Pixelation, Freezing, and Drops on new DS-2CD6D54FWD-IZHS

StewartJ

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First off, I'm running Blue Iris 4.8.4.6 x64. I'm a little leery about upgrading to V5 given the problems people have been reporting so I've been holding off.

I'm replacing 2 Mobotix cameras, a D14 and a D15 with a new Hikvision Panovu DS-2CD6D54FWD-IZHS. This is a 4-lens camera that shows up as 4 separate cameras in Blue Iris. The Mobotix cameras each had 2 lenses that showed in a single 3840x1080 stream (I believe that was the resolution) and had no problems but this new Hikvision is having a doozy of a time! Logging into the camera and viewing the streams everything looks right. Watching the feed from inside of VLC is fine as well. This is an example of what I'm seeing in Blue Iris.

upload_2019-7-16_15-4-58.png

In addition to the artifacting, there are also freezing of the cameras and the occasional "No signal". While Blue Iris shows the "No Signal" the stream is still perfectly fine in VLC and ping is 2-3ms. I've got to believe it is something to do with a setting I have.

Here are the things I've tried:
I've adjusted the resolution from 1280x720 up to 2560x1920
I've adjusted the Frame Rate from 24 to 15
I've set the i Frame interval to match the Frame Rate
I've tried both Direct-To-Disc and Re-Encode
I've disabled 3 of the 4 cameras and run just the 1

Also, whenever I make changes to the camera settings in BI, I just get the striped colored bars. Hardware accelerated decode is set to "No" because if I ever change it then the cameras stream locks up and I need to restart BI, losing the change. Most of the time I have to close BI and restart it but if I do then the changes I've made don't stick. Sometimes I can adjust a parameter in the camera and it will allow BI to reconnect, thus keeping the changes.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
 

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fenderman

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First off, I'm running Blue Iris 4.8.4.6 x64. I'm a little leery about upgrading to V5 given the problems people have been reporting so I've been holding off.

I'm replacing 2 Mobotix cameras, a D14 and a D15 with a new Hikvision Panovu DS-2CD6D54FWD-IZHS. This is a 4-lens camera that shows up as 4 separate cameras in Blue Iris. The Mobotix cameras each had 2 lenses that showed in a single 3840x1080 stream (I believe that was the resolution) and had no problems but this new Hikvision is having a doozy of a time! Logging into the camera and viewing the streams everything looks right. Watching the feed from inside of VLC is fine as well. This is an example of what I'm seeing in Blue Iris.

View attachment 44778

In addition to the artifacting, there are also freezing of the cameras and the occasional "No signal". While Blue Iris shows the "No Signal" the stream is still perfectly fine in VLC and ping is 2-3ms. I've got to believe it is something to do with a setting I have.

Here are the things I've tried:
I've adjusted the resolution from 1280x720 up to 2560x1920
I've adjusted the Frame Rate from 24 to 15
I've set the i Frame interval to match the Frame Rate
I've tried both Direct-To-Disc and Re-Encode
I've disabled 3 of the 4 cameras and run just the 1

Also, whenever I make changes to the camera settings in BI, I just get the striped colored bars. Hardware accelerated decode is set to "No" because if I ever change it then the cameras stream locks up and I need to restart BI, losing the change. Most of the time I have to close BI and restart it but if I do then the changes I've made don't stick. Sometimes I can adjust a parameter in the camera and it will allow BI to reconnect, thus keeping the changes.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
Intel Hardware acceleration doesn't work for 265...
You should not be using any smart or plus codec.
 

StewartJ

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Can I update to the last version of V4 if I'm not on a maintenance contract? I recall trying that before on another machine and it updated but requested a new license.
 

fenderman

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Can I update to the last version of V4 if I'm not on a maintenance contract? I recall trying that before on another machine and it updated but requested a new license.
yes. donwload the full installer from the website or the update file from the download section here
 

StewartJ

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I've updated the installer and switched from High Profile to Main Profile but no change. The camera does the same thing even if plugged directly into the switch. I've also set up another PC with BI5 in Eval mode to test. At least it allows me to shift around settings quickly.
 

StewartJ

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I believe the pixelation is an i-frame issue. If I set Frame Rate to 24 and adjust the i-frame the pixelation changes. I've tried 24/24, 24/12, 15/15 as well as other combinations. It only seems to happen if the bitrate is over 512, if that makes a difference.
 

StewartJ

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I have found that if I set the profile to Basic then the pixelation goes away. Skipping is still really bad but at least it's something. With the profile set to Basic and the I-Frame interval set to 1 it looks like the skipping goes away as well, but it's obviously an ugly image full of twinkling boxes.

I think maybe the pauses are linked to the I-frame at a ratio of 1:8. It seems like 1 second of pausing for every 8 frames of I-Frame. Setting it to 8 yields 1-2 seconds of pause. Setting it to 96 yields around 12 seconds of pause. Running at 24/24 has around 3-4 seconds of pause or around 6-7 seconds of pause. I'm not certain but I think there is a correlation.
 
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beepsilver

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Experiment by rebooting the camera and then change to constant bitrate and set bitrate to 6144 or higher. I don't know why but my system struggles when I use variable bitrate. Remove the timestamp in BI since you're using the cam's timestamp. In BI use direct to disc and keep the fps/iframe at 15 as you note above. For testing, make sure to turn off hardware acceleration and uncheck both Limit Decoding and Also bvr in Camera Properties > Video.

Maybe the next step is to factory reset the camera, especially if you made any firmware changes.
 

StewartJ

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Experiment by rebooting the camera and then change to constant bitrate and set bitrate to 6144 or higher. I don't know why but my system struggles when I use variable bitrate. Remove the timestamp in BI since you're using the cam's timestamp. In BI use direct to disc and keep the fps/iframe at 15 as you note above. For testing, make sure to turn off hardware acceleration and uncheck both Limit Decoding and Also bvr in Camera Properties > Video.

Maybe the next step is to factory reset the camera, especially if you made any firmware changes.
I've updated the firmware and reset the camera. (Oddly, after the firmware update only 2 of the lenses worked until a second reboot, even in the camera's web interface.) I've tried every combination of CBR and VBR I can think of.
 

StewartJ

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I've sent another email to support. It's been a week. Anyone have any ideas on what else I can do to get some help?
 

StewartJ

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Never did hear back from the dev at Blue Iris and the camera is dead. Need to find a replacement camera or 2 separate cameras with wider angles.
 
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