Blue Iris UI3

[Ssayer]

Phone shot

 

[bp2008]

Thanks. So webgl is unavailable in your latest chromium release. How unusual.

I wonder if the HTML5 player actually requires webgl or if that requirement only applies to the JavaScript player....

 

[bp2008]

Hey @Ssayer I don't have a convenient device with no webgl support, so if you wouldn't mind a little bit of advanced diagnostics, you can try hacking out the webgl feature check and see if the HTML5 video player still works to play H.264.

First, make sure in UI Settings > Video Player the H.264 player should be set to HTML5. Then open the ui3.js file in your Blue Iris 5/www/ui3 folder and go to about line 283 where it says

function detectWebGLContext()
{
    var canvas = document.createElement("canvas");
    var gl = canvas.getContext("webgl")
        || canvas.getContext("experimental-webgl");
    return gl && gl instanceof WebGLRenderingContext;
}

and just add a line saying return true; at the beginning of that function like this.

function detectWebGLContext()
{
   return true;
    var canvas = document.createElement("canvas");
    var gl = canvas.getContext("webgl")
        || canvas.getContext("experimental-webgl");
    return gl && gl instanceof WebGLRenderingContext;
}

Then CTRL+F5 to hard reload UI3 in chromium (this should override any cached ui3.js file) and see if the H.264 streams like 1080p work again. One way to be sure your change got loaded is to look in the "About" window, where the webgl warning should be gone.

 

[Ssayer]

@bp2008: That fixed it. Just to re-affirm: Newest version of PI Os with newest version of Chromium... Sound working and proper cam opening now with all video streams as options.

Thanks much!

 

[bp2008]

Thanks @Ssayer. To fix this issue properly, I had to dig into several parts of the code which simply treated the JavaScript player preconditions as being preconditions for H.264 playback in general. From UI3-179 onward, this should no longer be a problem for you!

 

[wittaj]

@bp2008 - thanks for all you do for the community! No idea if you get a piece of BI sales or not, but regardless, the stuff you share here are great tools!

 

[piconut]

I switched all my cameras and POE switch over to a second network card for security purposes and now I've recognized an issue with the time settings on all my cameras. I use the internal timestamp overlay from each camera instead of using an overlay from Blue Iris due to the large number of cameras I have and the CPU drain that the additional BI overlays would create. I noticed recently that many of my cameras have drifted off of the correct time, some by more than 60 seconds. When I logged into one of the cameras to check the NTP time settings, I realized that each camera can no longer access any of the public time servers. (duh, that was the point) So I Googled how to setup a local NTP server on the same Windows 10 computer where Blue Iris is hosted and think that I have successfully setup a local server. The problem is that when I test the connection from any of the cameras to that local NTP server, it doesn't work. Is there something I'm missing here? When you have your IP cams segmented off on a private (secondary) LAN, how do you configure them to get NTP time updates?

 

[wittaj]

I switched all my cameras and POE switch over to a second network card for security purposes and now I've recognized an issue with the time settings on all my cameras. I use the internal timestamp overlay from each camera instead of using an overlay from Blue Iris due to the large number of cameras I have and the CPU drain that the additional BI overlays would create. I noticed recently that many of my cameras have drifted off of the correct time, some by more than 60 seconds. When I logged into one of the cameras to check the NTP time settings, I realized that each camera can no longer access any of the public time servers. (duh, that was the point) So I Googled how to setup a local NTP server on the same Windows 10 computer where Blue Iris is hosted and think that I have successfully setup a local server. The problem is that when I test the connection from any of the cameras to that local NTP server, it doesn't work. Is there something I'm missing here? When you have your IP cams segmented off on a private (secondary) LAN, how do you configure them to get NTP time updates?

Try this:

Setting up NetTime Time Sync Tool on Windows 10

This is a great way to sync all your cameras. If cameras are not synced correctly they could be thrown out as evidence. This will not adjust for Daylight Savings - you must enter DST Start and End time in your Camera. I want to thank @mikeynags for all the information to get this up and running...

ipcamtalk.com

 

[Mike A.]

Not sure how you've segregated things or what NTP server you used and how set up, but speaking generally you need:

• The correct IP for the time server set up on the cams.
• A functioning network path to the server.
• The server set up and functioning properly.

Double check the first. Should point to the IP of the BI/NTP server using port 123.

Make sure that network is set up properly to let the cameras access the BI/NTP server. Beyond the network itself you may also need to let in-coming traffic on port 123 through the firewall on the BI/NTP server. Take down the firewall on the server and test from cam to check that quickly.

Don't know what NTP server you used or how set up. Search for NetTime. That one is relatively easy to get going and many here use it. May need to disable Window's own time server if it's running.

 

[piconut]

So I got it all working thanks to @wittaj and @Mike A. I originally had NetTime installed but didn't have the option checked to allow other computers to sync to it, and in my troubleshooting I had disabled NetTime. On top of that, I still had the Windows Time service running. In addition to those issues, I was using the IP of the network card that was tied to the router side, not the BI/POE switch side. Fortunately I had a second computer also running Blue Iris which didn't have NetTime installed. Once I installed that and configured it properly on the second computer, those cameras updated their time just fine. So I re-enabled NetTime on the first BI server and set the NTP IP to the LAN bound to the POE switch, then I disabled Windows Time and made sure NetTime was configured to allow other computers to sync to it and those things solved the problems. Thanks again for all of your help!

Edit: Oh, and I had to add a rule in the Firewall to allow UDP port 123 incoming!

 

[gotitmadecij]

Unable to perform mass deletions from UI3 alerts ,since several updates ago....
can do individual updates fine .. I used to could, hold "shift" and select all the alerts I wanted to delete, then press delete and they would be gone.. now they stay

Any suggestions?

 

[gwminor48]

Unable to perform mass deletions from UI3 alerts ,since several updates ago....
can do individual updates fine .. I used to could, hold "shift" and select all the alerts I wanted to delete, then press delete and they would be gone.. now they stay

Any suggestions?

Hmmm, I must have been doing something wrong. I would like to be able to do that but I never had any luck doing it.

 

[gotitmadecij]

Hmmm, I must have been doing something wrong. I would like to be able to do that but I never had any luck doing it.

always able to, until recently I could press and hold shift and the first alert clip move mouse to the last , release shift ,right click and hit delete , would be asked if I wanted to delete XX alerts (yes/no) hit yes and now I hit yes and it just unselects and the alerts are still there.

 

[MikeLud1]

I found a great way to gauge how much noise in your image using Stats for Nerds. You can use the VIdeo Bit Rate to gauge how much noise is in your image. The samples below is from one of my Dahua IPC-T5442TM-AS showing how sharpness adds noise.

Sharpness set at 20: low noise low Video Bit Rate 7.1 Mbps

Sharpness set at 50: high noise high Video Bit Rate 13.8 Mbps

 

[bp2008]

Hi everyone. I normally don't bother talking about UI3 releases here anymore, but I just released UI3-181 with a new video player option. It uses "WebCodecs" which is a brand new web API that gives low-level access to the video decoders, just like I've wanted for only about a decade. It is currently only available in Chrome/Edge and related browsers, but should be coming to Firefox later.

The only problem is, the Chrome developers decided to restrict its use to only web sites that are hosted with HTTPS. This is impractical for Blue Iris because HTTPS isn't supported natively by the web server yet. But even if and when HTTPS support is baked in to Blue Iris, you still have to deal with certificate trust issues. That means either you install and regularly renew a trusted TLS certificate, which requires internet access and port forwarding, otherwise you use a self-signed certificate and have to click through a browser warning page every day on every device you use for UI3. Both of these are a major nuisance, the latter of which would create a lot of confusion among users who haven't encountered the "untrusted certificate" warnings before.

So I opened an issue with the team that created the WebCodecs API, asking them to remove the HTTPS requirement. But I am worried they will not care about a bunch of lunatics that want to use unencrypted HTTP for their own local web servers. If any Chrome/Edge/etc users out there have a github account and want to be able to use the best performing video player in UI3, please leave a comment in the issue thread to show that people want this: Here is the issue thread

 

[hikky_b]

Hi everyone. I normally don't bother talking about UI3 releases here anymore, but I just released UI3-181 with a new video player option. It uses "WebCodecs" which is a brand new web API that gives low-level access to the video decoders, just like I've wanted for only about a decade. It is currently only available in Chrome/Edge and related browsers, but should be coming to Firefox later.

The only problem is, the Chrome developers decided to restrict its use to only web sites that are hosted with HTTPS. This is impractical for Blue Iris because HTTPS isn't supported natively by the web server yet. But even if and when HTTPS support is baked in to Blue Iris, you still have to deal with certificate trust issues. That means either you install and regularly renew a trusted TLS certificate, which requires internet access and port forwarding, otherwise you use a self-signed certificate and have to click through a browser warning page every day on every device you use for UI3. Both of these are a major nuisance, the latter of which would create a lot of confusion among users who haven't encountered the "untrusted certificate" warnings before.

So I opened an issue with the team that created the WebCodecs API, asking them to remove the HTTPS requirement. But I am worried they will not care about a bunch of lunatics that want to use unencrypted HTTP for their own local web servers. If any Chrome/Edge/etc users out there have a github account and want to be able to use the best performing video player in UI3, please leave a comment in the issue thread to show that people want this: Here is the issue thread

Does this apply to those running a reverse proxy and using HTTPS between browser and proxy server? It might be an obvious NO but I'm not entirely sure...

 

[bp2008]

Does this apply to those running a reverse proxy and using HTTPS between browser and proxy server? It might be an obvious NO but I'm not entirely sure...

It does apply. Currently a reverse proxy is the only way to use HTTPS with Blue Iris. That can be changed, but there will always be the nuisance of certificates.

 

[MikeLud1]

If any Chrome/Edge/etc users out there have a github account and want to be able to use the best performing video player in UI3, please leave a comment in the issue thread to show that people want this: Here is the issue thread

I just left a comment. Also I just loaded V181 and do not see WebCodecs in the dropdown.

 

[hikky_b]

It does apply. Currently a reverse proxy is the only way to use HTTPS with Blue Iris. That can be changed, but there will always be the nuisance of certificates.

Brilliant - I will download and test now. Are there any particular benefits from a users point of view? Stability?

 

[bp2008]

I just left a comment. Also I just loaded V181 and do not see WebCodecs in the dropdown.
View attachment 105791

Are you using HTTPS to connect? It also needs to be a supported browser.