5.3.0 - July 9, 2020

fenderman

fenderman

Staff member
Mar 9, 2014
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NOTE THIS INITIAL RELEASE IS BUGGY. USE COMMON SENSE!
5.3.0 - July 9, 2020
When recording direct-to-disc with a dual-streaming camera, now BOTH streams are saved
to the BVR file. Files created in this way will no longer be playable on older releases of this
software.
The sub stream will be used automatically for timeline playback as well as low-resolution
web requests.
A new right-click menu option has been added to the viewer window to select the sub
stream for single-camera playback. You will also find this option on the Convert/Export
window.
An action set may be run periodically based on the active schedule; configured on the
Schedule page in settings. This may be useful as a “keep alive” or a “health” function when
interfacing with other systems.
 
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Wish that he had a beta channel instead of releasing unproven versions it to the masses. I guess that is his "beta" channel. :lmao:
 
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biggen said:
Wish that he had a beta channel instead of releasing unproven versions it to the masses. I guess that is his "beta" channel. :lmao:
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He DOES have a beta channel - thats the point of the latest stable release option. He can win with these folks with update OCD.
 
For those that jumped to 5.3.x a few questions I am sure others will have as well:

I am assuming both streams being saved means more storage space being used to record two streams? Can you disable saving the substream?

Can you disable the substream being the automatic playback? I would prefer to watch the main stream on playback.
 
wittaj said:
I am assuming both streams being saved means more storage space being used to record two streams?
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Yes.

wittaj said:
Can you disable saving the substream?
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Not as far as I can tell. I imagine the option will be added as soon as enough people complain.

wittaj said:
Can you disable the substream being the automatic playback? I would prefer to watch the main stream on playback.
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Not really. At least right now the sub stream is not being used inappropriately. The recorded sub stream is mainly used if you are doing timeline playback -- that is where you play recordings from multiple different cameras at once. This type of timeline playback is incredibly inefficient when done with main streams, so I'm really glad to see Blue Iris taking CPU efficiency this seriously.

The main stream is used for single camera clip playback unless you explicitly tell Blue Iris to use the sub stream.

Also since 5.3.x, the sub stream is being used in UI3 if your current stream size is set to a low resolution that can be adequately handled by the sub stream.
 
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bp2008 said:
Not really. At least right now the sub stream is not being used inappropriately. The recorded sub stream is mainly used if you are doing timeline playback -- that is where you play recordings from multiple different cameras at once. This type of timeline playback is incredibly inefficient when done with main streams, so I'm really glad to see Blue Iris taking CPU efficiency this seriously.
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OK - now that makes a lot of sense - I didn't even think about playback of multiple cameras and that does want to max out a CPU. I was only thinking of playback of one camera full screen would be substream and that would kinda defeat the purpose of the main stream LOL. Probably too early to tell the increase storage space needed for the dual recording?

I have never been able to figure out how to get audio from a single camera to play while watching multiple cameras at once. I watch one camera and audio is there, but then when I kick back to the multiple camera view there is no option to select audio to play from a selected camera - is that the still the case for multiple camera playback or has it always been there and I can't find it LOL.
 
wittaj said:
I was only thinking of playback of one camera full screen would be substream and that would kinda defeat the purpose of the main stream LOL.
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Yeah, it would.

wittaj said:
Probably too early to tell the increase storage space needed for the dual recording?
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It is easy if you have a good mind for math. Calculating Required Hard Drive Size -- Just add the sub stream's average bit rate to the main stream's average bit rate.

The sub stream should be a small fraction of the main stream's size in most cases. Especially if VBR encoding is used and the quality is set lower than the main stream. You can easily have an acceptable sub stream that only adds 10% or less to your bandwidth and disk usage. Just as easily you could configure a sub stream to be half the size of the main stream though, so as always you need to know what you're doing.

Here are some example bit rates from my own system. Here you can see some where the sub stream is around 1% of the main stream's size. And one cam where the sub stream is about 30% of the main stream's size. In that case I think it is because my main stream is using H.265 while the sub is H.264.

1594355366546.png

wittaj said:
I have never been able to figure out how to get audio from a single camera to play while watching multiple cameras at once. I watch one camera and audio is there, but then when I kick back to the multiple camera view there is no option to select audio to play from a selected camera - is that the still the case for multiple camera playback or has it always been there and I can't find it LOL.
Click to expand...

I don't know. I don't really use the timeline much, and basically never play audio in the local console.
 
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I'm on 5.3.0.2 and just tried out the substream playback option. The CPU difference is only 15%.. Hopefully with other PC hardware its more of a difference.
 
BORIStheBLADE said:
Its fluctuating but not exactly a solid 20%.
Asrock Q1900 itx (Embedded Celeron J1900 CPU)
Windows 10 64bit
Patriot PSD34G13381S (2- 4GB DDR3)
Seagate Skyhawk 2tb
Cameras - (2) Amcrest IP5M-T1179EW / Set to 1080p / 15FPS / 6000 Bit Rate
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That is a very weak processor with a really low load, you cannot extrapolate from that. Higher res cameras decimate low power systems on playback.
 
fenderman said:
That is a very weak processor with a really low load, you cannot extrapolate from that.
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It is a low load and a weak processor but its working. When BI is open I'm only running at 20-30% cpu load on the computer. With BI minimized its bouncing under 20%. So while its weak its got more than enough over head for my cameras and more..

Let me look into the limiting decoding.

Also this is me showing what this new feature has changed with my set up.. Don't know what to tell you...
 
BORIStheBLADE said:
It is a low load and a weak processor but its working. When BI is open I'm only running at 20-30% cpu load on the computer. With BI minimized its bouncing under 20%. So while its weak its got more than enough over head for my cameras and more..

Let me look into the limiting decoding.

Also this is me showing what this new feature has changed with my set up.. Don't know what to tell you...
Click to expand...
Are you using limit decoding?
 
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