BI crashes!

[Cam_curious]

I installed the demo version of BI on my Intel i5-3470 with 16Gb. It ran my mix of 2 and 4 MP cameras OK 6 cameras total.
They were set to 30 FPS and they pegged the CPU to 100% but ran more or less OK. Then I reduced all the cameras to 5 FPS
and the CPU usage wend way down. So for so good for a few days.

Then BI started crashing. It would come up and display the video for a split second then crash. The BI window would
crash and the BI service. I watched it with Microsoft process explorer. The demo period had not expired.

I like BI and run it on another system, an i7, and it is very reliable. The demo expired so I bought a license. Still crashed.
Uninstalled, renamed all the BI directories, reinstalled. Still crashes. Rebooted and it still crashes. It still pops up a
window for a split second and then is gone.

What is my next step?

Thanks for any help.

 

[wittaj]

Do EVERY optimization in this wiki. Substreams and direct-to-disc is a must.

Do not skip any thinking they are not important.

Do not change something thinking it will bring down the CPU - it may bring it down momentarily but will freeze up as soon as something is done.

If you are using Hardware Acceleration in BI, turn it off as many have reported issues with that and newer versions.

Optimizing Blue Iris's CPU Usage

Blue Iris uses a lot of CPU time. In most Blue Iris installations, your CPU is the limiting factor which determines how many cameras you can have. As such, it is extremely important to optimize your configuration to ensure you can get the most out of your system while consuming the least...

ipcamtalk.com

 

[Flintstone61]

are the cams encoding in H264?

 

[inline6]

I installed the demo version of BI on my Intel i5-3470 with 16Gb. It ran my mix of 2 and 4 MP cameras OK 6 cameras total.
They were set to 30 FPS and they pegged the CPU to 100% but ran more or less OK. Then I reduced all the cameras to 5 FPS
and the CPU usage wend way down. So for so good for a few days.

Then BI started crashing. It would come up and display the video for a split second then crash. The BI window would
crash and the BI service. I watched it with Microsoft process explorer. The demo period had not expired.

I like BI and run it on another system, an i7, and it is very reliable. The demo expired so I bought a license. Still crashed.
Uninstalled, renamed all the BI directories, reinstalled. Still crashes. Rebooted and it still crashes. It still pops up a
window for a split second and then is gone.

What is my next step?

Thanks for any help.

I have same system i5-3470 with 8GB RAM. 16 cameras 81 MP/sec. Runs at 10-12% CPU.
Go over the Optimizing in Wiki like wittaj suggested. It's the setup NOT the gear. You'll love it

 

[crw030]

Is direct-to-disk an option for the demo version? It didn't used to be, and I would say that was the number one thing that reduced my CPU usage on my old i7-2600k (long before substreams came out). Substreams would be the next thing to turn on imho after you follow the optimization wiki.

 

[SouthernYankee]

Buy the software. Some features do not work in the demo.
You are using a 9 year old computer, that does not support the features provided for in bi.

 

[Cam_curious]

are the cams encoding in H264?

I did check and all cameras were set to H264. I did change some from VBR to CBR if that matters.

 

[Cam_curious]

The direct-to-disk is not an option in the demo version.

Is direct-to-disk an option for the demo version? It didn't used to be, and I would say that was the number one thing that reduced my CPU usage on my old i7-2600k (long before substreams came out). Substreams would be the next thing to turn on imho after you follow the optimization wiki.

 

[Cam_curious]

My major complaint here is not that my system is not up to the job. Actually on the Blue Iris Performance Statistics
page there are people running many more cameras than me on such a system. My real complaint is that with BI
crashing: I cannot make any changes, I can't fix the problem. These days software should not crash even when
it runs out of system resources. Yes, I write software, this is not hard to do.

Further, why did reinstalling and removing the original BI directories not clear out my camera configurations.
If I could have started with a new configuration and added cameras back one by one I would have recognized the
system limitation problem. Remember, with the demo version, I cannot use direct-to-disk.

Do EVERY optimization in this wiki. Substreams and direct-to-disc is a must.

Do not skip any thinking they are not important.

Do not change something thinking it will bring down the CPU - it may bring it down momentarily but will freeze up as soon as something is done.

If you are using Hardware Acceleration in BI, turn it off as many have reported issues with that and newer versions.

Optimizing Blue Iris's CPU Usage

Blue Iris uses a lot of CPU time. In most Blue Iris installations, your CPU is the limiting factor which determines how many cameras you can have. As such, it is extremely important to optimize your configuration to ensure you can get the most out of your system while consuming the least...

ipcamtalk.com

 

[fenderman]

My major complaint here is not that my system is not up to the job. Actually on the Blue Iris Performance Statistics
page there are people running many more cameras than me on such a system. My real complaint is that with BI
crashing: I cannot make any changes, I can't fix the problem. These days software should not crash even when
it runs out of system resources. Yes, I write software, this is not hard to do.

Further, why did reinstalling and removing the original BI directories not clear out my camera configurations.
If I could have started with a new configuration and added cameras back one by one I would have recognized the
system limitation problem. Remember, with the demo version, I cannot use direct-to-disk.

Perhaps you can write an alternative VMS that doesn't crash. There can be many reasons for a crash including a memory leak with the Intel driver if you're using an old driver. I run over 20 Blue Iris systems none of them crash so it's obviously something on your end even your other system doesn't crash.. so search The forum for possible causes of crashes and troubleshoot accordingly.

 

[Cam_curious]

Why can't I clear my configuration and start with a new config?

Perhaps you can write an alternative VMS that doesn't crash. There can be many reasons for a crash including a memory leak with the Intel driver if you're using an old driver. I run over 20 Blue Iris systems none of them crash so it's obviously something on your end even your other system doesn't crash.. so search The forum for possible causes of crashes and troubleshoot accordingly.

 

[fenderman]

Why can't I clear my configuration and start with a new config?

no idea. clean install windows using the media creation tool. Takes 10 min

 

[Cam_curious]

Where is the configuration file stored? Or is it in the registry? Cleaning it out from the registry
is much trickier for mere mortals.

no idea. clean install windows using the media creation tool. Takes 10 min

 

[fenderman]

Where is the configuration file stored? Or is it in the registry? Cleaning it out from the registry
is much trickier for mere mortals.

It's in the registry there are multiple threads pointing to how to do it but if you really want to clean it simply reinstall windows again a 10 minute job and quicker than the registry

 

[Cam_curious]

Being in the registry should not prevent a CLEAN install. It might be reasonable to ask during the install process "Clear old configuration?".
Reinstalling Windows is not something that I relish. I would then have to reinstall other unrelated software, not fun!

It's in the registry there are multiple threads pointing to how to do it but if you really want to clean it simply reinstall windows again a 10 minute job and quicker than the registry

 

[fenderman]

Being in the registry should not prevent a CLEAN install. It might be reasonable to ask during the install process "Clear old configuration?".
Reinstalling Windows is not something that I relish. I would then have to reinstall other unrelated software, not fun!

A CLEAN install of what? windows? BI? You must mean BI or none of what you are saying makes sense.
What unrealated software? That may be part of your problem. Use the machine for BI.
I can clean install windows in less than 10 minuets.

 

[wittaj]

Most of us only use the compute for BI, so there is no unrelated software on it.

Some people may think that is a waste of resources, but an NVR is basically an under-powered computer and we don't run other programs on it.

Clearing out the registry for BI is easy even for mere mortals. I do not write software and have cleared it out of BI.

 

[SouthernYankee]

1) do a clean install of windows 10 using "microsoft media creation tool"
2) install BI
3) do not install another software.
4) configure the space / allocations for BI as defined below
5) configure one camera and test, add one camera at a time.

====================================
My Standard allocation post.

1) Do not use time (limit clip age)to determine when BI video files are moved or deleted, only use space. Using time wastes disk space.
2) If New and stored are on the same disk drive do not used stored, set the stored size to zero, set the new folder to delete, not move. All it does is waste CPU time and increase the number of disk writes. You can leave the stored folder on the drive just do not use it.
3) Never allocate over 90% of the total disk drive to BI.
4) if using continuous recording on the BI camera settings, record tab, set the combine and cut video to 1 hour or 3 GB. Really big files are difficult to transfer.
5) it is recommend to NOT store video on an SSD (the C: drive).
6) Do not run the disk defragmenter on the video storage disk drives.
7) Do not run virus scanners on BI folders
8) an alternate way to allocate space on multiple drives is to assign different cameras to different drives, so there is no file movement between new and stored.
9) Never use an External USB drive for the NEW folder. Never use a network drive for the NEW folder.
10) for performance do not put more than about 10,000 files in a folder, the search and adding files will eat CPU and disk performance. Look at using a sub folder per camera (see &CAM in bi help)


Advanced storage:
If you are using a complete disk for large video file storage (BVR) continuous recording, I recommend formatting the disk, with a windows cluster size of 1024K (1 Megabyte). This is a increase from the 4K default. This will reduce the physical number of disk write, decrease the disk fragmentation, speed up access.
Hint:
On the Blue iris status (lighting bolt graph) clip storage tab, if there is any red on the bars you have a allocation problem. If there is no Green, you have no free space, this is bad.
======================================

 

[IAmATeaf]

The cams and config is held in the registry, no idea why as a software developer you thought it would be held as files within the install folder?

Look for Perspective Software or similar, not near my machine at the mo so can’t check but I normally simply rename the top level branch if I need to test something.

 

[Cam_curious]

Thanks for your helpful suggestions. That gives me some work to do.

1) do a clean install of windows 10 using "microsoft media creation tool"
2) install BI
3) do not install another software.
4) configure the space / allocations for BI as defined below
5) configure one camera and test, add one camera at a time.

====================================
My Standard allocation post.

1) Do not use time (limit clip age)to determine when BI video files are moved or deleted, only use space. Using time wastes disk space.
2) If New and stored are on the same disk drive do not used stored, set the stored size to zero, set the new folder to delete, not move. All it does is waste CPU time and increase the number of disk writes. You can leave the stored folder on the drive just do not use it.
3) Never allocate over 90% of the total disk drive to BI.
4) if using continuous recording on the BI camera settings, record tab, set the combine and cut video to 1 hour or 3 GB. Really big files are difficult to transfer.
5) it is recommend to NOT store video on an SSD (the C: drive).
6) Do not run the disk defragmenter on the video storage disk drives.
7) Do not run virus scanners on BI folders
8) an alternate way to allocate space on multiple drives is to assign different cameras to different drives, so there is no file movement between new and stored.
9) Never use an External USB drive for the NEW folder. Never use a network drive for the NEW folder.
10) for performance do not put more than about 10,000 files in a folder, the search and adding files will eat CPU and disk performance. Look at using a sub folder per camera (see &CAM in bi help)


Advanced storage:
If you are using a complete disk for large video file storage (BVR) continuous recording, I recommend formatting the disk, with a windows cluster size of 1024K (1 Megabyte). This is a increase from the 4K default. This will reduce the physical number of disk write, decrease the disk fragmentation, speed up access.
Hint:
On the Blue iris status (lighting bolt graph) clip storage tab, if there is any red on the bars you have a allocation problem. If there is no Green, you have no free space, this is bad.
======================================