We all have different expectations and results. For exporting video, I rarely do it and have to at least partially relearn every time. I find the difficulty between BI and smartPSS about the same. Except for the first time I tried to export from BI when it took me about 5 hours over several days, trying by myself with no luck, reading documentation with no luck, scanning through the forum with luck after a while finding a post with the same problem. Turned out I had a "stable" BI version where video export didn't work. Upgraded to the then-current stable version and it worked. Never had a problem like that with the NVR.
Today we had some suspicious activity. For viewing I always go first to UI3 because it's so much faster and easier. Click on the clip, and no video. WTF? Went to the native BI monitor. Clip is there, no video. In fact, all video from all cameras for the last 24 hours was gone. BI was complaining about storage drive overallocation. Never had a problem like that with the NVR, and finally got my info from smartPSS. I think I know what led to the video loss. I had accidentally left the storage tab up overnight on the BI machine, having changed no settings. I think I ran into this a couple of months ago, that BI messes up if the storage tab is displayed too long. I call it a bug, and expect others will call it stupid user error.
Conundrum! Spend more time every day viewing triggers with smartPSS, or spend hours and hours every month or so with something that isn't working right with BI? For the long run, keep fighting BI or get a new 32 channel NVR? Don't know which side of the fence I'll fall off of. Maybe I'll end up with both, one for easy viewing, and the other for rock-solid reliability.
