Blue Iris PC upgrade

[Hound Dog 911]

That's basically the biggest part of it but not recordings as you phrased it. The live view. Recordings will be done however they're set and you'll watch those as they're recorded.

I just go with continuous myself since I don't really care about disk space as long as I can keep a couple of weeks back. Getting more than that doesn't really buy me anything for my use. Most of my cams are more for watching wildlife and other general activity around the house and I sometimes like to go back on a different cam than was triggered to see things. Like having the main stream to view then. But if you want more storage, then using when triggered will save a bunch of space.

I don't need weeks and weeks of recordings. I don't think I'm currently getting a weeks worth of storage with my current cams. I am using a 4tb purple drive and want to add an additional drive of probably 8tb.

 

[wittaj]

So is there a disc space savings?

That is the beauty of the substreams, you can do whatever you want.

Record continuous and it will record mainstream 24/7 but use the substreams for the CPU intensive features.

Record continuous plus triggers and it will record substream until a trigger and then go to mainstream - you can set the triggers pretty low so that it records for anything.

Record continous plus alerts and it will record substream until an alert and then go to mainstream - with this one you run the risk of missing a trigger than wasn't elevated to alert level.

But if you do anything other than continuous it will result in disc space savings.

 

[Hound Dog 911]

If I can get 3 weeks of storage continuous, I'd be happy. I am just getting up and running so I have time to play and figure out what works best. May try the non-continuous with recording triggers mainstream. I'm not in a high crime area. But we are rural and not missing critical events in full resolution would suck.

 

[Mike A.]

As fenderman said earlier you also can set your substream to be a little higher as a good compromise if you go with triggered.

Your video settings in the cams also will affect things a lot.

 

[Hound Dog 911]

So you are saying that recording continuous with substream at 1080 then kicking to mainstream when triggered? That way if you miss a trigger you still have something of decent quality?

 

[wittaj]

So you are saying that recording continuous with substream at 1080 then kicking to mainstream when triggered? That way if you miss a trigger you still have something of decent quality?

If you are recording continuous then it will be 24/7 mainstream. You would want Cont+triggered to record substream until triggered then go to mainstream.

 

[Hound Dog 911]

If you are recording continuous then it will be 24/7 mainstream. You would want Cont+triggered to record substream until triggered then go to mainstream.

I thought I was starting to understand. Then I am lost again.

 

[Mike A.]

I thought you had it too. ; )

Think maybe how you worded things. Continuous is main stream all the time. As @wittaj said, continuous+triggered records the substream until a trigger, then records main stream. Yes, if you used a higher quality substream then you'd have something a little better even if you're viewing the substream. But that will cost you a little more space. Still much less than the main stream.

Just to further confuse you, you can set different cams to work in different ways so could go continuous on a primary cam and when triggered on a cam that's not so important.

 

[Hound Dog 911]

I think I understand. You said what I thought I said. Watching Yellowstone with the Misses. Probably crack this all open tomorrow morning to play with. I may set the 4k color cam to record continuous then continuous+triggered for the rest.

 

[Hound Dog 911]

I thought you had it too. ; )

Think maybe how you worded things. Continuous is main stream all the time. As @wittaj said, continuous+triggered records the substream until a trigger, then records main stream. Yes, if you used a higher quality substream then you'd have something a little better even if you're viewing the substream. But that will cost you a little more space. Still much less than the main stream.

Just to further confuse you, you can set different cams to work in different ways so could go continuous on a primary cam and when triggered on a cam that's not so important.

So I went in and setup several of my cameras with substreams and continuous+triggered. I dropped from 20+ percent to 9%. I will tinker more in the morning. Thank you guys for the help. Really appreciate it!

 

[Hound Dog 911]

I deleted all my old files being I've scrubbed over them heavily and not losing anything. I want to see how much space I have saved daily. Of course triggers will impact that more or less.

Question.. Are there any settings that you tweak to recording length, etc, to make sure it continues to record full resolution mainstream when triggered? Going to the setup page to see if you all answer that there.

 

[Hound Dog 911]

Memory usage and the total mp/s on the blue iris status>cameras page

I setup continous + triggered. I actually think I like it. About a second to two lag switch to mainstream. Granted I'm coming out my door and already in a ID range where if I was coming from the yard towards the house it would be recording much sooner from mainstream. Any tweaks you recommend to get the most out of this setup? Thanks everyone for steering me this direction. BI is rock solid.

 

[wittaj]

Under trigger tab is break time and that is how long it will record mainstream after triggered and not re-triggered.

Under record tab is a pre-buffer option to tell it how long before the trigger do you want it to switch to mainstream.

 

[looney2ns]

Be sure to read the BI help file.
And this: Blue Iris Support - YouTube

Be certain that you have exempted BI properly from any Antivirus, including Windows Defender as per the BI help file.

 

[Hound Dog 911]

I turned the windows anti virus off a few days ago. I'm doing a lot of reading.

 

[Hound Dog 911]

Everything has been running smoothly the rest of the day. For some reason my new 4k color cam doesn't like 20 fps. Cpu usage, memory, etc is all low. If I run that cam at 20 fps it occasionally starts dropping frames and I get the error signal on it. All settings are all recommended by the cam software for Bit Rate, I frame, etc.

 

[wittaj]

Everything has been running smoothly the rest of the day. For some reason my new 4k color cam doesn't like 20 fps. Cpu usage, memory, etc is all low. If I run that cam at 20 fps it occasionally starts dropping frames and I get the error signal on it. All settings are all recommended by the cam software for Bit Rate, I frame, etc.

Make sure you are using just plain H264 or H265 and general codec, not AI

15FPS is more than enough. Shutter speed is more important than FPS.

You will not find many of us here running more than 15 FPS; and movies are shot at 24 FPS, so anything above that is a waste of storage space for what these cameras are used for. If 24 FPS works for the big screen, I think 15 FPS is more than enough for phones and tablets and most monitors LOL. Many of my cameras are running at 12FPS.

Watch these, for most of us, it isn't annoying until below 10FPS, and certainly sufficient enough for anything these cameras are intended to capture...and certainly enough for what you want to capture. And the benefit is additional storage.

 

[Hound Dog 911]

Andy recommended 264H for his cam so that's what I been using. With BI open I'm at 20% cpu and 33% ram. Closed I'm at 8% cpu. It ran fine at 20fps then was looking at some triggers from this evening and it got wonky on me. Restarted that cam and backed out of BI and running fine again. I have been through a bunch of Thermal Optics for coyote hunting over the last several years. Earlier models had some lag issues making it impossible for running shots. My Halo XRF is amazing and lag free. I'll watch the videos. 15 or 20 will be fine. It's of my driveway so was shooting for 20.

 

[wittaj]

BI likes plain old H265 or H264, so if it goes wonky try it. Some have used 264H without issues and others have.

 

[Hound Dog 911]

Thanks! I am guessing I should get 10 days of recording on a 4tb purple drive with the current set up. Only the 4k recording continuous. Going to try and add a 10tb drive in the next couple months.