Blue Iris 4 to 5 Migration Guide

fenderman

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Man, I wished I had seen this thread.

You would have saved me major work.

I ran into it’s starts once, never again, can’t delete two registry entries etc. etc. etc.

My nephew asked my wife about recommendations on security cameras and software since his daughter’s bike got stolen, I told him to go to Costco buy coax cameras and a recorder bundled.

I am a retired Systems Engineer 30 plus years, and I find this a major job. When you start needing a dedicated IT staff support at home to run this, . well. That and fighting Windows 10, man, I miss Linux and that’s saying something.

The only way I got 4 to work was a restore, repeated, 5 times, this is before reading this thread.

I once got Blue Iris 5 working, somehow, but when I imported a backup of Blue Iris 4, Blue Iris 5 shutdown, never to restart.

Oh, I once got 5 working, damn thing told me to uninstall 4, I uninstalled fully , register entires and all, I just assumed 5 would have its own, silly me.

But I digress.....

Has anyone tried changing under “Sensor Motion” the Black and White, Cancel shadows, High definition setting?

While I had 5 briefly running I found if I checked off the settings they didn’t stick after clicking OK. It’s the reason I tried reloading a backup copy of 4 and 5 then disappeared never restarting nor could I restart the UI.

I’m waiting a month before even considering installing 5.

Why doesn’t this company allow some volunteers to pre test this finished product before releasing it to the public?

And a company Readme outside of an install with some of this information.

If I seem cranky you would be to if you stayed up into 4 AM screwing with this because the same computer runs Emby and I get the wife’s wrath, et al. when that TV service is down during the day.

Especially when I thought this would take about 15 minutes, that’s what I told the users, then my phone lit up.....thinking about my working days.

Many thanks for posting this.
Windows is fantastic. Blue iris is great. If you had problems installing 4 it it's on you. if you foolishly upgraded to version 5 the day it was released that's on you as well. If you follow two basic instructions you will have no problem with blueiris.
First install blueiris on a clean dedicated windows machine using the Microsoft media creation tool.

Second wait at least the week before installing minor updates and two weeks before installing major upgrades.

The folks having these issues have not followed one or both of those instructions. It's really that simple. Yes you could have gone with a dedicated kit, then you would get calls about false motion alerts and inability to turn off alerts easily or disable cameras or any of the other faults you can read about at length with these kits including firmware updates going. you need to use common sense and be a smart and user.

I for one prefer having the option to upgrade, and not having to wait months before fixes and new features implemented. By way of one simple example when the 1831 PIR camera was released the audio talk function didn't work. A few emails between the developer and providing an access the camera and he pushed an update. By your logic I should have to wait weeks if not months for beta testing which would include other new features that others were asking for. That is backwards and direct contradiction to what blueiris is. There are many other VMS options on the market that will not allow you that option to upgrade and will make you wait months, for those who can't contain themselves and must install every update immediately I would recommend those, though there's no guarantee you won't have issues with them.
 

ChrisX

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sorry bit bi5 not workig i can not start. i see no gui .. bugging sortwar !!! i can not go to BI4
 

Vini

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Has anyone tried changing under “Sensor Motion” the Black and White, Cancel shadows, High definition setting?
This seems common, and completely broken if you ask me. There's "a few" people discussing this, which means most people don't use/understand this, or simply aren't bothered. Based on the testing I have performed, I am almost certain this cannot be working for anybody, and I am currently in the process of rolling back to v4.

In order to try and rectify the Algorithm/Black&White/Shadows/Hidef issue, I've tried (all with 64bit version);

- Completely owning the registry items under /Motion/ - no luck, registry doesn't get updated.
- Marking the /Motion/ reg key as Read Only and manually setting 'algorithm' and 'hidef' keys to 1 from 0 - no luck.
- Adding 'algorithm' and 'hidef' keys to individual Profile keys within the registry - no luck.
- Uninstalling BI5 (removing the broken record in Add/Remove Programs - grr) and nuking the Registry of all things Perspective (including User Hive).
- Reinstalling BI5 as SYSTEM using PsExec
- Running BI5 as SYSTEM using PsExec
- Running BI5 as a Service, not as a Service
- And a few other things...

I did not try the 32bit version. That may work, it could be that the reg keys are not writing to the correct location.

I suspect some permission issue in the application itself, most likely ONLY fixable by a new release.

With it being this late on a Sunday and work beckoning, I'm rolling back. I'll P2V my machine once restored, and will check everything in a Virtual environment before venturing down the BI5 path again.
 

mech

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I'm finding BI5's recordings on various cameras are randomly stopping and starting later, like the attached screenshot showing a block of recording missing on the timeline.

After double-checking the Profile and Recording setup, and a couple of database repairs, I'm considering either deleting all existing recording files to give it a fresh start and another chance, or maybe falling back on BI4 for a while. I sent in a support request to see if they have any recommendations, I'll give it until the end of Monday.

What's everyone else on BI5 seeing, if you've got a camera set to record continuously? Is it missing blocks of time, or is it stable for you?
 

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BICO

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Here's an odd event I found this morning. All of my camera's clips stopped recording at 2:00 AM sharp, and returned to recording at 2:04:10 AM. The log files shows normal entries during this blackout. EDIT: Checking the old clips, and the same behavior was happening in Version 4.
Page 69 of user manual

Database compact/repair is normally performed each night at 2am. The primary purpose of this function is to remove “holes” in the database produced by deleted records. It is typically a short process, but recording is suspended during this time. If 2am is not a good time to pause recording, you may wish to change this time, or disable it altogether and perform it manually on occasion by using the right-click menu option in Clips, Database— >Compact/Repair. To better audit “
 

R4nger

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I have managed to get version 5 running however when I try and update version 5, it returns an error. See the attached screenshot.

I have tried copying the .dll file to the working directory but it still returns the same error.
 

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R4nger

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To fix the problem, I had to install the x86: vc_redist.x86.exe to update the software even though I have a x64 operating system.
 

aesterling

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I'm finding BI5's recordings on various cameras are randomly stopping and starting later, like the attached screenshot showing a block of recording missing on the timeline.

After double-checking the Profile and Recording setup, and a couple of database repairs, I'm considering either deleting all existing recording files to give it a fresh start and another chance, or maybe falling back on BI4 for a while. I sent in a support request to see if they have any recommendations, I'll give it until the end of Monday.

What's everyone else on BI5 seeing, if you've got a camera set to record continuously? Is it missing blocks of time, or is it stable for you?
All of my cameras are set to continuous and three are working correctly but one is behaving like you described, seeming to skip sections of recording. Interestingly, it does have the red border around the camera the entire time though. I haven’t found a fix yet.
 
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@fenderman / @bp2008 do either of you have BI5 working in test/production, and do either of you have Motion Algorithm/HD/Black&White/Shadows actually working?
i am having the same problem, cannot get the settings to save when ever i try to change them (black and white, simple/Gaussian, high definition ect...) . glad to see others having this same problem so i know its something that will probably get fixed.
 

Tinman

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FYI: There is a new FULL installer now 5.00.43 that we tried on my brothers test machine and it installed correctly with the VC and new UI3. On his everything worked as it should, BUT we did not uninstall BI4 yet. On mine I just ran the new install file and did a repair to get mine up to 5.0.0.43. BTW he has a ton of profiles and cameras at 2 locations...it all worked on his....I was amazed !
 
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Vini

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FYI: There is a new FULL installer now 5.00.43 that we tried on my brothers test machine and it installed correctly with the VC and new UI3. On his everything worked as it should, BUT we did not uninstall BI4 yet. On mine I just ran the new install file and did a repair to get mine up to 5.0.0.43. BTW he has a ton of profiles and cameras at 2 locations...it all worked on his....I was amazed !
Is the Motion stuff fixed? (Algorithm, HD, Shadows etc)

Is there a changelog?
 

Tinman

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Still bugged. No change log. On 5.0.0.44
What don't work ? I use just simple and nothing checked as far as black/white - shadows - HD. Mine is triggering and working ? I do use continuous rec and use motion mostly for pointers. I tried to check those and they seem to hold, not sure what they accomplish though.

Nevermind, after reading the help file I see what you mean. I never used those in BI4 :)

Update: I just tried 5.0.0.44 and checked the HD box....seemed to raise my cpu a bit, but how would you test this to see if it working ?
 
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bp2008

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I used black and white mode and cancel shadows in different profiles on most cams, but these weren't really important for my system's performance so I just kind of ignored it when the v5 upgrade broke a bunch of things because the core of it was still working.
 

Tinman

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One thing I am noticing is when I do a update via "check for updates" It is a very slow process of shutting down BI and updating....it does work, but much slower than normal. The first update I tried (5.0.0.43) actually failed, I had to use the full install to get it to that point. The 5.0.0.44 update did work.
 
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