4MP using H.265 codec

GuiBou

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that makes no sense at all..you were likely missing lots of footage with alerts as well..surprised it worked at all...
So I suppose Dahua NVRs should support SMART Codec from their cam then? I paid for Blue Iris and it's just for my home so I'll do what's best for it. I like to play with settings... I can't help it.
 

nbstl68

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Follow up:
In my most recent follow up email from Ken today he stated, "There's definitely something incompatible about the H.265 stream from this camera...Please try for yourself in another RTSP player VLC...If this does not work with VLC, it will not work with Blue iris ... they use similar video components."

Ken had been remoting in to try out a RSTP connection.

While I have have not been able to get a feed via RSTP with VLC on my Win10 computer for the camera at all, (while in either 264 or 265 setting), I was able to get it to work with the same connection string using Tiny Cam Pro.

I admit I have never used VLC before so I cannot say for sure I was doing it right, but after Ken's comments I thouht I'd ask here if anyone else has successfully gotten an RSTP stream from this camera to work in VLC while set to .265 to rule that out.

He also just suggested I make sure the camera is using the latest firmware of course.
I am not sure what the most recent firmware for this camera is nor how to update it really. My camera of course has the option to change the main stream from .264 to .265. So I am not sure updating would make a difference.
I show it is currently on:
2.460.0000.1.R Build Date 2016-10-25
Web ver 3.2.1.388722
ONVIF ver 2.42
 

nbstl68

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The camera in question for me where .h265 rstp stream is not working in BI (or VLC) is the hdw5231r-z.
 

mpbcam

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Follow up:
In my most recent follow up email from Ken today he stated, "There's definitely something incompatible about the H.265 stream from this camera...Please try for yourself in another RTSP player VLC...If this does not work with VLC, it will not work with Blue iris ... they use similar video components."
For what it's worth, on my SD49225T-HN I'm also getting a 2/3rd or so green screen (and also the same right-hand portion as your screen shots) when using H.265

Then something weird... I decided to try it out on my phone using IP Cam Viewer, so I added the camera, made sure it worked, then switched to H.265.

It looked fine on my phone, then I looked back at Blue Iris and it was working fine on there too.

So... what's different, you may ask? Nothing, honest!

Here's where it gets weird... so, I shut down the app on my phone and looked at anything else in the camera settings that I may have changed as well. I did also change to VBR, so I thought that might have done something? I switched back to CBR and 2048K... restarted the camera in Blue Iris... oh man, the green blob is back!

Changed CBR to 4096K thinking it needed more bandwidth... restarted cam; nope, still a green blob taking most of the image.

Now, remember, the app on my phone is shut down during this retesting... so I think "aha, it's failing in Blue Iris now, let's see what the phone app does". Start it up, and the image is fine. Well shoot. So while the app is running, I restart the cam in Blue Iris, and now it's fine again! What... ?

So then, Blue Iris and my phone app are both showing a good picture... I close my app, and BI is still good. Let's see what happens if I restart the camera in BI again. It's fine!

Okay... let's make some mostly harmless change on the camera like changing the max bit rate to another value...

The image in BI freezes when that change happens, so I have no choice but to "restart camera".

Green blob is back.

Open my phone app and bring up the camera, from BI I "restart camera" and voila, it's fine again.

My conclusion is that Blue Iris isn't initiating the RTSP stream properly, but when something else (another app) does so, then BI has no problem.

I won't pretend to know anything at all about the RTSP streams and how they work... apparently changing a setting on the camera will force any streams to restart, but is there some kind of initialization that an app has to do if it's the first guest to the party, so to speak? Something to tell the camera "if you're not already streaming, please start", and if it's not done right then you get over half of the image wiped out by some (presumably) default color or another... green in this case?

Well, hopefully my little troubleshooting and write-up helps him figure out the issue better and gives a solid, repeatable case study.
 

hmjgriffon

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For what it's worth, on my SD49225T-HN I'm also getting a 2/3rd or so green screen (and also the same right-hand portion as your screen shots) when using H.265

Then something weird... I decided to try it out on my phone using IP Cam Viewer, so I added the camera, made sure it worked, then switched to H.265.

It looked fine on my phone, then I looked back at Blue Iris and it was working fine on there too.

So... what's different, you may ask? Nothing, honest!

Here's where it gets weird... so, I shut down the app on my phone and looked at anything else in the camera settings that I may have changed as well. I did also change to VBR, so I thought that might have done something? I switched back to CBR and 2048K... restarted the camera in Blue Iris... oh man, the green blob is back!

Changed CBR to 4096K thinking it needed more bandwidth... restarted cam; nope, still a green blob taking most of the image.

Now, remember, the app on my phone is shut down during this retesting... so I think "aha, it's failing in Blue Iris now, let's see what the phone app does". Start it up, and the image is fine. Well shoot. So while the app is running, I restart the cam in Blue Iris, and now it's fine again! What... ?

So then, Blue Iris and my phone app are both showing a good picture... I close my app, and BI is still good. Let's see what happens if I restart the camera in BI again. It's fine!

Okay... let's make some mostly harmless change on the camera like changing the max bit rate to another value...

The image in BI freezes when that change happens, so I have no choice but to "restart camera".

Green blob is back.

Open my phone app and bring up the camera, from BI I "restart camera" and voila, it's fine again.

My conclusion is that Blue Iris isn't initiating the RTSP stream properly, but when something else (another app) does so, then BI has no problem.

I won't pretend to know anything at all about the RTSP streams and how they work... apparently changing a setting on the camera will force any streams to restart, but is there some kind of initialization that an app has to do if it's the first guest to the party, so to speak? Something to tell the camera "if you're not already streaming, please start", and if it's not done right then you get over half of the image wiped out by some (presumably) default color or another... green in this case?

Well, hopefully my little troubleshooting and write-up helps him figure out the issue better and gives a solid, repeatable case study.
Have you sent this info to Ken?
 

mpbcam

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Have you sent this info to Ken?
I haven't... unfortunately my BI support expired a couple months back and I didn't want to bother him directly about the issue. As long as he didn't think I was trying to weasel some free support out of him I could forward the info, but I'd feel kind of dirty doing that. :)
 

hmjgriffon

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I haven't... unfortunately my BI support expired a couple months back and I didn't want to bother him directly about the issue. As long as he didn't think I was trying to weasel some free support out of him I could forward the info, but I'd feel kind of dirty doing that. :)
get someone else to, lol. I'd think given the popularity of this cam he'd want to for all his users.
 

nbstl68

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For what it's worth, on my SD49225T-HN I'm also getting a 2/3rd or so green screen (and also the same right-hand portion as your screen shots) when using H.265

Then something weird... I decided to try it out on my phone using IP Cam Viewer, so I added the camera, made sure it worked, then switched to H.265.

It looked fine on my phone, then I looked back at Blue Iris and it was working fine on there too.

So... what's different, you may ask? Nothing, honest!

Here's where it gets weird... so, I shut down the app on my phone and looked at anything else in the camera settings that I may have changed as well. I did also change to VBR, so I thought that might have done something? I switched back to CBR and 2048K... restarted the camera in Blue Iris... oh man, the green blob is back!

Changed CBR to 4096K thinking it needed more bandwidth... restarted cam; nope, still a green blob taking most of the image.

Now, remember, the app on my phone is shut down during this retesting... so I think "aha, it's failing in Blue Iris now, let's see what the phone app does". Start it up, and the image is fine. Well shoot. So while the app is running, I restart the cam in Blue Iris, and now it's fine again! What... ?

So then, Blue Iris and my phone app are both showing a good picture... I close my app, and BI is still good. Let's see what happens if I restart the camera in BI again. It's fine!

Okay... let's make some mostly harmless change on the camera like changing the max bit rate to another value...

The image in BI freezes when that change happens, so I have no choice but to "restart camera".

Green blob is back.

Open my phone app and bring up the camera, from BI I "restart camera" and voila, it's fine again.

My conclusion is that Blue Iris isn't initiating the RTSP stream properly, but when something else (another app) does so, then BI has no problem.

I won't pretend to know anything at all about the RTSP streams and how they work... apparently changing a setting on the camera will force any streams to restart, but is there some kind of initialization that an app has to do if it's the first guest to the party, so to speak? Something to tell the camera "if you're not already streaming, please start", and if it's not done right then you get over half of the image wiped out by some (presumably) default color or another... green in this case?

Well, hopefully my little troubleshooting and write-up helps him figure out the issue better and gives a solid, repeatable case study.
I tried all the above, installing and simultaneously running IP Cam Viewer to try to simulate your sucess with removing the green screen but it made no difference for me.

I would think Ken would need more to go on.
I do not think he is looking into it any further since my last post. He basically stated if it does not work in VLC, (which for me, it do3s not connect via VLC in any format...possibly me doing something wrong there) then it won't work in BI as they use similar programming.
My take on that response was him telling me the issue, whatever it may be, is not with BI.

The mystery contiunes...and I remain using h.264.
 

mpbcam

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I tried all the above, installing and simultaneously running IP Cam Viewer to try to simulate your sucess with removing the green screen but it made no difference for me.
Weird. Did IP Cam Viewer work at all with H.265 from the Dahua? Anything look weird in there at all?

For me it seemed to be easily repeatable, but I wasn't clear from your response if IP Cam Viewer was working successfully with an h.265 stream or not.

My particular network or account settings may be involved some how as well. On my cameras I have a dedicated account for Blue Iris that I use for that as well as IP Cam Viewer. If you were using different users to start the different streams I wonder if that would impact anything too, or maybe there's something with the more restricted permission I have on that user (it can view video and do PTZ things but that's it).

At least H.264 is still working fine for both of us. I'm trying to remember if any of my other cameras have H.265 support that I can try out but I'm drawing a blank... I may have to try later with one of those, if possible.
 

nbstl68

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When I switched btw H.264\265 and back, IP Cam viewer (on both my phone and later on my tablet) just froze for a few sec then continued streaming the full image.
Shut down IP Cam Viewer \ switched back on...BI just kept the green screen image for H.265. Even rebooted the cam connection and BI itself a few times while testing.
When the Dahua cam switched to H.264 BI would show full image and back to green when switchwd back to .265. IP cam Viewer showed full stream the whole time.
I used the same camera log-in for both.
So for me, it seemed to make no difference with BI by introducing IP Cam Viewer into the mix.

I'd be interested to know how much smaller the file would be with H.265. As it is now, separated into 1 hr clips running 24/7 each hour for that cam is around 1.42GB (no active motion on screen) with H.264, CBR set to max at 25fps.

I have 4 of the hdw5231r-Z cameras and they all behave similarly, so I have ruled out the cam as the issue.
 

willzim

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When I switched btw H.264\265 and back, IP Cam viewer (on both my phone and later on my tablet) just froze for a few sec then continued streaming the full image.
Shut down IP Cam Viewer \ switched back on...BI just kept the green screen image for H.265. Even rebooted the cam connection and BI itself a few times while testing.
When the Dahua cam switched to H.264 BI would show full image and back to green when switchwd back to .265. IP cam Viewer showed full stream the whole time.
I used the same camera log-in for both.
So for me, it seemed to make no difference with BI by introducing IP Cam Viewer into the mix.

I'd be interested to know how much smaller the file would be with H.265. As it is now, separated into 1 hr clips running 24/7 each hour for that cam is around 1.42GB (no active motion on screen) with H.264, CBR set to max at 25fps.

I have 4 of the hdw5231r-Z cameras and they all behave similarly, so I have ruled out the cam as the issue.
Any solution to this? ipc-hdw5231r-z here as well with half green screen for H.265 in Blue Iris (works in SynoSurv, tinyCam, etc)
 

aristobrat

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Any solution to this? ipc-hdw5231r-z here as well with half green screen for H.265 in Blue Iris (works in SynoSurv, tinyCam, etc)
I'm going to send in a support ticket about this (I just bought BI the other day). Maybe if everyone with the issue did the same, Ken would start looking at this again?
 
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