Blue Iris/Homeseer/Emby/DVBLink pc

[Homer]

Hi all,

I presently have an 8 core AMD 8350 server with 32GB of ram and lots of hard disk capacity, to run iSpy (CCTV), HS3 (Home automation), Emby (Blu-ray and tv) and DVBLink (Combines Satellite and terrestrial tv in one server). It all worked quite well with standard definition analogue cctv until I put a 4MP IP camera on it. That camera alone uses 35% cpu when recording, so not good. The bottom of the picture jumps around, and iSpy thinks that means motion. Since it also smears (and breaks up) moving objects with the 4MP camera, and goes berserk if the bit rate is increased, it was clearly time to try something new.
So, I installed Blue Iris. It crashed. I couldn't get it to work. I then tried Blue Iris on a AMD Ryzen 1800X pc, and it works well there with the 4MP camera. It uses 2 to 3% cpu, the picture is completely stable, and there is no smearing of moving objects, even with the bit rate maxed out.

I am well aware that Fenderman advises people to use Intel chips with hardware acceleration for Blue Iris, and I am willing to do this. I do have a few issues though:

1. I'm in the UK, and I cannot find any good deals on used i7 pc's.
2. I'm aware that I can build a specific pc much cheaper than I can buy it ready built.
3. I'm unsure if this is the time to split my four programs onto separate less powerful hardware, or to keep them all together.

I'm looking at building a i7-8700k pc with 16GB ram, and using the Intel hardware acceleration for Blue Iris. Now Emby can use various hardware video card acceleration methods, so I am wondering if I could add a video card for that as well.

There it is. Should I separate the programs onto different pc's that need hardware acceleration for simplicity, or is there a well trodden path to keep everything on one pc ? Any thoughts ?

 

[TonyR]

Should I separate the programs onto different pc's that need hardware acceleration for simplicity, or is there a well trodden path to keep everything on one pc ? Any thoughts ?

Since you asked, I would buy/build that i7 PC with Intel video h/w accel, let it be your Blue Iris server and nothing else and keep all the other (iSpy, HS3, Emby and DVBLink) on the AMD 8350. This way, should you decide to add more IP cams to the i7 and migrate away from analog cams currently on the AMD, you'll have a good platform that will handle them.

If possible, put Win 10 along with BI itself and BI's db folder on a quality SSD and put ALL other BI folders on a WD purple drive.

 

[vfrex]

I built a dual xeon machine from used server equipment off eBay that does Emby transcoding and BI duty for 7 cameras. I do not use hardware acceleration on either Emby or BI. Its not like I'm transcoding all the time but I have CPU cycles to spare. Maybe not the best way to skin the cat, but it works for me.

By the way, did you try toggling the BI install between 32 bit and 64 bit? I had issues getting the 64 bit to work in some circumstances where the system would bluescreen on launch. Uninstalled, reinstalled the 32 bit, and it worked ok.

 

[Homer]

TonyR: The idea is to get rid of the analogue cams, but I am presently only testing with BI, as I want to move house ! I was surprised at the difference in cpu usage with the two AMD pc's and the 4MP camera, but I couldn't test BI on the AMD 8350, as it wouldn't start. Intel cpu with h/w acceleration is clearly the way for a growing BI installation.

vfrex: I have just tried 32 bit and 64 bit BI on the 8350 pc. It does the same with both. It shows 15 days demo (Licence is on the other pc), and stalls on the start up splash screen. Oh.. I just left it stalled for ten minutes while writing this, and BI has started(64 bit). Tried stop start, and it sits on the start splash screen for around 5 minutes. Swapping licence over and rebooting 8350 pc with saved BI settings.....

 

[vfrex]

Did you set direct to disc on the camera settings in BI? It doesn't work when you are on the trial version, but saves a lot of CPU when used.

 

[Homer]

Hi, yes, as I had used the setup file and licence from the other pc. I can now see that the 4MP camera uses 7% cpu with BI against around 50% with iSpy when recording (Both running on the AMD 8350 cpu). Since BI is now running on the 8350, I have disabled the ip camera in iSpy. iSpy now only has two analogue cameras on it - reducing.....

 

[Homer]

Reduced ! I just got the analogue cams working in BI using the Picolo Pro 2 card that is installed for iSpy. Can't get it above 640x480 but SD isn't much bigger than that anyway (I had managed 720x576 with a registry hack from Eurysys, but it doesn't appear to work with BI). Never mind, those old SD cameras are on there way out anyway.

 

[Homer]

I managed to get the two analogue cameras to full SD definition, but I have noticed that they do not record to hard drive. I can see live images, and motion detected clips appearing on the RHS. Double clicking a recording appears to open a black box with a jpeg title (Note that the 4MP IP cam records and plays back normally). There are no files for these cameras in the selected folders. Any idea what I am doing wrong here ?

 

[Homer]

OK, one response from Ken later, and they are recording. I hadn't realised that "direct to disk recording" is only for h264/5 streams and a 10 year+ old Picolo Pro 2 is not going to be doing that. I have now set BI to re-encode the two analogue cams as h264, and to save them as bvr.

For the record, Picolo Pro 2 works with BI ! And since the cams are SD the H264 re-encoding is not visibly loading the cpu.

Now to replace them with HD IP cams