Blue Iris 5 Reolink Cameras and Hardware Acceleration Not working

[MichiganBroadband.com]

Just did a clean Install of BI 5.
This worked fine in the past when I set it up on older Intel CPUs/Graphics with same cameras.
Could really use a hand figuring out why this is not working now.
---

Clean install of Windows 10 pro 64bit 16GB RAM integrated graphics only (no video card installed).
Clean new install of Blue Iris 5 ( 5.2.4.4 )
I7 9700K CPU
Asus Z390-A motherboard.
Reolink RLC-410 and RLC-411 IP Cameras (all have latest firmware installed)

All up to date bios and drivers.
Intel Graphics driver up to date and loaded/working properly Can see GPU and GPU usage in task manager, GPU tests work as expected.
Blue iris not showing any GPU usage in Task manager.

Blue Iris running as service.

All attempts to enable Hardware Accelerated Decode fail to enable it. ( Intel® ) it just comes back showing "no" after setting, restarting Blue Iris and restarting computer.

Tried all that I know to try.

Setting video source to Generic ONVIF H.264 instead of Reolink.
In Camera: Tried setting encode to H.264 Profile = Baseline instead of default "High".
Makes no difference. Still will not enable and show enabled in Blue Iris.

Please help!

What am I missing?

 

[sebastiantombs]

What you're missing is that they are Reolink cameras. Reolink varies frame rate and iframe rate according to what they think is good. Unfortunately, it's not good at all. I have a Reolink camera set to run at 25Fps. It actually supplies anything from 5 to 20Fps with an iframe rate that rarely, if ever, gets over 1 when iframe should match the frame rate. The result is that HW acceleration won't work and, if it does, there will be constant "tears" and color bars, usually horizontal, in the video.

 

[tdwilli1]

Just did a clean Install of BI 5.
This worked fine in the past when I set it up on older Intel CPUs/Graphics with same cameras.
Could really use a hand figuring out why this is not working now.
---

Clean install of Windows 10 pro 64bit 16GB RAM integrated graphics only (no video card installed).
Clean new install of Blue Iris 5 ( 5.2.4.4 )
I7 9700K CPU
Asus Z390-A motherboard.
Reolink RLC-410 and RLC-411 IP Cameras (all have latest firmware installed)

All up to date bios and drivers.
Intel Graphics driver up to date and loaded/working properly Can see GPU and GPU usage in task manager, GPU tests work as expected.
Blue iris not showing any GPU usage in Task manager.

Blue Iris running as service.

All attempts to enable Hardware Accelerated Decode fail to enable it. ( Intel® ) it just comes back showing "no" after setting, restarting Blue Iris and restarting computer.

Tried all that I know to try.

Setting video source to Generic ONVIF H.264 instead of Reolink.
In Camera: Tried setting encode to H.264 Profile = Baseline instead of default "High".
Makes no difference. Still will not enable and show enabled in Blue Iris.

Please help!

What am I missing?

In the video config change the camera type to Generic/ONVIF, stream to H264, and RTSP port to 554.

 

[MichiganBroadband.com]

Had already tried the Generic/ONVIF H264 as this is posted in many forum posts.
Switching to RTSP instead of default (HTTP?) made it work. weird.
I think HTTP is default.
This is buggy stuff. I don't think http or rtsp should make a difference in whether hardware video codec decode acceleration works or not.

I only see the tearing mentioned above on the WiFi versions of the Reolink cameras. I am not seeing it on the wired ones.

I started out at 15FPS and 1080P
30FPS also works fine at 1080P
If I try higher resolutions it does not.
HW VA not compatible: -10 in the log is pretty useless.
I'd like to know what is compatible and what is not. is there a list somewhere?
What exactly does it expect? or what range?

At 1080P and 30FPS This seems to work consistently or is at least a starting point to test this.
And it appears NOT to work at the max resolution or any of the "4K/2K" types.

Not even at lower framerates forced form the camera.

 

[sebastiantombs]

ALl I can say is that my experience with Reolink shows that their frame and iframe rates are garbage. Have a look in Blue Iris at the cameras tab and you'll see what I mean. Hardware acceleration just wont't work with an iframe rate that low and that is a common problem with all the low end consumer grade, stuff like Reolink, Foscam and so on. I have a Dahua 5442 running at 8196, CBR, and a constant 10 frames and 10 iframes per second with no problems at all.

 

[MichiganBroadband.com]

Thanks for the heads-up.
For the price I have been happy with the reolink stuff as far as the video quality and outdoor reliability.
I never expected them to work as good as they do when we bought our first couple of them 4 years ago.
They'd been left outdoors in Michigan crap winter weather and out hot summers baking in the sun and the cheap things still
work and give a nice smooth clear image. And decent night vision as well.
But I can see and understand having to spend more on a more pro scenenario and where we might want 20 or 30 cameras
sending high def. with hardware acceleration in place and working.

I don't even know what an iframe is.
I'm guessing it is just a video packet with information or timing/sync information on it.
But clueless.

I'm very technical but have not got deep into video or camera systems.
I'm comfortable jumping in and learning more as I go.

 

[MichiganBroadband.com]

What I have found so far (in one day) is they are rock solid with hardware accel. turned on and set for 30FPS 1080P or below.
If I want the native higher def. output it only works with hardware accel. turned off.
In act it automatically turns it off and I get the "HW VA not compatible: -10 in the log is pretty useless" in the log.

I'd sure like to know what this means in terms of what exactly is compatible an d what is not?
I wish it would log details on what it sees (or does not see) that makes it determine if its compatible or not.

 

[MichiganBroadband.com]

Any comment on this?
Is the iframe issue gone when you set a Reolink to 1080P?
Why does 1080P 30FPS work perfectly but if I switch to any higher resolution BI says it is incompatible -10?
How is BI determining if something is compatible or not?

 

[MichiganBroadband.com]

ALl I can say is that my experience with Reolink shows that their frame and iframe rates are garbage. Have a look in Blue Iris at the cameras tab and you'll see what I mean. Hardware acceleration just wont't work with an iframe rate that low and that is a common problem with all the low end consumer grade, stuff like Reolink, Foscam and so on. I have a Dahua 5442 running at 8196, CBR, and a constant 10 frames and 10 iframes per second with no problems at all.

I'm in Blue Iris 5 and I don;t have a "cameras tab".
Can you explain that a bit more?
I'm guessing there is real time stats there or maybe you are talking about version 4.
If I go into settings there is a cameras tab there but it only has global settings no data like you suggest.

If I go into each individual cameras I see some realtime data but it only shows bitrate FPS and what looks like possibly jitter.
No iframe information -See attached-

Also what is an iframe before I go google it?

 

[sebastiantombs]

In the upper left of the console there's a series of icons. The fourth, or maybe fifth (not at the console so I'm working from faulty old memory) is a graph with a sort pf lightening bolt . Click that and you'll see a :Messages" tab, a "Cameras" tab, a "Disk" tab and a "Remote" tab. Click on the "Cameras" tab and you'll see th real time bit rate, frame rate and iframe rate. A hash tag, #, in front of a camera indicates hardware acceleration for that camera.

The capture you posted does illustrate exactly what I'm saying. The iframe rate is .5, the bit rate seems kind of low fora 4MP camera, assuming it's a 4MP camera. With a 30FPS frame rate the iframe rate should be 30 if you want good performance.

 

[MichiganBroadband.com]

Found it... I'm just being an idiot.
It's under status and then you get the tabs.
You're talking about the "key" field? I take it? same as iframe?
I know nothing about this.

I don;t know what's good and what's bad and what it has to do with hardware acceleration "compatibility"

And I don't get why it works fine with the camera set to 1080P 30FPS yet not with any higher settings.
Trying to learn something here.

Thanks!

 

[MichiganBroadband.com]

Sorry wrong screenshot.

Try this:

 

[SouthernYankee]

An Iframe is a full frame all the picture data. The index frame. All other frames only have the data that has changed. The full picture of each frame is calculated from the changes make to the Iframe. different compression methods calculate and keep the changed data. Example a frame rate of 15 means that there are 15 frames per second. An iframe of 15 means that the full complete iframe is sent once per second or once every 15 frames.

Too high a iframe value means that there is to much calculation to successfully build a valid frame. Where reolink have problems is at night in low light with motion. With your reolink with no additional light run past the camera about 20 feet out, looking at it, would that picture hold up in court to identify the bad guy ?

 

[MichiganBroadband.com]

I'm still lost on hardware acceleration "compatibility"
And is the original reason for my post.
I don't know if iframes have anything to do with it.
And it's working perfectly if I set the resolution to 1080P coming from the cameras.
But I would like to use the higher resolutions and employ Intel hardware decode.

 

[sebastiantombs]

I'm not an expert on the intricacies of hardware acceleration but my take is that there is simply not enough information at low iframe rates and higher resolutions to reliably build a full frame of video. There's simply too much information missing, think time when no data is available, to build a full frame from the fractional frames that are available at some, or any, given time. I use Nvidia acceleration and get tearing 24/7 if I try to use hardware acceleration on that on, sinking, Reolink camera. I rate SV3C a step above Reolink because they can, successfully, use Nvidia acceleration at least. Again, read the Cliff Notes in the WiKi and have a look at Optimizing Blue Iris in there as well.

It's interesting to see your one, 2MP camera has a higher iframe rate that the rest of the cameras.

 

[MichiganBroadband.com]

I'm not an expert on the intricacies of hardware acceleration but my take is that there is simply not enough information at low iframe rates and higher resolutions to reliably build a full frame of video. There's simply too much information missing, think time when no data is available, to build a full frame from the fractional frames that are available at some, or any, given time. I use Nvidia acceleration and get tearing 24/7 if I try to use hardware acceleration on that on, sinking, Reolink camera. I rate SV3C a step above Reolink because they can, successfully, use Nvidia acceleration at least. Again, read the Cliff Notes in the WiKi and have a look at Optimizing Blue Iris in there as well.

It's interesting to see your one, 2MP camera has a higher iframe rate that the rest of the cameras.

I understand what you are saying.
But I'd expect tearing and dropping and distortion in the video NOT and instant Blue Iris fail message saying the video stream is "incompatible -10"
And then it works perfectly on the 1080 setting. (with low iframe rates).



Not that interesting: the Camera with the high frame rate is in a well lit room.
The other four are in completely dark rooms and giveing the low dark room rates.

I'm only testing the hardware acceleration on the cameras when they are pumping out the faster framerate.

 

[sebastiantombs]

There have been numerous, recent, changes in how hardware acceleration is implemented within BI. The error message may be a result of that from BI detecting insufficient iframes to effectively use hardware acceleration at a specific resoultion/iframe combination. Actually, I would think the higher the frame rate the more likely it is to fail at low iframe rates. More information, allegedly, is being transmitted at higher frame rates with not enough reference frames to make a full frame. Just a random thought. The bottom line is that cameras like Reolink, SV3C, Foscam and so on are just not very good cameras despite what their advertising claims may be.

 

[SouthernYankee]

Reolink does not use the standard compression formats. It uses it own format that is incompatible with the hardware acceleration.

 

[MichiganBroadband.com]

Reolink does not use the standard compression formats. It uses it own format that is incompatible with the hardware acceleration.

Then why is it working fine on the 1080P setting?
And why is the higher settings working fine on VLC player when I open an RTSP stream in VLC player with it?

 

[MichiganBroadband.com]

There have been numerous, recent, changes in how hardware acceleration is implemented within BI. The error message may be a result of that from BI detecting insufficient iframes to effectively use hardware acceleration at a specific resoultion/iframe combination. Actually, I would think the higher the frame rate the more likely it is to fail at low iframe rates. More information, allegedly, is being transmitted at higher frame rates with not enough reference frames to make a full frame. Just a random thought. The bottom line is that cameras like Reolink, SV3C, Foscam and so on are just not very good cameras despite what their advertising claims may be.

Frame rate doesn't seem to matter in my tests here.
I can set it to 1 or 2FPS at any of the three highest resolutions in the camera and they all fail with the same error.
Set it to 1080P and highest framerate (30FPS) and the error goes away and Blue Iris starts using GPU. (Intel quick sync).

Blue Iris is working with me to try and get to the bottom of this.
I will of course keep anyone interested posted on how this turns out.