Blue Iris UI3

[davidmtml]

I'm trying to figure out if there's a way for me to increase the fps when viewing a clip back at higher playback speeds (8x, 16x etc.) when using UI3. Is this just a limitation of UI3, or is there some settings that I need to change?

When viewing a clip at 1x playback speed, I get on average 20-25fps. At 2x and 4x, I still get about the same. However, starting at 6x or higher, my fps drops to 5-6fps, and at the highest speeds of 128x or 256x, I get 2-3fps

1. This does NOT happen when using the Blue Iris application, only when using UI3. When using the actual Blue Iris application, the playback is buttery smooth even at 256x. This leads me to believe that there is no issue with hard drive speed.

2. This happens locally (same network), remotely (across the internet), and even using localhost:81 on the same machine that Blue Iris is installed. This means it is not a network speed issue.

3. CPU usage does not seem to be an issue either, showing a modest increase at the highest playback speeds, but still typically under 40%.


So, is this just normal for UI3, or is there something I can do? Does anyone get good performance at higher playback speeds using UI3??

 

[bp2008]

Hah I was just trying to reply to the separate thread you had created, and then you deleted it.

I think it is safe to rule out UI3 or any network as the cause of the problem, and you'll need to email Blue Iris support about it.

Let me attempt to explain why. Not to confuse you, but every video UI3 plays is actually a live stream. Even clip playback. You see, when you play a clip in UI3, Blue Iris does not actually send the video file. Blue Iris internally plays the video file and encodes the result into a live stream for UI3 to play. This is how, for example, you can have a 4K / 16 Mbps video clip and play it in UI3 as 720p / 1 Mbps. Because UI3 is only being sent a live stream of Blue Iris playing the clip.

Therefore, when you have UI3 play a clip at 256x speed for example, Blue Iris sends a live stream of the clip being played at 256x speed. If that live stream happens to max out at a tenth of the expected frame rate, it is because Blue Iris produced it that way.

Since you say all playback speeds perform smoothly in the Blue Iris application (a.k.a. the local console) and you have plenty of CPU cores to spare, it does stand to reason that you should be able to get similar playback performance in UI3. I agree your Blue Iris machine's storage device and CPU does not seem to be an issue. This seems to me like a coding issue in Blue Iris.

So, is this just normal for UI3, or is there something I can do? Does anyone get good performance at higher playback speeds using UI3??

I think results vary pretty wildly on this. Some playback rates (even fast ones) may work better or worse than others depending on a great many factors. I can for example play 1080p clips pretty well at all kinds of playback rates in UI3, except at some parts of the clip it will stutter horribly for no apparent reason, so I seek back to the start, and when it reaches the same place again it stutters horribly again. It could be something as simple as Blue Iris being too aggressive at dropping frames when it thinks its transcoding pipeline is falling behind, and certain parts of certain clips could trigger this more than others. But I'm really just speculating since Blue Iris is closed source and nobody but its developer can see the code or debug it.