BI Switching from Substream to Main too late

I can't seem to find many other people with this issue, any help or advice would be appreciated. System is an i7-9700 with 16GB on Windows 11, no GPU, I have CPAI running and BI and that is pretty much all I use the PC for. I have 3 Reolink cameras, RLC-811A (8MP), RLC-510A (5MP) a Duo 3 (16MP) and a Wyze cam; I am currently recording all but only running AI on the 8MP and 5MP cameras and CPU usage without active analysis is <5%. On the two cameras in question I am recording Continuous+Alerts and it seems to catch motion fairly well (I think I have some tweaking to do) but the Alert clips are switching to the Main stream sometimes 30 seconds after motion has ended. I have the cameras set to 15 FPS and a constant iframe rate at 1x and I have the pre-trigger record time set to 5s, sending 4 images to AI at 750ms apart. I've had the system setup for about 1 month and at first things seemed to be working fairly well, over the last few weeks I have added cameras, done some of the updates that were released, got Firmware from Reolink specifically for BI, and done some tweaking of setting to try and reduce unneeded alerts. The delay between stream switching seems to fluctuate but I would say at this point rarely if ever do I get a clip that has switched to main prior to the event actually happening. Today I removed and reinstalled CPAI, thinking that maybe I had some corrupted files, that didn't make any difference. When I double click a camera to full screen it switches to the main stream within 1 second so seems to me the main is easily available. Anyone have suggestions on what to change?

It is common knowledge here that Reolinks and BI do not play well together. Even though Reolink claims to have firmware to fix things, there are emails floating around here people got from Reolink confirming there are still issues.

Have you confirmed that the iframe is actually holding?

Post your BI camera status page that shows MP, bitrates, KEY, etc.

Is the KEY 1.00 for every camera?

Are your cameras going thru the router or are they isolated via dual NIC or VLAN?

Is the issue worse during the night or is it happening day and night?

Reolinks are also notorious for not capturing good motion at night.

wittaj said:

It is common knowledge here that Reolinks and BI do not play well together. Even though Reolink claims to have firmware to fix things, there are emails floating around here people got from Reolink confirming there are still issues.

Have you confirmed that the iframe is actually holding?

Post your BI camera status page that shows MP, bitrates, KEY, etc.

Is the KEY 1.00 for every camera?

Are your cameras going thru the router or are they isolated via dual NIC or VLAN?

Is the issue worse during the night or is it happening day and night?

Reolinks are also notorious for not capturing good motion at night.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the quick reply! Yeah, I am kind of wondering if Reolink isn't the problem, my only hesitation at this point is how well they did seem to be working at first, not sure what changed.

Every time I have checked the status page I see a key frame rate of 1, is there some other place I should be checking it? Snap shot included.

Cameras are going through a router, no isolation from the rest of the network (that is on my to-do list).

I don't notice a big difference in the stream switching issue between day/night, seems to be pretty much the same. I do agree, motion on these cameras at night isn't great.

That looks correct as far as the KEY, except for the Wyze.

Try turning off Hardware Acceleration. For some people that has caused issues.

Also in the Reolinks use plain H264 without any variants. Two of them are showing H265/H264 which could mean a mismatch between codec of mainstream and substream (one is H265 and the other is H264 and that will cause this issue) or you have smart codec like + going on.

Cameras going thru the router is probably an issue as well. Routers are not designed for the non-buffering video demands of these cameras. Netflix works because it buffers video.

So what happens is the longer your system is up and running, the more packets that are dropped and over time those cause these delays as it is trying to make sense of what to do and since these cameras are sending data nonstop, the lost packets are then causing BI to not get the mainstream feed in time.

If you reboot the router, you may see a temporary improvement.

Thanks again for the help. I'll try turning off the hardware acceleration and at least a trial run directly to the PC this weekend, if I have success I'll certain come back to provide feedback for all to benefit. As far as the H264/H265, there is no setting in the firmware for the two cameras showing a mixed codec, so I think I am kind of stuck with it unless I go back to Reolink for a shot at another firmware update. Maybe another downside to using Reolink.

Send back the Reolinks if you still can.
Then purchase known good cameras.

I had this problem as well running only 2 empiretech at only 1080p 18 fps. My pc is just an old optiplex i3 4th gen so I wasn’t surprised. I just stopped using substream since it’s only 2 cameras. I tried all combinations of h264 and h265. For my liking even the live view took too long to switch from sub to main stream let alone viewing recorded footage took an average of 18 seconds.

FWIW, I run BI on a Dell Inspiron i5-6400 with 8GB RAM, Samsung 250GB 860 EVO SSD and a 2T WD Purple.
I run 8 cams all @ 15fps (three 2MP, two 5MP, one 3MP and two 4MP) with no HA, use Direct-to-Disk and use sub streams.
CPU idles at 24%, all set to record continuous + triggered.
In live view all cams switch to main stream in less than a second on console or in UI3 from another PC.
Version is 5.4.7.11 from 6/11/21.
Not using any AI.

looney2ns said:

Send back the Reolinks if you still can.
Then purchase known good cameras.

Click to expand...

I see good things about Dahua and Hikvision, recommendation on others?

cdh179 said:

I see good things about Dahua and Hikvision, recommendation on others?

Click to expand...

They make most of the gear out there, except for the crap stuff LOL.

You could look at Axis, but bring your checkbook.

Many find Dahua to be the best bang for the buck with better options currently than Hikvision.

Just a mini-sampling of the some of the cameras those two make for others...