Blue Iris forcing updates?

[FlipNJ]

I have 2 machines running BI. I purchased 2 licenses. Both systems run on the same network. Both set to not update since I usually wait until absolutely necessary. Had problems caused by crappy updates so I shut it off. Here is what's annoying. Out of the blue, 2 cameras display "No Signal" in BI BUT only on 1 machine. Tried restarting everything, nope. Access each camera through a browser and they are fine. Right before it happened, the BI interface was resizing, minimizing, maximizing. Friggin haywire. Nothing worked except to allow an update. That is bullshit but not a big deal. Feels like an Apple product with code to cause issues after a certain time passes. Waist of time having to diagnose a problem caused by the software itself. I certainly can't design software but damn.
Oh, forgot to mention that the second machine running BI crashed yesterday and locked up. Needed a restart. Sooo glad I have sd cards in the cameras, BI is biting lately.

 

[wittaj]

I do not believe it is intentional.

Rather I think it is a byproduct of adding DeepStack to the program and the order with which things happen in BI had to be changed.

From my experience in playing with BI, I believe that the sequencing of items is much more critical than before, which is apparent by so many of us experiencing making an update and something "breaks", but then rollback and it works again as intended.

I have a camera that suffered the "No Signal" as well, so I start the troubleshooting and saw that it works logging in directly to the camera GUI and was relieved that it was not a dead camera.

I have found that after the updates, if you redo the find/inspect on each camera, it takes care of a lot of these quirky issues. Since I did that on my "no signal" camera, it has been fine ever since.

As always YMMV.

 

[FlipNJ]

Noticed that yesterday's latest stable update is no longer latest stable version. The latest stable version is now from June LOL. Glad to see at least they are working on it. Just have to laugh that I am attempting to create a backup plan of a backup plan and BI has been shitting the bed so bad. Had been a user since the beginning and hope these problems do not continue. It is regardless, an excellent product.

 

[wittaj]

Yeah, it is a double edge sword. BI could wait and only send out updates once a year or less like many other programs and apps out there, or put stuff out there and see what happens.

it is amazing it works as well as it does given all the different computers people have and all the different variables. Heck android apps will just plain not let it run on older versions of android. But people here run BI on everything from a crappy laptop to a top of the line screaming machine, and other ways BI wasn't intended like in dockers and VM and who knows what else someone tried.

In the last 6 months or so the addition of DeepStack and ability to record substream until trigger and then record mainstream are two great additions. I think most of us would prefer he roll it out and we get access to this stuff earlier. Worse case is we rollback if it isn't stable in our system.

 

[FlipNJ]

My backup BI laptop just can't work properly. it is a 2 year old. Dell XPS 9570 with I7 & 16G ram. It was really great when I used it for 4K video editing and other intensive applications. Haven't spent much time diagnosing but V5 is just not working right and continuously pegs the processor at 100%. Tried using my V4 instead and there is no camera configuration that will run 2 of my newer Dahuas. The old 5231 no problem but not the newer cams. That is the reason I bought V5 and here I am lol. Weird how it was fine.

 

[sebastiantombs]

i7 doesn't mean much. A laptop processor may work fine for video editing, but video editing is not the same as multiple, constant, never ending, multiple streams of video. A laptop will throttle due to heat under those kind of load conditions, which the processor is designed to do, no matter what version of BI is in use. Have you implemented sub streams? That, by itself, can reduce CPU utilization by a factor of five to fifteen or twenty.

 

[SouthernYankee]

read the wiki. You do not have it configured correctly. do 100% of the recommend items. DO NOT SKIP ANYTHING. your cpu load should be 10%.
Start with a Windows 10 clean install use "microsoft media creation tool"

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

 

[FlipNJ]

i7 doesn't mean much. A laptop processor may work fine for video editing, but video editing is not the same as multiple, constant, never ending, multiple streams of video. A laptop will throttle due to heat under those kind of load conditions, which the processor is designed to do, no matter what version of BI is in use. Have you implemented sub streams? That, by itself, can reduce CPU utilization by a factor of five to fifteen or twenty.

Not saying I7 means that much, just saying it isn't an 10 year old I3. Sub streams are implemented.

 

[FlipNJ]

read the wiki. You do not have it configured correctly. do 100% of the recommend items. DO NOT SKIP ANYTHING. your cpu load should be 10%.
Start with a Windows 10 clean install use "microsoft media creation tool"

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

Before whatever changed, all 8 cameras recording full time, CPU was hovering around 13%.

 

[FlipNJ]

Just want to say that this setup was working fine for weeks. Will try the wiki instructions this weekend.

 

[Edcfish]

As SouthernYankee has said, follow the wiki to the letter.
there are optimizations in it that seem like they would make little/no difference but in reality can make a large difference.
I have run BI for several years and been through some rough releases and learned that unless there is a need to update right away i wait at least a week before installing updates.
I have never had BI spontaneously stop working correctly..
The issues that I have had with No signal on my cameras seems to be more due to the cameras/switches than BI. Once I upgraded to Dahua cameras and a gigabit switch I have had no loss of signal.
YMMV

 

[sebastiantombs]

The generation of the i7 is what's critical. It is also possible that something is failing in the laptop. I went from v4 to V5 on an i7-6700K and noticed no difference in CPU utilization. In fact CPU utilization is under half what it was on V4 with almost three times the number of cameras. The problem you're having seems to be unique to your installation and hasn't been reported elsewhere that I can remember here. Perhaps running some benchmarks on the laptop will shed some light on things.