4.2.8 - January 7, 2016 - Hardware Acceleration

[fenderman]

Adding my noobie experience.

4xHikVision DS-2CD2032F
1xHikVision DS-2CD2432F
1xZyxel IPC-3605N

Intel Skylake 6700K, 16GB RAM, Samsung 1TB EVO SSD

Cams at 10FPS, direct-to-disk, BI video format.

CPU usage hasn't changed much (hard to tell) with the update and hardware encoding activated. Pre-update it was in the high-teens. Post-update maybe mid-teens.

GPU-Z reports only 3-4% usage with BI running. Maybe 1pt less with BI off.

Zyxel Camera won't work with hardware encoding turned-on. Had to disable in camera-specific settings.

Not sure if I'm doing anything wrong. Prior to installing BI my home server would idle at 17W. Now it's around 30W. Would love to get it back down some, but that may be an unrealistic expectation. Very happy with the software and cams otherwise!

Are you using the h.264 url for the zyxel? With respect to he cpu change, its important to note the percent change. So for example of you started with 19 percent and went down to 14 percent you have a 26 percent reduction which would be the same as going from 50 to 37.
You pc will idle higher because there is load on it. 30w is very low.

 

[bp2008]

I bet an i5 NUC would make a halfway decent low power Blue Iris box these days, and will only get better at it as Ken expands his use of Intel's quick sync. It would probably be twice as efficient in electricity usage as a full size desktop.

 

[MartyO]

Some info on Quick sync

1) came out in 2011, works on sandy, ivy, haswell, broadwell and Skylake (I think too)
2) Its a dedicated hardware core on the processor dye, it doesn't use the CPU at all.
3) Slight quality loss vs applications that use the CPU
4) Speed is prioritized over quality.

I got above info from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video

Its since release there is much effort into improving quality, haswell apparently did that. http://missingremote.com/review/intel-quick-sync-examining-haswell-performance

 

[bp2008]

3) Slight quality loss vs applications that use the CPU

Only for encoding though, I think. So it is not likely to affect Blue Iris recording most of the time.

 

[MartyO]

Only for encoding though, I think. So it is not likely to affect Blue Iris recording most of the time.

I guess only if you reencode mpeg to h264???

 

[650hpAMG]

Just and update, generally I never update BI to the latest version as they are very prone to issues. I made an exception this time due to the Hardware Acceleration feature. I ran into a host of issues of course and no cpu usage improvement. However with the latest 4.2.8.4 update things are going smoothly-so far. I replaced one of the 1mp cameras with a 3mp camera and even with that my cpu usage dropped 8-10 points, no bad. No funny reboot as I had with the prior version. My wall mounted remote ipads so far appear to stay connected though it remains to be seen if BI is finally as reliable as the ipcamerapro app running on one of the ipads. So 28Mp total cameras, many running 15/20fps, few with audio, Plex 4k server, Zwave, Teamviewer, and itunes, my pc is around 55% on average. Streaming 4k over Plex bumps it up a bit but still healthy. So far happy. Now if they can get the 2-way audio for Armcrest to work as they told me it would be in a 'future' release, I would dance a jig.

 

[bp2008]

I just updated my dad's BI from 4.2.6.8 to 4.2.8.4, enabled Intel hardware acceleration in Main options > Cameras tab, and restarted the Blue Iris service. CPU usage down from 23% to 11%. No problems detected. This on an i7-3770k.

 

[smiticans]

I just updated my dad's BI from 4.2.6.8 to 4.2.8.4, enabled Intel hardware acceleration in Main options > Cameras tab, and restarted the Blue Iris service. CPU usage down from 23% to 11%. No problems detected. This on an i7-3770k.

What version of windows is he running?

 

[bp2008]

What version of windows is he running?

His server is running Windows 8(.1). Mine on Win10 had similar results.

 

[smiticans]

I'm running Windows 7 Professional 64bit. Running Blue Iris as a service along with Intel hardware acceleration causes all my cams to drop out. If I run it without it being a service, the hardware acceleration works very nicely. I'm trying to figure whats causing this issue.

 

[bp2008]

I'm running Windows 7 Professional 64bit. Running Blue Iris as a service along with Intel hardware acceleration causes all my cams to drop out. If I run it without it being a service, the hardware acceleration works very nicely. I'm trying to figure whats causing this issue.

Works fine here as service on Windows 8 and 10.

 

[smiticans]

I'm going to do some more experimenting tomorrow

 

[MartyO]

Intels GPU getting par with discrete, with they enter discrete graphics market, in comments, NVidia is speculated to in the future to be the weakest player ?

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/221322-intel-claims-its-integrated-gpus-now-equal-to-discrete-cards

 

[kboxvegas]

Okay so I disabled the Blue Iris service, enabled HA again, rebooted and my Hik's stopped dropping out. So in my case there is currently something up with HA and the BI service.


Previously the average for this box was 32% CPU, it is now sitting at 24% CPU and 5%GPU since changing over about an hour ago. Not a drastic change but this box only has 6 3MP cams connected at the moment. I suspect the benefits will only increase with more cams. I will add a couple more in a few days and retest. This box is monitored by PRTG every minute so I should have some good data to contribute in about a week.





Lenovo TS140 E3-1225 V3 - Intel HD P4600 - Intel C226 chipset - Win 7 Pro 64bit 12GB ECC - BI 4.2.8.4 - 6 3MP Hikvision's

 

[wcrowder]

Intels GPU getting par with discrete, with they enter discrete graphics market, in comments, NVidia is speculated to in the future to be the weakest player ?

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/221322-intel-claims-its-integrated-gpus-now-equal-to-discrete-cards

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-HD-4600-Desktop-125-GHz-vs-Nvidia-GTX-980-Ti/2168vs3439

 

[bp2008]

Previously the average for this box was 32% CPU, it is now sitting at 24% CPU and 5%GPU since changing over about an hour ago. Not a drastic change but this box only has 6 3MP cams connected at the moment. I suspect the benefits will only increase with more cams. I will add a couple more in a few days and retest. This box is monitored by PRTG every minute so I should have some good data to contribute in about a week.

I suspect that is a typical result. I only got more drastic CPU savings because I had all my cams on direct to disk recording, and the live video preview frame rate limited to 1 FPS. Blue Iris is really inefficient at drawing video, especially noticeable if you have a large Blue Iris window.

 

[ruddj]

Has anyone got Hardware Acceleration working on a HP Gen 8 Microserver? I have a Microserver with Xeon E3-1260L (V1) running Server 2012 R2, I enabled HA and restarted but didn't notice any change.
I am unsure if it works with these as in Display Adapters it only lists the Matrox G200eh and no Intel HD graphics.

 

[fenderman]

Has anyone got Hardware Acceleration working on a HP Gen 8 Microserver? I have a Microserver with Xeon E3-1260L (V1) running Server 2012 R2, I enabled HA and restarted but didn't notice any change.
I am unsure if it works with these as in Display Adapters it only lists the Matrox G200eh and no Intel HD graphics.

You need to find out if you can disable the matrox and use the built in intel. HP should be a be able to help you. Check the bios for an option as well.

 

[ruddj]

You need to find out if you can disable the matrox and use the built in intel. HP should be a be able to help you. Check the bios for an option as well.

Thanks. I just found on another Site

As the Gen8 utilizes a C204 chipset motherboard that lacks support for processor graphics, the Pentium G2020T's Intel HD IGP was set aside in favor of a Matrox G200 graphics chip.

So although I upgraded my CPU to a Xeon it appears the motherboard does not support the on-chip graphics.

 

[kboxvegas]

I got to say that I am pretty happy with the results thus far. Much less fluctuation at night than I was getting before.