW encoding on Intel?
 

m_listed

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Would also like an answer to this. The Encoder options window only has an Nvidia checkbox for HW acceleration, but no Intel.
 

hugheba

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I'm also interested in QuickSync ENcoding instead of NVENC.

I notice the processor load increases when requesting a stream through the webserver but don't see any activity on Intel GPU.

SECURITY0.jpg
 
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mech

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I'm also interested in QuickSync ENcoding instead of NVENC.

I notice the processor load increases when requesting a stream through the webserver but don't see any activity on Intel GPU.

View attachment 49609
Does that change if you toggle the "Also BVR" checkbox for the camera in question (example below)? The help file mentions that this uses hardware decode when playing back recorded video. Not sure if that is your scenario. Each camera has its own independent setting, as you probably know already.

1572123862875.png
 

pov2

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@mech Yes, all cameras have the "Also BVR" option checked as I followed this guide to set them up and it was recommended. Optimizing Blue Iris's CPU Usage
That guide doesn't seem to even mention it. From the manual: "The Also BVR checkbox will cause the software to also attempt hardware decoding for BVR clips that were recorded by this camera." So, it's really only for playback of the recorded videos in BI.
 

bp2008

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Quick Sync hardware-accelerated encoding is still not available in Blue Iris.

New here but does this help?

Blue Iris: Decrease CPU Use
That guy recommended buying an expensive GPU for hardware acceleration, and did not even mention Quick Sync even though his example system supports it. That is a pretty significant gap in his apparent knowledge. Quick Sync is a whole lot more energy-efficient than Nvidia's hardware acceleration. Using Quick Sync reduces the overall power consumption of a system while Nvidia acceleration raises it by quite a lot.
 

sadpanda

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I figured because the dialog box was generic in description and later iterations of Quick Sync have simultaneous encode/decode capability perhaps it was implemented just not well documented.
 

bp2008

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Nah, Blue Iris does a lot of things that are not well-documented, but Quick-Sync encoding isn't one of them yet.

Blue Iris can use Quick Sync for H.264 decoding only. It also tries to do H.265 decoding, but in my experience, you get precisely one video frame decoded, then it hangs until Blue Iris automatically restarts the video stream, then you get one frame again, and so on. Depending on the Intel driver version, you may not even get that. I've never heard of anyone getting it to work properly.

I suspect the problem is Intel having a really cruddy SDK and driver for Quick Sync. When Blue Iris added "Nvidia CUDA" acceleration support, it was for H.264 and H.265 decoding, as well as H.264 encoding, all working just fine from day one. Intel on the other hand has been the cause of numerous problems, including rare rainbow-colored video corruption with some cameras, black frames on clip seeking, memory leaks, and similar problems. Unfortunately Nvidia's acceleration is expensive and energy-inefficient, making it poorly suited for most situations. At least Intel Quick Sync can be made to work, most of the time, with H.264 streams.
 
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CCTVCam

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