Blue Iris playback recordings are really choppy

[bozoreefer]

Hey guys

My playback recordings are super choppy when I view them.

Most of the recording on my cameras are like that.

I'm recording to a 20TB local nas that is directly attached to my 1U server.

I have a 24 port POE switch that is also directly attached to the server.

I allocated 16 vcpus and 32 gbs of ram to this particular virtual machine.

I'll post my Virtual Machine Specs along with Blue Iris camera settings and also my Turret/Bullet 54IR-ZE-S3 settings as well.

Thanks!

 

[wittaj]

Playback wasn't choppy for me.

But 30FPS is overkill for surveillance cameras, especially as you add more cameras. And 4092 is too low bitrate at that FPS and MP. 8192 minimum.

Keep in mind shutter speed is more important than FPS and movies for the big screen are shot at 24FPS. Doubt your screen is that big LOL. Plus the CPU demands go up with higher FPS.

The goal of surveillance cameras are to get freeze frame images of perps, not butter smooth movement.

Watch these, for most of us, it isn't annoying until below 10FPS:





And then this thread shows that in many instances a higher FPS results in lower quality in a bit rate per frame calculation:

FPS - in reality...

Hey all, I understand the general recommendation has been 15FPS is good for CCTV... My thought was the higher FPS the better, as you'll end up with more potential frames to get an ID of a person... is that a fair assumption? What do YOU run your FPS as and why?

ipcamtalk.com

 

[Bruce_H]

How are you watching the video, via remote desktop or on the actual console of the virtual server?
What happens if you export the video recording to another system, is it still choppy, the choppy playback might be caused by the virtual display driver.

 

[Bruce_H]

When I download the video, it is showing the car moving in a very choppy movement, is this what you are referring to?

 

[Bruce_H]

Have you looked at the "Status" window on the "Camera" tab to see what the actual FPS rate is that BI is seeing? Are you recording the main stream or the sub stream?

 

[doc_747]

I would love to see an answer, but I've been pulling my hair out over this for years. I finally gave up and accepted it as the price of BI admission.

I definitely see the jerky playback in your recording and it's the same thing I see on my system - you're not crazy, it's annoying. You can do a search and see that this topic has been brought up many times. It's usually misinterpreted as discomfort with lower FPS, but at least in my case it's the unpredictable jumps and skittering that drive me nuts. I would be thrilled with the steady 10 FPS ticking in the FPS examples (my cameras are all set to 15 FPS, fyi).

Some things you can try:

• First off - try disabling Hardware Acceleration (Hardware decode)
  • I see you're using 'Intel +VPP', I have mine set to 'No' and that does help some - there are posts that explain the purpose and theory behind those settings
• Download a clip directly from the SD card and play with VLC
  • These clips should be buttery smooth and prove it's not a camera/settings/firmware issue - if they stutter, you have an issue at the camera itself
• Open the Live Feed directly in VLC and view side-by-side with BI
  • In VLC, drop down Media > Open Network Stream > enter: rtsp:/xxx.xxx.xx.xx/live (using your camera's IP address - and fyi, this is the Dahua URL) > enter User/PW
  • The VLC feed should be slightly delayed but perfectly smooth
  • If you view both feeds on the same machine where you're running BI, this should mostly rule out any network issues between the BI machine and the camera
• Power the camera with a POE injector and plug it directly into your BI machine (if you have a spare ethernet jack on your rack mount)
  • If both VLC and BI were choppy when running through the switch, you can do this to bypass the switch and determine whether it's the problem
  • Run both VLC and BI feeds again, and if this clears up the VLC feed you're left with BI as the source of the issue

At this point it's either some combination of BI settings, something with BI that can't be changed, or your machine. I have a list of troubleshooting attempts I've made that's literally 78 rows long and includes fully swapping out RAM. None have worked for more than a couple hours.

 

[fenderman]

I would love to see an answer, but I've been pulling my hair out over this for years. I finally gave up and accepted it as the price of BI admission.

I definitely see the jerky playback in your recording and it's the same thing I see on my system - you're not crazy, it's annoying. You can do a search and see that this topic has been brought up many times. It's usually misinterpreted as discomfort with lower FPS, but at least in my case it's the unpredictable jumps and skittering that drive me nuts. I would be thrilled with the steady 10 FPS ticking in the FPS examples (my cameras are all set to 15 FPS, fyi).

Some things you can try:

• First off - try disabling Hardware Acceleration (Hardware decode)
  • I see you're using 'Intel +VPP', I have mine set to 'No' and that does help some - there are posts that explain the purpose and theory behind those settings
• Download a clip directly from the SD card and play with VLC
  • These clips should be buttery smooth and prove it's not a camera/settings/firmware issue - if they stutter, you have an issue at the camera itself
• Open the Live Feed directly in VLC and view side-by-side with BI
  • In VLC, drop down Media > Open Network Stream > enter: rtsp:/xxx.xxx.xx.xx/live (using your camera's IP address - and fyi, this is the Dahua URL) > enter User/PW
  • The VLC feed should be slightly delayed but perfectly smooth
  • If you view both feeds on the same machine where you're running BI, this should mostly rule out any network issues between the BI machine and the camera
• Power the camera with a POE injector and plug it directly into your BI machine (if you have a spare ethernet jack on your rack mount)
  • If both VLC and BI were choppy when running through the switch, you can do this to bypass the switch and determine whether it's the problem
  • Run both VLC and BI feeds again, and if this clears up the VLC feed you're left with BI as the source of the issue

At this point it's either some combination of BI settings, something with BI that can't be changed, or your machine. I have a list of troubleshooting attempts I've made that's literally 78 rows long and includes fully swapping out RAM. None have worked for more than a couple hours.

This is not a BI issue. I have 20+ bi systems and non of them exhibit choppy issues. You have something setup incorrectly.

 

[doc_747]

This is not a BI issue. I have 20+ bi systems and non of them exhibit choppy issues. You have something setup incorrectly.

Yep, just wish i could find which button to push... This is literally the only issue I've ever had that I haven't been able to resolve with a forum search.

There are a number of posts about this over the years (I cataloged all suggested resolutions a year ago and tried all of them - it improved things slightly but not completely), but I haven't seen anyone who describes this specific problem come away with a full resolution - which also makes me wonder if there's some kind of random hardware issue that contributes to it. I'd happily buy a new system, GPU, etc., if i knew that was the culprit.

 

[bozoreefer]

This is not a BI issue. I have 20+ bi systems and non of them exhibit choppy issues. You have something setup incorrectly.

What information from my set up that I could provide so that you could help us hehe.

I willing to learn!

Thanks!!

 

[bozoreefer]

I would love to see an answer, but I've been pulling my hair out over this for years. I finally gave up and accepted it as the price of BI admission.

I definitely see the jerky playback in your recording and it's the same thing I see on my system - you're not crazy, it's annoying. You can do a search and see that this topic has been brought up many times. It's usually misinterpreted as discomfort with lower FPS, but at least in my case it's the unpredictable jumps and skittering that drive me nuts. I would be thrilled with the steady 10 FPS ticking in the FPS examples (my cameras are all set to 15 FPS, fyi).

Some things you can try:

• First off - try disabling Hardware Acceleration (Hardware decode)
  • I see you're using 'Intel +VPP', I have mine set to 'No' and that does help some - there are posts that explain the purpose and theory behind those settings
• Download a clip directly from the SD card and play with VLC
  • These clips should be buttery smooth and prove it's not a camera/settings/firmware issue - if they stutter, you have an issue at the camera itself
• Open the Live Feed directly in VLC and view side-by-side with BI
  • In VLC, drop down Media > Open Network Stream > enter: rtsp:/xxx.xxx.xx.xx/live (using your camera's IP address - and fyi, this is the Dahua URL) > enter User/PW
  • The VLC feed should be slightly delayed but perfectly smooth
  • If you view both feeds on the same machine where you're running BI, this should mostly rule out any network issues between the BI machine and the camera
• Power the camera with a POE injector and plug it directly into your BI machine (if you have a spare ethernet jack on your rack mount)
  • If both VLC and BI were choppy when running through the switch, you can do this to bypass the switch and determine whether it's the problem
  • Run both VLC and BI feeds again, and if this clears up the VLC feed you're left with BI as the source of the issue

At this point it's either some combination of BI settings, something with BI that can't be changed, or your machine. I have a list of troubleshooting attempts I've made that's literally 78 rows long and includes fully swapping out RAM. None have worked for more than a couple hours.

Thank you for your advice! I wil try these steps.

 

[bozoreefer]

Does it matter if I'm using dual Xeon Gold CPUs to run this particular VM?

I allocated 16 virtual cpus to the vm.

Could that be the issue?

Thanks

 

[Bruce_H]

Have you considered disabling some of the cameras temporarily to see if it can tell you if you have a CPU resource issue or not? Is the recording fine with only 1 or 2 cameras? If good how many cameras can you add back before the recording issue becomes apparent again!

 

[NoloC]

Try switching the camera from H265 to H264H. Helped mine

 

[bozoreefer]

I finally decided to move my entire Blue Iris set up to a baremetal pc that has a 1080ti and a i7-9700K.

Its like day and night.

I guess Blue Iris doesnt work well on virtual machines regardless of how many virtual cores you give it.

Thanks for all the help!