This appears to be fixed now, not sure which version of the last couple I installed fixed it but it's no longer happening.
Blue Iris UI3
- Thread starter bp2008
- Start date
Good to know. Thanks.
That graph looks fine. If the glitching occurred during that graph run and no problem was evident on the ping graph at the same time, then I wouldn't blame it on the network. Sounds like it is probably BI having trouble encoding the streams for the web server then. If your web server streaming profiles are configured to use hardware acceleration, try without it. Not sure what else to suggest. You could screenshot your Streaming 0 configuration I suppose.Wow, thanks for all the detail explanation. A lot to unpack here. I will dig into your suggestions a bit later this evening when I get some more me time. I quickly ran your ping tracer and got this:
I have no proxy set up, and no antivirus software on either machine (other than what Windows 10 comes with - and I've attempted to neuter that as much as possible). Interestingly, the firewall was up on the BI machine (presumably from an update). So I disabled it and still find the same glitching.
Ok, I had a little more play time just come up. I went to playback of a clip from earlier this evening. At first it was relatively smooth at the camera frame rate of 20 FPS. While watching the thin blue scrubber line on the stats for nerds window, I could clearly see the artifacts you highlighted earlier. It's not the screen capture software.
It's a 1 min video grab, but around the 10 second mark, the jerkiness returns. It is showing a network delay (and I get the orange clock). At the same time I'm using your ping trace and shows smooth pings to the server (top part of the video).
Clearly there is something going on with how the stats for nerds is showing the parameters visually - but I don't think it's a local client issue since I get the same jerkiness and network delay errors on my Moto Edge android phone.
When I go to the same camera on UI3 on the phone and PC at the same time and I watch the video bit rate, they both mimic each other perfectly - the waveform looks identical, and there is huge variability in that waveform as the jerkiness occurs. The blue line on the phone is intact and does not fracture like the one on the PC - but it does speed up and slow down during the jerkiness, just like on the PC.
So strange with the graph drawing. Maybe a buggy video driver on the PC.
You're saying the phone and the PC both stutter at the same time if they are playing the same thing? That combined with the clean ping graph strongly suggests that it is Blue Iris internally having problems. Is playback smooth in the local console or does it do the same thing?
Some thoughts:
You're saying the phone and the PC both stutter at the same time if they are playing the same thing? That combined with the clean ping graph strongly suggests that it is Blue Iris internally having problems. Is playback smooth in the local console or does it do the same thing?
Some thoughts:
- It could be failing hardware in the BI server causing unusual delays that BI's frame processing pipelines weren't designed to handle.
- Are you using sub streams? They add a lot of complexity to how BI handles frame timing. They're supposed to work best when the frame rate and i-frame interval of the main and sub streams are all the same. e.g. 20 fps, 20 iframe, for both streams. But if the camera is having trouble encoding the streams at full frame rate, or does something weird with the frame timing, that could throw Blue Iris off... would be worth testing with sub streams disabled.
- Streaming 0 configuration could cause problems. Some people go in there and change a bunch of stuff without understanding any of it.
- Try a "non-VBR" streaming profile like 2160p 4K. It is unusual but some setups can buffer network data for quite a while and cause delays if it is a low bit rate stream, which UI3's VBR profiles often are (low bit rate). the 2160p stream all but guarantees you will get 6-8 Mbps which would force such a buffer to clear out quickly.
Yes, if I'm watching the same live-stream camera on both phone and PC, both on the same network, I get identical data on the stats window.
Is the variability of the bitrate waveform normal for an image which is showing no perceptible change in video content?
Every one of my cameras is using sub-streams. And all are set to use same frame and i-frame. Most are set to 15 / 15. Is there a global way to disable sub-streams or would i have to go into each camera to disable it one at at time?
Thing is, I didn't have nearly this amount of jerkiness when running on 5.5.0.15 - and I can revert back to it and I'm smooth. That's really what makes me think there is some kind of incompatibility with my hardware and the whatever changed since that version.
My server is running without a physical monitor (headless) and I'm using VNC to make changes on it. That has some inherent video latency, so I cannot really confirm whether the console has the same jerkiness - at least not without climbing into my network closet and put a monitor on the PC. I'll do it, but only after exhausting some of the easier items on the differential.
As for my stream 0 configuration under the web server options, here's what I currently have setup:
Wasn't quite sure where you meant for me to do the non-VBR. I assume in the UI3 interface? I just tried it for 4k on both phone and PC, and both continued the same behavior.
If I haven't said it enough, I really appreciate your interest in getting me squared away. I miss the days where reviewing an event on BI was fun. Now it's so frustrating to find things...
Fortunately when I export everything is smooth as butter.
Hey, BTW, do you know of a way to cancel a queued export? I posted separately on this but no takers. I accidentally started an export on my phone via UI3 - my fat finger hit export when I was trying to click the timelapse checkbox... and it was before used the red and green trim handles to get it down to what I wanted - and so it dutifully put it in the queue - all 8 hours worth.
Is the variability of the bitrate waveform normal for an image which is showing no perceptible change in video content?
Every one of my cameras is using sub-streams. And all are set to use same frame and i-frame. Most are set to 15 / 15. Is there a global way to disable sub-streams or would i have to go into each camera to disable it one at at time?
Thing is, I didn't have nearly this amount of jerkiness when running on 5.5.0.15 - and I can revert back to it and I'm smooth. That's really what makes me think there is some kind of incompatibility with my hardware and the whatever changed since that version.
My server is running without a physical monitor (headless) and I'm using VNC to make changes on it. That has some inherent video latency, so I cannot really confirm whether the console has the same jerkiness - at least not without climbing into my network closet and put a monitor on the PC. I'll do it, but only after exhausting some of the easier items on the differential.
As for my stream 0 configuration under the web server options, here's what I currently have setup:
Wasn't quite sure where you meant for me to do the non-VBR. I assume in the UI3 interface? I just tried it for 4k on both phone and PC, and both continued the same behavior.
If I haven't said it enough, I really appreciate your interest in getting me squared away. I miss the days where reviewing an event on BI was fun. Now it's so frustrating to find things...
Fortunately when I export everything is smooth as butter.
Hey, BTW, do you know of a way to cancel a queued export? I posted separately on this but no takers. I accidentally started an export on my phone via UI3 - my fat finger hit export when I was trying to click the timelapse checkbox... and it was before used the red and green trim handles to get it down to what I wanted - and so it dutifully put it in the queue - all 8 hours worth.
Here's another video clip capture showing the lack of fluidity. This is using the 4k (non-vbr) setting in UI3.
Neither player nor network delay appear to be excessive while it's happening. Though the video bit rate is all over the place. Notice also how the blue line on the stats box stops moving forward with each jerk. Does this on the phone as well.
Neither player nor network delay appear to be excessive while it's happening. Though the video bit rate is all over the place. Notice also how the blue line on the stats box stops moving forward with each jerk. Does this on the phone as well.
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The bit rate is usually very steady in such a case, except when a new i-frame arrives in the stream that causes a massive upward spike (which is pretty infrequent normally in UI3 video streams). The fact it jumps up more frequently after a pause simply indicates there was a period of time when the video wasn't arriving, then whatever blockage was holding it back got cleared, and all that was buffered arrived suddenly which causes a spike in the apparent bit rate. UI3 doesn't calculate bit rate based on frame timestamps, rather on the real world time when the data was received.
No global way.
That all looks fine.
Yes, in UI3 there are the 2160p VBR and 1080p VBR profiles, which have a set quality of 20, and then everything below it is more like "CBR". Technically those are VBR too, but I didn't name them as such because in a default configuration their quality level is so high it will almost always make the stream hit the bit rate cap which makes them effectively "CBR". I actually reduced the default quality settings for most of the profiles in one of these last few UI3 patches, but this change to the defaults doesn't affect existing UI3 users who already have a streaming profile list saved in their browsers.
No. It was a while ago now, but if I didn't put a cancel button into the interface, then I'm pretty sure we didn't design a cancellation system. You might be able to cancel it from the local console by accessing the convert/export queue via this item above the clip list
.In this case the bit rate fluctuations could be partly caused by all the motion in the video. The Stats for nerds panel mostly only updates when a video frame gets rendered, so when playback gets stalled, so do the graphs. That is definitely a place I could make improvements.
No, that looks pretty normal actually. I have never figured out why a pattern appears like that but I've seen it lots of times and it isn't drastic enough to be of much concern.
Something you can try, too, is running pingtracer on the BI machine and entering the IPs of all your cameras (comma separated) so you can monitor them in realtime and see if there's a problem on that end of the network.
That's awesome, i was going to ask if you'd considered allowing more than one at a time. Very cool. Will play with it tonight..
This ping trace is powerful. I'm running 10/sec pings on 6 cameras for grins and am getting an occasional no response. It seems to happen to two cameras at once. Do you think this is just me saturating the ping command, or is it a hiccup that I should investigate further?
It could be a sign of a minor issue, but nothing I would worry about too much. I've never had great ping responses to most of my cameras. See what I mean, here's 8 of them:
MrRobinHood
Getting comfortable
Hey BP, any chance we could get arrow navigation between cams to skip forward and back between one cam and the next when one is select to be maximised please?
I tried all the arrow keys and n and p, but none seem to work.
Also, I'm not sure if this is a bug or a config issue on my end: Audio works in live view, but if I use the time line to go back in time and check something, the video loads great, but I see the muted audio icon, which doesn't seem to change when I adjust the volume.
Any ideas?
Thanks
I tried all the arrow keys and n and p, but none seem to work.
Also, I'm not sure if this is a bug or a config issue on my end: Audio works in live view, but if I use the time line to go back in time and check something, the video loads great, but I see the muted audio icon, which doesn't seem to change when I adjust the volume.
Any ideas?
Thanks
@MrRobinHood UI Settings > Hotkeys has "Next Camera" and "Previous Camera" bound to < and >. But those same keys are also used for Skip ahead and back 1 frame, when viewing clips. As the timeline view is sort of a hybrid, I chose to support the next and previous frame version of those hotkeys there, and just not have the camera switching hotkeys work. Its not great, but its the way it is for now.
Blue Iris doesn't support audio when using the timeline. Not even when using the local console. The BI developer is aware, but didn't have time to implement it yet.
Blue Iris doesn't support audio when using the timeline. Not even when using the local console. The BI developer is aware, but didn't have time to implement it yet.
Ssayer
BIT Beta Team
Dumb question, but I'm known for those... I've searched the thread and don't seem to see anywhere anyone has even asked this... Does UI3 have a Solo Selected Camera setting like the console has?
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Ssayer
BIT Beta Team
Thanks, figured as much, but it wouldn't have been the first thing I missed.
Quick question/feature request... I find myself using UI3 via my brave mobile browser about 90% of the time when I need quick access to a live event. Perhaps it's because I'd been using the BI app (for android) for so many years, that I now can't seem to shake the "swipe left/right to switch to next/previous camera in group" function, but if that could be integrated somehow, I'd all but abandon the BI app.
Is there any way to integrate such functionality? If that would somehow conflict with another touch/swipe feature, maybe it could be added as a user-enabled capability under settings?
I can't tell you how many times I swipe only to inadvertently dump out of the individual camera and back into the group view.
Is there any way to integrate such functionality? If that would somehow conflict with another touch/swipe feature, maybe it could be added as a user-enabled capability under settings?
I can't tell you how many times I swipe only to inadvertently dump out of the individual camera and back into the group view.
Hmm. Switching cameras without returning to the group view is not something I ever wanted myself (and I still don't).
Swipe gestures don't make much sense in areas that support zoom, because they interfere with panning. I suppose I could do swipe detection on the video player only if you aren't zoomed in at all. But that seems really janky having a function like that silently enable or disable itself based on zoom state.
Quick question, maybe a bug, more likely user error: when using the new timeline view on a mobile phone, everything works perfectly when viewing "normal" horizontal cameras, and it initially appears correct when viewing a vertically oriented camera (corridor mode) as well, but as soon as I attempt to scroll back in time a bit, the image shrinks to an almost unusable postage stamp sized image.
Your thoughts?
Your thoughts?