Blue Iris UI3

[bp2008]

Just wanted to give you a heads up.

The Resolution settings in the Main Settings-> Web Server, now works. I just tested it on a profile and viewing a single camera, and I get the right Res.

Yeah, that was a couple of patches ago. Actually Blue Iris ignores the width part and only honors the height. Some of the other encoding parameters still don't work and Ken doesn't seem to care (or at least other things are a higher priority to him).

Only issue there is and not sure if its chrome or UI3, is that when I turn off the resize and view a single 4K camera, I get the you cpu isnt fast enough message. At 1920 x 1080 it works 100% fine.

With BI's "resize output frame" setting turned off, your 4K camera will be streaming at actual 4K resolution, and not a lot of CPUs can keep up with decoding that unless you turn the frame rate way down (which isn't an available control yet). A lot of high-end smartphones struggle to keep up with 720p @ 15 FPS! The reason for this is that UI3 can't access hardware acceleration, and its video decoder is single-threaded and running in JavaScript.

 

[bp2008]

Is it at all possible to have the stream settings separate between live view and playback modes? Playback is working great in 1280x720 for me when I change the stream, but when I go back to live view I have to change the stream again to get the better quality. Having these settings separate would be a perfect balance.

I can probably give UI3 an option to remember live and recorded streaming profiles independently, sure, but it won't be enabled by default.

 

[lgRich]

Hi,

Where is the option to see “Video Only” when I am not in full screen ?

Thanks

 

[bp2008]

Click the 3 dots in the upper right corner. This opens the main menu. Choose UI Settings. Scroll down to the "Extra" section. It is in that section.

 

[bp2008]

Oh, sorry, when "not in full screen" you need to use a URL parameter maximize=1 or a hotkey (CTRL + ~ by default).

 

[lgRich]

Nice, problem solved…

Thanks very much @bp2008 for your great work, UI3 is the greatest improvement for BI until many years.

 

[eangulus]

I can probably give UI3 an option to remember live and recorded streaming profiles independently, sure, but it won't be enabled by default.

Sounds like a good compromise to me.

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

 

[bp2008]

I am hoping to start work soon on a complete overhaul of UI3's streaming quality options. My goal is to have more intuitive quality options like the ones on YouTube:

The user will be able to add/remove/edit all the streaming profiles right there in UI3, but I also want to have good enough defaults that most people won't find that necessary.

I would have done this before the first Beta release in November, but I've been having trouble convincing Ken to let client apps specify the H.264 encoding parameters. Currently we're stuck with the Streaming 0,1,2 profiles.

 

[Albert Einstien]

Personally, I find UI2 to be much better.

 

[rcnet]

It was in UI2 but not in UI3 because I wanted to keep UI3 more focused on the core experience and not be bursting at the seams with buttons and features. Smaller apps are less work to build and maintain. That is really all there is to it. Though honestly I feel like every patch takes UI3 further from that simplicity I wanted.

Thing is, I believe you are the first person to ask to have this feature in UI3, and it has been in public beta on this forum since November. There are other development priorities which would be useful for more people, not to mention things that I am personally more interested in having than labels.

Is it good enough for people to just right click on a camera to see its name in the context menu?

While camera labels are something you could technically achieve with a local script, it would require programming experience and a great deal of knowledge of the inner workings of UI3.

Is camera names really that cluttering? Personally I think it's an essential feature, though not necessarily enabled by default as it is probably not necessary for every use case.

Understandable that your time is better spent on more pressing features though.

I can write JavaScript, but being a n3wb at this forum and BI, and looking through UI3 source I can see what you mean about needing a great deal of knowledge on the inner workings. I see it's outputting the stream on a canvas element but I can't see how I could get any reference to each of the camer names within, to inject a simple label overlay (fixed to the top of each camera).

The UI obviously receives the info I need to make a label, as you can see the camera names on the right click menu's. Any pointers on how I can achieve this? Is there a JSON API or anything similar?

I wish I didn't have to but will have to stay on UI2 otherwise as the site I'm using it needs a visible name on each camera.

 

[Albert Einstien]

Is camera names really that cluttering? Personally I think it's an essential feature, though not necessarily enabled by default as it is probably not necessary for every use case.

Understandable that your time is better spent on more pressing features though.

I can write JavaScript, but being a n3wb at this forum and BI, and looking through UI3 source I can see what you mean about needing a great deal of knowledge on the inner workings. I see it's outputting the stream on a canvas element but I can't see how I could get any reference to each of the camer names within, to inject a simple label overlay (fixed to the top of each camera).

The UI obviously receives the info I need to make a label, as you can see the camera names on the right click menu's. Any pointers on how I can achieve this? Is there a JSON API or anything similar?

I wish I didn't have to but will have to stay on UI2 otherwise as the site I'm using it needs a visible name on each camera.

UI2 is a lot more robust with many more setting options, (like the labels you mention). I have cameras in laundry rooms in different apartments, and cameras surveying the apartments, and I don't know which is which. Practically speaking, I don't need to know unless something happens, in which case I can id the camera if I need to. However, having servers in different offices in different cities and having a server list was nice. Certainly I can go to a different URL. The deal breaker for me though is scrolling through the animated clips. It is way easier and faster in UI2 and that saves me a lot of time. Usiing the mouse wheel is faster in UI2, scaling them is handy, and I don't need the overhead of having them pop out with each mouse hover. UI3 is handy though to see only the flagged clips. UI3 has some very attractive features, but I need to stay with UI2 as it comes across as a more Enterprise solution and UI3 is a more 'consumerish' version.

 

[looney2ns]

The deal breaker for me though is scrolling through the animated clips. It is way easier and faster in UI2 and that saves me a lot of time. Usiing the mouse wheel is faster in UI2, scaling them is handy, and I don't need the overhead of having them pop out with each mouse hover. UI3 is handy though to see only the flagged clips. UI3 has some very attractive features, but I need to stay with UI2 as it comes across as a more Enterprise solution and UI3 is a more 'consumerish' version.

That can be turned off in UI3's settings. Along with many other options.

 

[bp2008]

Is camera names really that cluttering? Personally I think it's an essential feature, though not necessarily enabled by default as it is probably not necessary for every use case.

It isn't something I can just implement as a plug-and-play feature. There are too many settings involved for a feature that most users don't care about. To really get an ideal layout you even need to edit your group frame sizes to create the right amount of black space above all the cameras, and most users won't realize they need to do that or even know how.

I can write JavaScript, but being a n3wb at this forum and BI, and looking through UI3 source I can see what you mean about needing a great deal of knowledge on the inner workings. I see it's outputting the stream on a canvas element but I can't see how I could get any reference to each of the camer names within, to inject a simple label overlay (fixed to the top of each camera).

The UI obviously receives the info I need to make a label, as you can see the camera names on the right click menu's. Any pointers on how I can achieve this? Is there a JSON API or anything similar?

I wish I didn't have to but will have to stay on UI2 otherwise as the site I'm using it needs a visible name on each camera.

I'll see about copying over the labeling code from UI2, perhaps this weekend. I'll try to simplify the configuration somewhat though.

 

[bp2008]

Usiing the mouse wheel is faster in UI2

Curious. Both UIs just use native browser scrolling so each mouse wheel tick should have exactly the same effect. Unless you mean that UI3's list seems laggier. It is a great deal more complex than UI2's list, so slower devices may exhibit poorer scrolling performance.

 

[Albert Einstien]

That can be turned off in UI3's settings. Along with many other options.

That won't help. Turning off the animated clip preview or turning off 'disable mouse over thumbs' in UI3 disables the animated preview completely.

 

[Albert Einstien]

Curious. Both UIs just use native browser scrolling so each mouse wheel tick should have exactly the same effect. Unless you mean that UI3's list seems laggier. It is a great deal more complex than UI2's list, so slower devices may exhibit poorer scrolling performance.

UI2, using IE, with the clips scaled to about the same as UI3, moves the clips up about 1 1/2 frames in the clips window with each mouse wheel tick.
UI3, using Firefox, moves the clips up about 1/2 frame in the window with one mouse wheel tick.

EDIT: Just in case, I tried it using the same Firefox browser for both UI2 and UI3 and the results are still the same as I described above.

 

[bp2008]

UI2, using IE, with the clips scaled to about the same as UI3, moves the clips up about 1 1/2 frames in the clips window with each mouse wheel tick.
UI3, using Firefox, moves the clips up about 1/2 frame in the window with one mouse wheel tick.

EDIT: Just in case, I tried it using the same Firefox browser for both UI2 and UI3 and the results are still the same as I described above.

Interesting, so it turns out that Firefox (but not Chrome) adjusts wheel scroll distance based on font size that is specified for the element being scrolled. For various reasons it was 16px in UI2 but 0px in UI3. So if I specify 16px for that element in UI3 then it solves the scrolling speed issue in firefox. I'll include that in the next UI3 patch.

 

[bp2008]

UI3 version 24 is here: bp2008/ui3

(to install, extract into Blue Iris 4/www and overwrite all)

It has been submitted to Ken and should be included in the next BI update.

Version 24:

• Added camera name label overlay (disabled by default in UI Settings).
• Added audio toggle button to clip export controls.
• Mouse wheel scrolling of the clip list in Firefox now performs better.
• Added hotkey for downloading the current frame (CTRL+ S by default).

 

[looney2ns]

Reminder folks, Bp has spent a lot of energy on this. You can thank him another way.
Pay Brian Pearce using PayPal.Me

 

[Albert Einstien]

Holy Moly! I just upgraded and the clips pane is awesome now. I don't know how you can figure these things out so fast and give so much of your attention to this thing. You are greatly appreciated. Thanks bp.
One more question...
I turned on auto-play, and now it does not seem to turn off. The slider button says it is off, but it is still on. I tried rebooting, re-starting, turning it on and off and it seems to just be stuck on. Am I missing something?