5.9.11+ and Dahua 4MP cams

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kumar2020

Young grasshopper
May 8, 2020
42
12
Iowa
When I upgrade BI to anything above version 5.9.10 I start getting high CPU use without changing anything else. On 11 and previous versions my machine hovers around an average of 15-25% with 9 cameras all using substreams. When I try any version later than that my CPU goes up to 50-70% and often spiking to 100%. It seems to be related to 2 Dahua 5442 (4MP) cams. When I disable them the CPU use drops back to normal. Disabling any other of my cams has very little CPU impact. I have these cams set to use their onboard IVS AI and BI set for external triggers only. When I go back to 5.9.10 or earlier without making any other changes my CPU use is again way lower. I have no idea what is going on here, and am wondering if anyone else is seeing this. I did send a support email to BI.

Both Dahua cams are running firmware V2.820.15OG001.0.R. from May I think. I use the Find/Inspect feature in BI to configure them as there is no default for them yet. I did enable subtream channels on them and they are being seen by BI. Again, everything had been working great until I upgraded BI.

I know people are going to say don't upgrade unless you need to, but the developer has been adding some great features lately that I've been taking advantage of like Deepstack support for my older non-AI cams. I can't get my head around why this combination of camera and version should be problematic. So can anyone else duplicate this?
 
I always use find/inspect and I think I used a dropdown menu item once since I started with BI back in version 3.

I'd suspect you have a video driver conflict. There are various threads here talking about video driver problems. This is assuming that you're using Intel and QuickSync.
 
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Well it's an old Intel CPU with basic Quicksync. They haven't put out new drivers for it for years. But I also tried the 2 cams with several of the graphics accel options including "none" and it made little difference.
 
What CPU and how much memory? The CPU could be becoming overwhelmed by all the add-ons in BI now.
 
i5-2300 with 16GB. Admittedly older, but as I said it was no where near maxed out just a few versions of BI ago. If major add-ons have taken place recently I guess that could do it. But the notes have mostly been about tweaks and fixes from what I recall.
 
I'm not an expert on CPUs for BI but I strongly suspect that's your problem. "Minor tweaks" being made have caused all kinds of different memory utilization for me. Fortunately, that hasn't hurt anything so far, but they can also add CPU overhead...that memory gets used somehow. Have a look in the Wiki at the "Choosing Hardware" section. The oldest listed there is a 4th generation and you're on a 2nd generation. It is getting a little long in the tooth.

Choosing Hardware for Blue Iris

Buy refurbished. Don't build or buy new. The most cost-effective Blue Iris computers are refurbished business-class systems such as "HP EliteDesk" and "Dell OptiPlex". You can usually get a good deal by searching [URL='http://www.ebay.com/']Ebay[/URL] for specific CPU model numbers, and...
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A 2nd generation and Deepstack will be tough.

Was it running before? What was the ms return on finding objects?

Post a screenshot of your BI camera status page that shows MP, FPS, KEY, MP/s, substream, etc.
 
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An i5-2300 is now pretty old and fairly weak for the No. cams you have, I'd recommend having a look on ebay, gumtree etc for something around Intel 6th gen - you should get a whole system or at least MoBO/RAM/CPU combo for reasonable money and good bang for your buck
 
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I'll add to the chorus of that is pretty old. And this is coming from the guy running two BI installs on 10 year old machines. I recently upgraded one of my installs with a i7-6700 Dell from eBay for $330. Runs Deepstack, ALPR and a dozen cameras great, running, now with two ALPR cameras, at less than 20% CPU.
 
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No offense, but I feel like my info isn't getting understood. Everything was working very smoothly until I updated to versions that came out the last couple of weeks. And it only affects the Dahua cameras. I can disable all of my other cameras and it persists with just the two. If I disable one of the Dahua it drops a little, but with both disabled the difference is dramatic. Again, with a BI version from just a few weeks ago it's fine. Again, yes they are using substreams.

CPU usage was hovering well under 50% even when motion was being detected on one of the DS cameras. Average was 25%. Deepstack is running off of a dedicated 1060 GPU (yes with the GPU version of DS) so that's not hitting the CPU.
 
Oh and since someone asked, the return time of DS GPU has been averaging around 200-250ms. So it doesn't seem to be struggling. I get that everyone thinks the system is old. I'll upgrade when I get time, but that's a major undertaking that I don't have resources for right now. Especially if I can fix the problem by just changing 2 cameras to another brand that I have laying around. But I like the AI features of the Dahua. Again, I don't think the age is the problem as it runs great when I drop back to 5.9.10 with NO other changes.
 
Here's the camera status page.
camstatus.png

The two Dahua cams are the Front Porch and Driveway. Two cameras, Master Bedroom and Basement, are only active when we're away.
 
camconfig.pngcamconfig1.pngcamtrigger.pngTask.PNG

CPU was running a little higher when I grabbed this because wind was triggering one of my cams using BI motion triggers and DS. It was also taken running BI version 5.4.9.10. When I upgrade to anything newer without changing anything else it jumps to an average between 50-70% with frequent spikes to 100%. Disabling the two Dahua 5442 cams returns everything to normal.

The unanswered question from my point of view is why are these two particular cameras models causing this issue only with newer versions of BI? What's different with these cameras compared to other models. I'm using their onboard AI (not DS nor even an BI motion) which should reduce my CPU utilization, not increase it.
 
My point is that he new features, tweaks and adjustments made in BI probably assume a higher capability processor is running BI. If it works on the older versions and not on the newer versions I would tend to think that is the root cause. The two cameras, 8MP combined, are probably pushing the CPU close to the edge. Have you tried connecting them and leavving one of your 8MP cameras disconnected? That would test the CPU overload I am talking about.
 
Well I guess I haven't tried physically disconnecting them from the network, but I have tried disabling cameras in BI. Makes little difference. With ONLY the 2 4MP dahua cams enabled (everything else disabled), CPU remains way too high. So 2 4MP cams not using any of the BI motion detection results in 50-60% average with spikes to 100% with newer BI versions. The two 8MP cams don't have nearly this much impact, maybe 2-3% added for each, even using BI motion detection on them. It really does seem related to the interaction of BI and the 5442 cams. Doesn't make any sense to me.
 
OK, let's look at this once again. You connect two 5442 cameras, a very popular heavily used camera, to your system that I have not seen anyone else have a problem like this with. You upgrade your system to a newer version of BI, albeit a very old processor, and CPU utilization goes up. The only difference between your system and mine, currently running BI 5.4.9.18, that I can see is that my processor is newer, but still kind of old in today's world. I'm running at about 15MB/ps with about 200MP/ps, almost four times as much data, and don't see any significant difference when I connect another camera 5442 or otherwise and all four of my 5442 cameras are running at a bit rate of 8192. Yes, utilization does go up but it is quite marginal and depends on the frame and bit rate of the camera. So, it has to be a problem with the cameras, right?
 
Am I missing something? The BI status page shows the two Dahuas running at 400 and 157 kB/s. For 4.1MP, that seems low. My 4 MP Dahuas, running at 20 fps, are showing 730-1,000 kB/s. What do you have the bit rate in the camera set to? What codec are you running? Try H.264 if not using that.
 
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I'm not saying that the problem isn't with the cameras somehow, but I can't figure out why these two cams are different in regards to CPU use.

I run h.265 on all cameras. I tried switching the 5442's to h.264 and it doesn't make much of an CPU impact that I can tell. All of my other cams are set up similarly. I updated BI again to further test and here's a curious thing: one 4MP camera with all others disabled runs 40-45% CPU. If that seems high, I agree. Disable that camera and enable one 8MP camera and CPU drops to 5% or less. I've set the frame rates and bitrate to the same for both cameras. So a camera with much higher resolution is costing fewer CPU %. If I double the bitrate on the 8MP camera CPU goes up to 6%. And the 8MP camera is using BI motion detection where the 4MP is not.

I tried doubling the buffer and it had no effect on CPU.
 
One thing I just noticed is that you have "use cameras digital input or motions alarm" checked in the trigger tab but do not have "get ONVIF events" checked in the camera IP configuration tab. Check that or uncheck the other. I doubt it will make a difference but one never knows what the interactions are in this crazy digital world.
 
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