Are cloned cameras linked?

[OICU2]

I have a cloned LPR camera that does line crossing triggers for vehicles going one way and the main cam does LPR triggers to AI for vehicles going in the opposite direction. How are these linked? If I restart the clone in BI, it restarts the main camera also.

So for testing purposes I added the same camera as brand new in BI directly with the IP. It detects and installs no issues. But it still restarts in BI if I restart the original camera. It also has an asterisk (*) next to the camera name in BI. How are these linked?

 

[bp2008]

It is based on the streaming method, IP address, and path. Maybe some other settings too. Basically if the network config options match well enough that Blue Iris can get by with only pulling one video stream, then that is what it will do.

If you want to force it to pull two identical streams separately, you can likely add a made-up URL parameter to the end of the RTSP URL/path on one of the camera instance. The camera will ignore the extra parameter, but Blue Iris won't know it is not important, so it should treat it as if it was a different video stream.

 

[Mike A.]

I've seen some strange behaviours with duplicated cams. If you go in and toggle clone master on/off on the cams, then that seemed to "decouple" them too.

 

[jrbeddow]

I've seen some strange behaviours with duplicated cams. If you go in and toggle clone master on/off on the cams, then that seemed to "decouple" them too.

Can you elaborate a bit there? Decouple? What do you mean...in a beneficial way or undesirable way?

I'm still struggling a bit with cloned cameras and wrapping my head around how the alerts from clones appear. Even after tinkering with the "clone master" and "group clones" checkboxes, I still can't seem to simply receive alerts that truly all seem to originate from the "originally named" (ie: the first instance/master) camera. Is this possible, or will they always appear to come from each individually named clone camera?

What about hiding or unhiding them: yes or no, reccomended or not?

Clones in general seem like the least well documented feature of Blui Iris, they are glossed over in the user help file (PDF).

 

[Mike A.]

I meant that when you create a copy/clone it seems to keep some association between the cams when you wouldn't expect that it should (as he was saying).

Alerts will come from wherever they're set up. i.e., If you have "Clone 1" set to send whatever alert, then it will come from it. I'm not sure that there's a way to pass through alerts from the original cam if that's what you're saying.

You can hide them or not as you want. Just depends on how you want to use them. Doesn't affect how they work. I generally do hide them. You can make groups to include/exclude them and toggle whether they're visible or not.

As bp says above, the concept is that the clones can share the same stream, but you can have different actions/alerts/etc., happening on those cams.

 

[jrbeddow]

Alerts will come from wherever they're set up. i.e., If you have "Clone 1" set to send whatever alert, then it will come from it. I'm not sure that there's a way to pass through alerts from the original cam if that's what you're saying.

Then does anyone understand what the checkbox for "Group clone clips" really does?

Intuitively it would seem to do as I indicated, allowing the Alert to show as one "belonging" to the camera designated as the "Clone master" or original cam, but I can't seem to get that to work.

 

[fenderman]

Then does anyone understand what the checkbox for "Group clone clips" really does?

Intuitively it would seem to do as I indicated, allowing the Alert to show as one "belonging" to the camera designated as the "Clone master" or original cam, but I can't seem to get that to work.

From the help file:

If you select to Group clone clips, all cloned camera clips will be included with the master’s
clips when the clips list is filtered by camera.

 

[jrbeddow]

From the help file:

If you select to Group clone clips, all cloned camera clips will be included with the master’s
clips when the clips list is filtered by camera.

Yeah, I have run across that note, but I can't seem to get it to work at all.

Even under those conditions (filtering the clips by camera), I don't see the alerts generated by it's clone. The only way I see the alert clips of the cloned camera are directly by going to the group that I have it under. Or is that my error? Maybe I shouldn't be assiging that clone camera to an alternate group (ie: one specifically created to hold all of the cloned versions of other cameras). Now I think I probably should be having it inside the original group, but generally keeping the clones as hidden. Is that the real solution here?

Somehow I still feel like truly grouping those clone alerts directly within the original "master camera's" alerts would have been a lot more intuitive, but there are probably use cases where that would interfere with other considerations.

Please let me know if the above proposed solution (same group, but hidden clone camera) is correct...

 

[Mike A.]

Maybe explain what you're trying to do more specifically and approach it that way. Too many options to run through independent of that. Between clones/groups/hidden/alerts/triggers/clips, etc. and how you want all of that to work there's a lot going on.

 

[Tinman]

Yeah, I have run across that note, but I can't seem to get it to work at all.

Even under those conditions (filtering the clips by camera), I don't see the alerts generated by it's clone. The only way I see the alert clips of the cloned camera are directly by going to the group that I have it under. Or is that my error? Maybe I shouldn't be assiging that clone camera to an alternate group (ie: one specifically created to hold all of the cloned versions of other cameras). Now I think I probably should be having it inside the original group, but generally keeping the clones as hidden. Is that the real solution here?

Somehow I still feel like truly grouping those clone alerts directly within the original "master camera's" alerts would have been a lot more intuitive, but there are probably use cases where that would interfere with other considerations.

Please let me know if the above proposed solution (same group, but hidden clone camera) is correct...

I just tested this option by checking the "Group cloned clips" box on the MASTER cam. It works exactly as it says. I posted a couple pics to show. In my case my cloned camera only detects ONVIF triggers and is used to move my PTZ cam to this IVS line crossing area so it can track the subject. The second picture is with box unchecked.



How it works clip:

 

[jrbeddow]

OK, thanks to all that replied. I now have it working (more or less) how it is "expected" to be with hidden clones, which is not really how I would prefer, but close enough I suppose. Having to use the filtering for "Selected camera only" just to see ALL of the alerts for that camera (and it's clones) seems like a bit of an unnecessary workaround (read: hassle) in my opinion, but if that's the intended behavior, so be it. Until this point, I had developed such a complex set of rules and conditions for combining ONVIF and B.I motion alerts into one camera (without using clones) that was nearly perfect, only rarely missing sending a Pushover alert for the regions that I truly cared about, that I'm not sure just yet if this any better. I guess for now I'm not convinced that using clones has opened up new possibilities, maybe I'll change my mind later.