Blue Iris Shuts Down Every Night

[mike s.]

Hi,
BI is set to run all the time, and it's on a computer that has its power options set to never turn off. Why is BI just closing itself during the night? There are no error messages or anything - it just shuts down and I have to re-open the software in the morning.

 

[Lebeter]

did you set it to run as a service?

 

[mike s.]

No; actually, I am not even sure what "running as a service" is....

 

[fenderman]

It should not be shutting down..it may be crashing...look at event viewer.

 

[Lebeter]

so basically blue iris can run as a service in the background. what that means is upon startup of the computer, BI will run and the service will actually restart the program if it crashes. In this case its kind of a bandaid and doesn't get to the root of your problem. there may be a configuration problem or something else causing it to crash. BI consumes a lot of processor utilization and creates some constant disk i/o along with memory so basically its like

In the BI Options Menu and then in the Startup Tab, there is a check mark at the top in the Operating System Category labeled "Run as a Win32 service (no user account or interface--advanced use)" selecting this will run BI in the background as an automated windows service.

I would make sure you are on the latest version of BI as well, there tend to be some buggy releases now and then, simply a byproduct of a developer trying to flood new features into a great program which is a tradeoff many of us can deal with. You can always revert back to a stable working version that suites your setup, or forge ahead to bleeding edge features.

 

[Git]

You may also want to install BlueIris Tools and enable the watchdog feature and email alerts

http://www.ipcamtalk.com/showthread.php?198-Blue-Iris-Tools-Weather-Overlay-Watchdog-amp-more!

 

[mike s.]

"The VSS service is shutting down due to idle timeout" shows up now and again in the event viewer, but there's nothing else that I can see. Would that do it? Again, I don't know what VSS is.

As I set up this new computer solely to run the cameras, I'm not sure it's important that I set up BI to run in the background. Will check for a BI update; it used to update itself quite often on the old laptop, but since I moved the software to a pretty powerful desktop (4 days ago) I haven't seen it update.

 

[Git]

For me, running BlueIris as a service takes less resources

BlueIris Tools > watchdog - will check to see if BlueIris is running and if not, will restart it automatically

VSS is Volume Shadow Copy Service

 

[Lebeter]

as Git stated, running BI as a service uses less resources. Many folks mainly use BI to remotely view their cameras, therefore the main rendering window really only need to be open when making configuration changes and reviewing recorded footage which may be a rare occurrence depending on use. I have a dedicated BI box which i remote into occasionally to tweak trigger mask areas and hotspots among other settings semi regularly especially as I've added cameras. the one thing I've found is the seasons and other environmental events like wind, rain, etc. can be continuously mitigated with these settings, lowering false motion detection. It's a trial and error experience, but outside of configuration BI is mostly set and forget.

 

[mike s.]

as Git stated, running BI as a service uses less resources. Many folks mainly use BI to remotely view their cameras, therefore the main rendering window really only need to be open when making configuration changes and reviewing recorded footage which may be a rare occurrence depending on use. I have a dedicated BI box which i remote into occasionally to tweak trigger mask areas and hotspots among other settings semi regularly especially as I've added cameras. the one thing I've found is the seasons and other environmental events like wind, rain, etc. can be continuously mitigated with these settings, lowering false motion detection. It's a trial and error experience, but outside of configuration BI is mostly set and forget.

I just wanted to say that since I began running Watchdog, for whatever reason, I'm no longer getting BI shutdowns.

 

[Zxel]

I just wanted to say that since I began running Watchdog, for whatever reason, I'm no longer getting BI shutdowns.

Yuppers, BI Tools is awesome, however, it doesn't stop the shutdowns, it mearly restarts it when it happens (and unless you are watching it or checking the logs you wont notice it). Since your VSS service is having issues this may be the cause of the shutdowns, sounds like maybe backups are your problem (if your doing them), if so it isn't unusual for BI to stop/crash during a backup (depends on the software you use for backups and its settings). Another possibility could be a Windows update caught in a loop, but any of these type of errors should be in your event viewer adn BI log (correlate the times).

 

[mike s.]

Yuppers, BI Tools is awesome, however, it doesn't stop the shutdowns, it mearly restarts it when it happens (and unless you are watching it or checking the logs you wont notice it). Since your VSS service is having issues this may be the cause of the shutdowns, sounds like maybe backups are your problem (if your doing them), if so it isn't unusual for BI to stop/crash during a backup (depends on the software you use for backups and its settings). Another possibility could be a Windows update caught in a loop, but any of these type of errors should be in your event viewer adn BI log (correlate the times).

i could use a pointer on how to customize Event Viewer for a search of BI issues....

 

[Zxel]

OK, first let's start with the BI log itself. The default location for the log is 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Blue Iris 3\Blue Iris.txt' although it may be different if you've changed the defaults. It may be big - too big for notepad - depends on how you're archiving it and the leangth of time you've been running BI. Look for lines similar to those below:

0 12/13/2014 5:27:35 AM App Started
0 12/13/2014 5:27:35 AM Clips New: storing 2 files 3.14G [2/2, 476477/512000, 476477]
0 12/13/2014 5:27:35 AM Clips Stored: deleting 1 files 1.34G [3/5, 476477/307200, 476477]
4 12/13/2014 5:27:35 AM Clips D:: 208, 596.6G/800.0G (+263.3G)
4 12/13/2014 5:27:35 AM Clips C:: 0, 0K/9.76G (+33.5G)
0 12/13/2014 5:27:37 AM Server Started on port 80
0 12/13/2014 5:27:37 AM App Today's sunrise: 7:48 AM, sunset: 5:08 PM

These are the lines indicating it's startup. Also look at the lines preceding it, they should indicate the shutdown reason, a normal shutdown would be like:
0 12/13/2014 3:15:38 AM App Stopped

If it say's something like "Unexpected shutdown" then it was a "crash". It may give more hints - but many times it does not. What we are interested in is the time it happened (in the example that would be 3:15:38 AM), this is the time we will be looking around in the event viewer.

Now onto the Windows event viewer. Go ahead and open up the event viewer and select "Create Custom View" from the right side menu. Once that opens on the "Filter" tab change the folllowing:

Logged:
Select "Custom range..." and in the pop-up choose "Events On" and set the "From:" time to be 5 minutes before the stop time noted above (that would be 3:10:38 AM using the example time given above). Do likewaise with the "To:" time, except make it 5 minutes after (that would be 3:20:38 AM using our example time). Select OK to save and return back to the "Filter" tab.

Event Level:
Check ALL boxes EXCEPT "Verbose".

By Log:
Choose the "By Log" option and and in the "Event logs:" dropdown select "Application, Security, and System from under the "Windows Logs" tree (it has a little plus you can click on to open it).

That is it, click on "OK" to save and give it a name (whatever you like). You should now see the custom view you have created on the left tree menu under "Custom Views", click on it to check it out.

You can widen the time window and the number of logs it searches - but the ones given should do the trick. Hopefully you will see something that stands out in that time frame to give us a further clue as to what is happening.

 

[mike s.]

OK, first let's start with the BI log itself. The default location for the log is 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Blue Iris 3\Blue Iris.txt' although it may be different if you've changed the defaults. It may be big - too big for notepad - depends on how you're archiving it and the leangth of time you've been running BI. Look for lines similar to those below:

0 12/13/2014 5:27:35 AM App Started
0 12/13/2014 5:27:35 AM Clips New: storing 2 files 3.14G [2/2, 476477/512000, 476477]
0 12/13/2014 5:27:35 AM Clips Stored: deleting 1 files 1.34G [3/5, 476477/307200, 476477]
4 12/13/2014 5:27:35 AM Clips D:: 208, 596.6G/800.0G (+263.3G)
4 12/13/2014 5:27:35 AM Clips C:: 0, 0K/9.76G (+33.5G)
0 12/13/2014 5:27:37 AM Server Started on port 80
0 12/13/2014 5:27:37 AM App Today's sunrise: 7:48 AM, sunset: 5:08 PM

These are the lines indicating it's startup. Also look at the lines preceding it, they should indicate the shutdown reason, a normal shutdown would be like:
0 12/13/2014 3:15:38 AM App Stopped

If it say's something like "Unexpected shutdown" then it was a "crash". It may give more hints - but many times it does not. What we are interested in is the time it happened (in the example that would be 3:15:38 AM), this is the time we will be looking around in the event viewer.

Now onto the Windows event viewer. Go ahead and open up the event viewer and select "Create Custom View" from the right side menu. Once that opens on the "Filter" tab change the folllowing:

Logged:
Select "Custom range..." and in the pop-up choose "Events On" and set the "From:" time to be 5 minutes before the stop time noted above (that would be 3:10:38 AM using the example time given above). Do likewaise with the "To:" time, except make it 5 minutes after (that would be 3:20:38 AM using our example time). Select OK to save and return back to the "Filter" tab.

Event Level:
Check ALL boxes EXCEPT "Verbose".

By Log:
Choose the "By Log" option and and in the "Event logs:" dropdown select "Application, Security, and System from under the "Windows Logs" tree (it has a little plus you can click on to open it).

That is it, click on "OK" to save and give it a name (whatever you like). You should now see the custom view you have created on the left tree menu under "Custom Views", click on it to check it out.

You can widen the time window and the number of logs it searches - but the ones given should do the trick. Hopefully you will see something that stands out in that time frame to give us a further clue as to what is happening.

Wow, I really appreciate your taking the time to lay it all out so clearly! I'll do it as soon as I get some spare time. One question: What does the "0" or "4" signify at the beginning of each entry?

 

[Zxel]

You're welcome.

I don't know, never had a reason to know, although I bet there are peeps on the forum who do, or you can just email the author of BI (ken@blueirissoftware.com) - He really is a nice guy. I could guess but I'd like to know too.

I forgot to mention that in the BI help file under the troubleshooting section the first example shows what an error in BI might look like in the event viewer - may be of help.

 

[mike s.]

You're welcome.

I don't know, never had a reason to know, although I bet there are peeps on the forum who do, or you can just email the author of BI (ken@blueirissoftware.com) - He really is a nice guy. I could guess but I'd like to know too.

I forgot to mention that in the BI help file under the troubleshooting section the first example shows what an error in BI might look like in the event viewer - may be of help.

Unfortunately, there is no Blue Iris.txt file in the Blue Iris 3 folder (or anywhere else on the computer). In the Blue Iris 3 folder there are 4 files with BI in the file name (BlueIris, BlueIrisAdmin, BlueIrisApplePush, and BlueIrisService), but all 4 are apps. Maybe it's set up differently on my system - Windows 7 64-bit.

 

[paarlberg]

It looks like

0 = informational
2 = OK - an error has been corrected or the status is OK
3 = motion
4 = OK - an error has been corrected or the status is OK
10 = remote logon

If you compare your actual log file to the messages in BI you will see the various codes match a certain icon. The rest I am not sure about.

 

[mike s.]

Got it, thx!

 

[paarlberg]

By default the log file goes to \Blue Iris 3\log\%Y%m.txt

 

[mike s.]

I don't have that, either. No text files in the Blue Iris 3 folder except Readme, and the Log folder is empty. Not even hidden files.