Absolute minimum CPU: is no decode possible?

M

Miles B

n3wb
Feb 2, 2016
5
0
Hi

Just started trialing Blue Iris. I came for the interface, scheduling and Android app.

What I can't find though is how to completely stop BI from decoding the IP camera stream. I just want it written direct to disk. No motion detection, timestamping, nothing. The camera does all that. I am experimenting with a little AMD e450 embedded board with 8GB RAM and an Escam 720p IP camera. Watching the camera with ONVIF Device Manager uses about 35% CPU. Watching a 720p mkv uses about 45% CPU. Watching the camera in the BI UI is about 35%. I have tried to turn off the motion detection and have set the file format as direct to disk. Even running BI as a service, I am still seeing 30% CPU. I figure it is decoding.

I have seen mention on other sites of direct recording using ffmpeg running 2% on similar CPUs. After all, it is just a 4 megabit network stream to disk. Eventually I want to run up to 8 of these cameras. I don't see why this CPU shouldn't be able to do this.

Has anyone had any luck doing this with BI?

Apologies if this has been asked before, I definitely tried searching first.
 
Miles B said:
Hi

Just started trialing Blue Iris. I came for the interface, scheduling and Android app.

What I can't find though is how to completely stop BI from decoding the IP camera stream. I just want it written direct to disk. No motion detection, timestamping, nothing. The camera does all that. I am experimenting with a little AMD e450 embedded board with 8GB RAM and an Escam 720p IP camera. Watching the camera with ONVIF Device Manager uses about 35% CPU. Watching a 720p mkv uses about 45% CPU. Watching the camera in the BI UI is about 35%. I have tried to turn off the motion detection and have set the file format as direct to disk. Even running BI as a service, I am still seeing 30% CPU. I figure it is decoding.

I have seen mention on other sites of direct recording using ffmpeg running 2% on similar CPUs. After all, it is just a 4 megabit network stream to disk. Eventually I want to run up to 8 of these cameras. I don't see why this CPU shouldn't be able to do this.

Has anyone had any luck doing this with BI?

Apologies if this has been asked before, I definitely tried searching first.
Click to expand...
Welcome to the forum. If you are using the demo version then direct to disk is not being used. You need the licensed version for it to be fully implemented.
 
The original poster said he was "trialing Blue Iris" and using the "direct to disk" recording option. Fenderman was only saying that a fully licensed Blue Iris installation is needed to use the direct to disk feature (e.g. it would not work during a free trial period).

I figured that statement by fenderman made it sound a bit like direct to disk would allow Blue Iris to run without decoding the incoming video stream if the OP would purchase a full license. That would have been an incorrect conclusion. Direct to disk only prevents Blue Iris from re-encoding the video. So I attempted to clarify by pointing out that nothing, not even direct to disk, will prevent Blue Iris from decoding incoming video as the OP was curious about.
 
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Thanks bp. I was under the impression that if I bought the full version, I could see low CPU from zero decoding. So you can definitely tell me that if I hook up 8 of these IP cameras, it will (try to) decode all eight streams?
 
Miles B said:
Thanks bp. I was under the impression that if I bought the full version, I could see low CPU from zero decoding. So you can definitely tell me that if I hook up 8 of these IP cameras, it will (try to) decode all eight streams?
Click to expand...

That is right. I don't think AMD is even realistically on the roadmap for hardware accelerated decoding support either, so that system would likely be a poor match for Blue Iris.
 
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Oh yes, completely unsuitable. Thanks, I will look for some different software that does what I want, or roll my own.

Cheers.
 
I've heard good things about Exacqvision. Much pricier of course but I understand it will run on really low end hardware. It may be worth investigation for you. "rolling your own" software is probably not worth your time at any price, even if you already have experience with video streaming and ffmpeg and whatnot. In most cases, it is cheaper to use a bigger/more expensive PC and run Blue Iris than to buy into another more efficient VMS. If size and efficiency are a chief concern, there is always a Skylake i5 NUC which should be able to handle a fair amount of camera load now that Intel Quick Sync Video can be used to accelerate the h264 decoding.
 
With the basic functionality I want, it'll only take a few days to put together what I need. Should be fun, takes me back. I actually had a job building software for a 4 camera DVR back in '03. Now THAT was tough work.
 
Miles B said:
With the basic functionality I want, it'll only take a few days to put together what I need. Should be fun, takes me back. I actually had a job building software for a 4 camera DVR back in '03. Now THAT was tough work.
Click to expand...

Cool. I don't know if your camera supports recording to a NAS but you might not even need to write your own software except to manage the video files once recorded by the camera. You wouldn't even need to integrate ffmpeg for that.
 
That's a good point. I had noticed some apps for synology NAS mentioning security cameras. Maybe I should check out the linux offerings :)
 
It looks like the demo version supports D2D now. I just set up a system with the BI demo running and D2D enabled and the saved clips didn't have the big demo version watermark in the center of the clip on playback. That's a pretty strong indication that D2D didn't allow the demo warning to be added. It is still on the live screen and alert thumbnails though. IIRC cpu use dropped a bit when it was enabled as well.
 
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Kawboy12R said:
It looks like the demo version supports D2D now. I just set up a system with the BI demo running and D2D enabled and the saved clips didn't have the big demo version watermark in the center of the clip on playback. That's a pretty strong indication that D2D didn't allow the demo warning to be added. It is still on the live screen and alert thumbnails though. IIRC cpu use dropped a bit when it was enabled as well.
Click to expand...
it does not support direct to disk properly. While the watermak is not there (as it was in v3), the cpu consumption does not drop properly. I have tested this on multiple new installs. As soon as you register with they cpu drops dramatically and frame rates go back to normal. If you test with a webcam,you will see the watermark if you set to direct to disk in the demo, but it will be gone in the licensed version, not sure why its different with ip cameras. But one thing is for certain, it doesnt work properly in the demo. There are a bunch of other threads confirming this.
 
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