Blue Iris hanging

[johnstjs]

Hi all

I have a quick question to see if anyone can help me figure out what is going on. I have BI running on a dedicated PC (specs listed below) and about once a week the app hangs. When it happens, the PC is extremely sluggish even tho the CPU and memory aren't spiked (roughly 30% CPU usage and 50% memory usage). BI is set up to run as a service and I auto boot the pc once a week to try to combat this, but it doesn't help. I haven't been able to narrow down when it happens (different times of day, sometimes when no/little motion is sensed, etc). When it happens, the cameras are up (I can reach them directly and I also have a separate NVR for backup and that does not drop the video feed) but all the cameras are frozen in BI. I reboot the PC and all is well until it happens again. Originally put this system together about a year ago and all was fine until about a month or so ago. I suspect it has to do with one of the updates, but I'm not sure how far back to go with BI to test (and it may take a week or so for each test which is AGES)

PC specs:
i5-10400 (10th gen) CPU - 2.9ghz
12GB memory
Operating system and BI running on SSD with 2nd HDD for files

BI:
version 5.5.4.1
Did have ALPR and DeepStack running but disabled both (no change - still happening)
Intel+VPP acceleration enabled
16 cameras (15 Dahua - different models, 1 amcrest)
All cameras set to record "Continuous+Triggered".

Network:
PC is connected to a 1Gb switch
Some cameras are directly connected to the same switch
Some cameras are direct wired to a wifi mesh system (wired to a switch which uses a wifi mesh as a backhaul to get them to the wired network)
Checked bandwidth - plenty remaining on all locations

Any ideas what I should try?

Thanks

Jef

 

[sebastiantombs]

Shut off hardware acceleration completely. It sounds like a memory leak in the video processor.

 

[johnstjs]

Shut off hardware acceleration completely. It sounds like a memory leak in the video processor.

I was hesitant to do that to ensure that CPU usage stays down. I just disabled it and I'll keep an eye on it. Thanks for the reply

 

[wittaj]

If you are doing all the optimizations in the wiki, including substreams and direct-to-disc, then hardware acceleration isn't critical anymore - maybe saves a percent or two. Since the addition of Deepstack to BI, many have experienced troubles with hardware acceleration and run with it off now.

 

[johnstjs]

If you are doing all the optimizations in the wiki, including substreams and direct-to-disc, then hardware acceleration isn't critical anymore - maybe saves a percent or two. Since the addition of Deepstack to BI, many have experienced troubles with hardware acceleration and run with it off now.

Thanks

I changed it last night and just checked. CPU is actually down a percent or 2 and memory is just slightly up. Neither is enough to worry about, but this is just a snapshot in time and nothing is going on at the location (very little motion). I'm going to keep monitoring it to see what happens next.

Does anyone know if there were any changes made to the HW Acceleration on BI? It was working fine for quite a while. I try ot stay on top of updates so I am usually running the most recent version, but I may drop bck to the "most-stable" version.

Jeff

 

[wittaj]

There hasn't been anything official from BI regarding changes to HW acceleration, but we have lots of antecdotal issues here from members having problems once DeepStack was introduced. Turning off HW acceleration fixes the issue for most of them.

But we also have lots of members that haven't experienced any issues with HW acceleration since DeepStack was introduced.

Fortunately HW acceleration isn't as critical as it was before substreams, so it is easy to simply turn it off to fix the issue.

Many of us noticed at BI startup HW decode issues in the log once DeepStack was introduced.

If I had to guess, i think it is some sort of sequencing/order of items on startup and if Item A starts before Item B, then it has issues even if both items independently work.

 

[johnstjs]

I know this thread has been dormant for a while, but I thought I'd send out a quick note on what fixed my problem. It turns out that it was caused by Windows defrag running on the computer once a week. Wouldn't always cause it to hang but I let it go a few times and it was always right after the app ran. I had turned it off a while ago, but the setting is "auto defrag new drives" (I don't have the exact wording right in front of me). I had it off a while ago, but it either turned back on with a Windows update (I know - I should turn updates off, but since I have port 80 open to the public on this PC I wanted to keep it as up to date as I can) or the other possibility - I while ago I disconnected the HDD and then reconnected it (different issue). Windows may have mistaken that for a new HDD and re-enabled defrag.

Turned it off and everything has been solid for a few weeks now.