"after" Optimising BI for better CPU - My solo view cameras blurry

Rhodesy

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So, I followed the optimisation ages ago and CPU usage is great. Recorded videos and clips are also great quality.

But during live view on the "Web servive" viewing from my laptop, the image quality is garbage "even when viewing a solo camera"

And I have tested all image quailities but none make the image as good as can be seen on my mobile or the sever.

So I went into the PC with BI server on it and looked at Web Server settings >> Advanced, but I cannot figure how to improve the Web UI.

Please can anyone help?
 

TonyR

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You're talking about UI3, right?
If so, over on the left, with "Live View" up at the top selected, what is the setting for "Streaming Quality" ?
 

Rhodesy

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You're talking about UI3, right?
If so, over on the left, with "Live View" up at the top selected, what is the setting for "Streaming Quality" ?
2160p VBR
 

wittaj

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VBR means if there is not a lot of motion, the bitrate could drop a lot. Consider CBR.
 

looney2ns

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VBR means if there is not a lot of motion, the bitrate could drop a lot. Consider CBR.
bp2008 recommends this setting for best overall quality.
Read the UI3 help, it has suggestions on how to setup BI for best results.

You may need to adjust your subtreams.

 

bp2008

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bp2008 recommends this setting for best overall quality.
Best quality in UI3 comes from 2160p (non-VBR). For hardcore users, they can even edit the 2160p profile or add a new one with higher specs. But generally if the 2160p profile is not delivering sufficient visual quality, then something else is wrong, like the main stream isn't loading, or the group streaming resolution limit is not set high enough for the user's tastes (right click in group video and choose Group Settings to edit that).

On a wired LAN and when not running UI3 on a potato, I always recommend the 2160p non-VBR profile. On wifi or cellular or a slow device like a raspberry pi, use your own judgement.

The VBR profiles compromise on quality to reduce bandwidth usage. UI3's default is "1080p VBR" because I consider that to be a good compromise between quality and helping the user not run into CPU or network performance bottlenecks on the default configuration. In UI3, the VBR profiles just have lower quality settings than the other streams. This makes them particularly well suited to cellular or bad wifi usage.
 
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Rhodesy

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Best quality in UI3 comes from 2160p (non-VBR). For hardcore users, they can even edit the 2160p profile or add a new one with higher specs. But generally if the 2160p profile is not delivering sufficient visual quality, then something else is wrong, like the main stream isn't loading, or the group streaming resolution limit is not set high enough for the user's tastes (right click in group video and choose Group Settings to edit that).

On a wired LAN and when not running UI3 on a potato, I always recommend the 2160p non-VBR profile. On wifi or cellular or a slow device like a raspberry pi, use your own judgement.

The VBR profiles compromise on quality to reduce bandwidth usage. UI3's default is "1080p VBR" because I consider that to be a good compromise between quality and helping the user not run into CPU or network performance bottlenecks on the default configuration. In UI3, the VBR profiles just have lower quality settings than the other streams. This makes them particularly well suited to cellular or bad wifi usage.
As I dig around today in a the cameras individual settings, whilst UI3 was open in another tab, it was clear UI3 is receiving the image from the camera's sub stream. Problem seems to be max sub stream resolution is D1 704*576.
So as you hint to @bp2008, it seems the main stream isn't loading but sub stream is.

I am using a powerful laptop with good wifi speed. And I have now selected a non-VBR profile @2160 4k.

Wifi speed test.jpg

I have looked at group settings as advised, but cannot find anything by right clicking in group screen or using 3 dots of UI3 top right corner that leads me to be able to force UI3 to use the camera's Main Stream unfortunately.

Right click group photo menu.jpg General UI settings.jpg

And I have also looked many times into th BI Setiings on the server PC at the Web Server settings + >> Advanced, but I just cannot find a way to force UI3 to show the camera's main stream in live view.

So if anyone has ever had this issue and knows a resolution, please advise me as I am stuck with blurry images which is awkward when live viewing incidents.
Can anyone see anything wrong with anything here please?

Web Server - Advanced.jpg Encoder Options.jpg
 

bp2008

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Ah, your Blue Iris version is quite old. That is why you don't see a Group Settings option in the context menu in UI3.

Maybe you are on a Blue Iris version that does not handle switching between sub and main streams properly. What is your support plan's expiration date and your current Blue Iris version? Perhaps you are eligible to run something newer.

Or you may have your sub stream and main stream frame rates or iframe intervals so misaligned that Blue Iris is unable to get them synchronized. See this guide on setting up sub streams: Sub Stream Guide


Can anyone see anything wrong with anything here please?
Yes, you've clearly tried a lot of things that didn't solve your problem, but you didn't set those things back to defaults so they may cause more problems for you later.

Just from what is obvious in your screenshots:

1. In the Blue Iris web server > advanced > Encoder profiles. This is all covered in UI3's help file, but set the quality back to 50 and keep the "Limit bitrate" box checked. This doesn't even affect UI3 normally because all of UI3's default streaming profiles override the quality and bit rate limit with sane values. But the official Blue Iris mobile apps do not, so they would be sent absurdly high bit rate video streams the way you have it set in the screenshot, and they would perform absolutely horribly. This is a very common configuration error actually, there should be a warning built into Blue Iris about it IMHO.

Also be aware that Preset "veryfast" can add some video delay, so I recommend "superfast".

2. In UI3 Settings, the "Maximum H.264 Kbps" setting is not capable of increasing your streaming quality in any way. All it can do is impose a stricter limit on bit rate than you have set anywhere else. It is meant to be a convenience option, like if you have an internet connection with only 1 Mbps of speed available, you can set 800 or something in that box to help ensure the video streams don't lag.

3. For Jpeg Supersampling, a value of 2 will greatly reduce the efficiency of any jpeg images that UI3 loads because you are literally telling UI3 to load those images at a higher resolution than they will be displayed at. I recommend going back to 1.0 with it. This setting mainly exists for extremely rare cases where the machine you run UI3 on does not handle DPI scaling correctly.
 

Rhodesy

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Ah, your Blue Iris version is quite old. That is why you don't see a Group Settings option in the context menu in UI3.
Thank you very much @bp2008, I reverted all the changes that I had made and you pointed out. I had already done the sub stream guide too.

The solution was my out of date version, soon as I updated, problem solved without changing settings.

I very much appreciate your tips sir:)
(and your sunrise sunset app that you so kindly gave the community some time ago, at least I think it was you)
 

Rhodesy

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Yes, you've clearly tried a lot of things that didn't solve your problem, but you didn't set those things back to defaults so they may cause more problems for you later.
I have often though that a "Restore Defaults" per individual BI tab would be useful.

Still not sure I will have all the Web Server settings correct, but it is working so I am happy now.
 
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