BI5 playback: ghosting with H.264H, stuttering with H.265

T

tai4de2

Young grasshopper
Aug 25, 2019
41
15
Near Seattle
I've read a few threads about ghosting. I am also experiencing random ghosting when my cameras are encoding H.264H, and stuttering with H.265. This happens only during playback. With either encoding, the video looks perfect live in BI, in the camera's web page, and in VLC. It's only when being played back that there are issues.

When cameras are configured for H.264, during playback there's random ghosting others have posted about. I can't really find a pattern to it except that if the system working without ghosting before I go to sleep, by the time morning comes around I am reliably seeing ghosting on all three cameras (see below for list of cameras).

When cameras are configured for H.265, during playback there's a momentary stutter seemingly exactly once per second. Video is otherwise OK. Unlike the ghosting with H.264, this symptom is pretty consistent. I can see perfect live video and then when I go to immediately play it back, there's stuttering.

Cameras are 2x Amcrest 2496, 1x Amcrest 1051. See below for screen shot of 2496's configuration. Different combos of CBR vs. VBR, bit rates, quality, etc. don't affect the symptoms I am seeing.

Blue Iris version 5.0.2.4 x64, running as a service. Direct-to-disk recording and "limit decoding unless required" enabled. Intel hardware accelerated decode including "Also BVR" are enabled -- when I am trying H.264. When I switch the cameras to H265, I turn hardware acceleration off.

Computer is i7-6700 w/ 16GB RAM and Win10 1903. The machine is dedicated to BI. CPU usage is around 1-2% with cameras set to H.264, and 8% when set to H.265.

Having the video be perfect when viewed live but glitchy when played back is confusing -- isn't "direct to disk" supposed to mean that the exact stream being decoded and played live is what gets written into the .bvr file?

I've also seen talk about turning h/w acceleration off (for H.264) helping. But if the video was recorded direct-to-disk shouldn't I just be able to turn off "Also BVR" to remove HA from playback? The stream written to disk should be identical with and without hardware acceleration.

Suggestions welcome.


2496-H265.jpg
 
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I’m interested in this also. I’ve noticed my playback isn’t of same quality as my live view. The playback is kind of hazy compared to live view.


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I too have the exact same issue with playback, just got 2 new Hik cams and been trying to solve it the past few days to no avail, i have a very similar system to the OP and ended up using H.265 to save space, after uping the bitrate to help with ghosting, but still have slight stutter every second, may be the way keyframes are put into the video, i did spend a lot of time reading up on this and one way or another there always seems to be a compromise somewhere.

I know the "+" on the Hik is for Hik use only but i did try using it and the bitrate fell to the floor which was really good, but the playback was all over, although not a mile away, its a pity Blueiris cannot make use of the Hik +, the bits of the video that did play well were really good quality and the space saving was even better.
 
I followed advice I saw on the wiki and downgraded my Intel video drivers to a version from 2 years ago, 21.20.16.4664. Surprisingly, this fixed the ghosting I was seeing.

I don't understand how though. The exact stream that came from the camera should be in the BVR, right? so if I turn off "Also BVR" then not using hardware acceleration to decode it should remove the driver from the equation... but it doesn't seem to work that way.

I agree that it likely has something to do with key frames and how they get put into the BVR file. It's the only explanation that seems to fit.

For now I am sticking with H.264. It seems easier to deal with -- can get hardware acceleration, CPU usage stays lower, etc. I can always toss another hard drive into the rig to make up for the larger file sizes vs. H265.

I'm going to eventually build out my system to ~12 cameras, mostly 4K, so every bit of CPU savings will help.
 
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Had another tinker earlier and definitely an iframe issue, if I export the video as it is recorded in h265, it will playback fine with no problems, nice and smooth, so must be a BI issue that needs resolving.

Andy
 
I record h.264 direct to disk in a BVR file. Direct to disk records as the video stream is received, no re encoding. I use an AMD processor, record 15 frames, 15 iframes , VBR, 6144 Kb/s, smart codec off, smoothing off. All cameras are 1920*1080. Running 13 cameras with this configuration There is no GPU hardware acceleration. Absolutely no problems. I doubt that it is a BI problem. More than likely a driver or configuration problem.
 
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I was having a similar issue with H.264 QuickSync hardware decoding... whenever the monitor would go to sleep (15 min) the decoding would go to sh*t. I pushed a GPO that kept the screen on all the time to allow QuickSync to work, and this immediately fixed the problem. I can physically turn the (VGA) monitor off if I want, doesn't matter.
 
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