Blueiris NVR conundrum

M

Moley8

n3wb
Dec 2, 2021
11
5
UK
Blueiris,NVR conundrum.
Hi I'm at the start of my CCTV journey, currently have X2 Hikvision IP cameras with max eventually of X6.
I was looking for some advice please. I don't know a lot about computers but recently purchased this pc for surfing the web, emails , bit of eBay, YouTube etc as last pc broke.


Dell Optiplex 3060 Tower
I5-8500@3.00ghz
256m2
500hdd
16gb ram
Fully updated, including bios
Would someone with no pc knowledge be able to with information of here use and install blueiris with above or newer computer. Alternatively I would get an NVR.
Installation of cat6 cable and cameras I did, and the X2 camera at the moment I'm running with SD Cards.
I'm sure the question I'm asking is a bit open. Ended, just looking for a bit of input
Hope question put in correct place
Thanks
 
I agree with "conundrum". My NVR comments are for Dahua but I have a gut feeling that they're also applicable to Hikvision. I assume you already know that if you use an NVR, the camera and NVR manufacturers should be the same for compatibility reasons. I find the BI vs. NVR situation on the forum to be kind of like politics, in that it's two dug-in teams with few independents in the middle. I'm in the middle. BI has a huge list of capabilities over the NVR. With that comes complexity and a fairly steep learning curve for setting it up when learning it from scratch. Once it's set up and you don't need to change anything, it's pretty easy to use. The NVR is pretty easy to set up and get going, at the cost of less configurability and flexibility. As a Dahua-only comment (Hikvision may or may not be the same with this), BI has a vastly superior user interface for scanning through event triggers. I sometimes get a lot of false triggers on outdoor cameras and the time savings with BI is huge. On the other hand, the newer NVRs are gaining some AI capabilities that give some advantages over BI.

If the NVR had the ease of scanning through clips that BI has, I'd say go with NVR. If BI had the simplicity of the NVR I'd say go with BI. At the present I'm running both in parallel and am not sure what will kick me off the fence. As a career computer person, it was s snap to set up the NVR, and difficult for me to set up BI. I may have failed without the generous support from forum members who thoroughly know BI. Now that I've learned a lot, setting up again wouldn't be awfully hard, but still more difficult than the NVR. To answer your question, unless you're totally not capable of understanding computer things (some people are, they're just wired that way), you can probably set up BI successfully with the help of forum members to answer questions when you're stuck. But it will take longer than spinning up the NVR.

Also, if you use BI, buy another computer that's dedicated to it. With a perfectly good used one it costs less than the NVR.
 
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On the flip side, I ran NVRs for years. Found them counterintuitive and clunky.

I tried BI and knew within minutes it was far superior and more intuitive to me than an NVR. I didn't experience a learning curve. I literally had it up and running with the few cameras I had at the time very quickly.

You have to set the motion detection up within the camera GUI regardless of whether you go with an NVR or BI. It is literally two checkboxes to pull that from the camera and use that for motion detection in BI.

It is only if you want to use the advanced features that you may start doing lots of tweaks.

Personally I can set up BI faster than I can an NVR. Lot's of us are tweakers, but it is very possible to set it and forget it as well. I run two instances of BI - the one I consider my main driver hasn't been touched in years. It just chugs along and sends me alerts based on how I set them up. I run another instance that is the latest that I play with and tweak. If I ever come across a feature that is worth updating my daily driver, then I will do so.

Here is the search tool of all the NVR versus BI comparisons:

blue iris vs nvr ip cam site:ipcamtalk.com - Google Search

Keep in mind an NVR is simply a watered down computer....
 
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Also.....

Blue Iris works with a MULTITUDE of cameras and DVDs/NVRs from different manufacturers, can display various type of streams, static images, live web pages and more. It can output streams in various ways as well. It can even stream directly to YouTube using RTMP using a camera that on its own cannot stream to YouTube.

It can stream to OBS. Using OBS it can display live streams from YouTube as a camera!

It has a built-in web server, UI3, that is viewable on browsers in most PC's, tablets and smart phones and is customizable in so many ways.

It can display and record a chosen camera feed from another BI server at a remote location as well.....just the tip of the iceberg.
 
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wittaj said:
Personally I can set up BI faster than I can an NVR.
Click to expand...
You must have a Vulcan mind meld with BI ;). A couple of random examples: Figuring out what to do about New, Stored, Alerts, and Aux 1-13 is very confusing. Sure, once you know it's easy, but for a first time user it's a total mystery. Then you have to figure out how much disk space to allocate for the storage files. To much, and BI chokes. Too little and you're wasting space. These obstacles just don't exist with the NVR. They could be made easier in BI, SMOP (simple matter of programming), one of the common directives from Marketing to Engineering where I worked. I have a whole list of things where BI is better, but setup complexity isn't one of them.
 
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tigerwillow1 said:
These obstacles just don't exist with the NVR.
Click to expand...
Correct...no obstacles with storage options in the NVR...but also few or no choices either. :cool:
 
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Based on your own bio, I would recommend an NVR.
 
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tigerwillow1 said:
I have a whole list of things where BI is better, but setup complexity isn't one of them.
Click to expand...
I think you mean "simplicity" and not "complexity", words that are polar opposites.:cool:
But I get your drift.
 
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tigerwillow1 said:
You must have a Vulcan mind meld with BI ;). A couple of random examples: Figuring out what to do about New, Stored, Alerts, and Aux 1-13 is very confusing. Sure, once you know it's easy, but for a first time user it's a total mystery. Then you have to figure out how much disk space to allocate for the storage files. To much, and BI chokes. Too little and you're wasting space. These obstacles just don't exist with the NVR. They could be made easier in BI, SMOP (simple matter of programming), one of the common directives from Marketing to Engineering where I worked. I have a whole list of things where BI is better, but setup complexity isn't one of them.
Click to expand...

OK, yeah trying to figure out the initial storage options and setting up profiles correctly can be weird to set it up. We get a few posts a month with someone setting those up and having issues figuring them out.

Like you said, once you figure it out, then it is easy.

I guess you haven't had the misfortune of an NVR choking on itself once the drive was full? I had it happen a few times where I guess it didn't leave enough to read/write over at the same time and it would just start rebooting. Kinda like some of my cameras do with SD cards LOL. I set them up on a delete schedule to hopefully prevent that from happening (although one camera refuses to keep that setting LOL).
 
^^^^
Rare , I’ve never heard of that nor had one do that in 10 years..
 
The only bad thing my NVR has done in 8 years was one random reboot for reasons I don't know. When I put a larger disk in, it was plug-and-play without having to do the silly BI approximate math to set the storage size.

TonyR said:
I think you mean "simplicity" and not "complexity", words that are polar opposites.:cool:
Click to expand...
So true. I keep having a problem with a friend reporting on medical test results. For me "negative" is good because it says whatever bad thing they're looking for isn't there, but he calls it positive because it's the good outcome. Makes for a lot of wrong conclusions.
 
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tigerwillow1 said:
I agree with "conundrum". My NVR comments are for Dahua but I have a gut feeling that they're also applicable to Hikvision. I assume you already know that if you use an NVR, the camera and NVR manufacturers should be the same for compatibility reasons. I find the BI vs. NVR situation on the forum to be kind of like politics, in that it's two dug-in teams with few independents in the middle. I'm in the middle. BI has a huge list of capabilities over the NVR. With that comes complexity and a fairly steep learning curve for setting it up when learning it from scratch. Once it's set up and you don't need to change anything, it's pretty easy to use. The NVR is pretty easy to set up and get going, at the cost of less configurability and flexibility. As a Dahua-only comment (Hikvision may or may not be the same with this), BI has a vastly superior user interface for scanning through event triggers. I sometimes get a lot of false triggers on outdoor cameras and the time savings with BI is huge. On the other hand, the newer NVRs are gaining some AI capabilities that give some advantages over BI.

If the NVR had the ease of scanning through clips that BI has, I'd say go with NVR. If BI had the simplicity of the NVR I'd say go with BI. At the present I'm running both in parallel and am not sure what will kick me off the fence. As a career computer person, it was s snap to set up the NVR, and difficult for me to set up BI. I may have failed without the generous support from forum members who thoroughly know BI. Now that I've learned a lot, setting up again wouldn't be awfully hard, but still more difficult than the NVR. To answer your question, unless you're totally not capable of understanding computer things (some people are, they're just wired that way), you can probably set up BI successfully with the help of forum members to answer questions when you're stuck. But it will take longer than spinning up the NVR.

Also, if you use BI, buy another computer that's dedicated to it. With a perfectly good used one it costs less than the NVR.
Click to expand...
Very informative thank you for the time to respond
 
wittaj said:
On the flip side, I ran NVRs for years. Found them counterintuitive and clunky.

I tried BI and knew within minutes it was far superior and more intuitive to me than an NVR. I didn't experience a learning curve. I literally had it up and running with the few cameras I had at the time very quickly.

You have to set the motion detection up within the camera GUI regardless of whether you go with an NVR or BI. It is literally two checkboxes to pull that from the camera and use that for motion detection in BI.

It is only if you want to use the advanced features that you may start doing lots of tweaks.

Personally I can set up BI faster than I can an NVR. Lot's of us are tweakers, but it is very possible to set it and forget it as well. I run two instances of BI - the one I consider my main driver hasn't been touched in years. It just chugs along and sends me alerts based on how I set them up. I run another instance that is the latest that I play with and tweak. If I ever come across a feature that is worth updating my daily driver, then I will do so.

Here is the search tool of all the NVR versus BI comparisons:

blue iris vs nvr ip cam site:ipcamtalk.com - Google Search

Keep in mind an NVR is simply a watered down computer....
Click to expand...
Appreciate your time response and input. I'll check the links out. Thanks
 
TonyR said:
Also.....

Blue Iris works with a MULTITUDE of cameras and DVDs/NVRs from different manufacturers, can display various type of streams, static images, live web pages and more. It can output streams in various ways as well. It can even stream directly to YouTube using RTMP using a camera that on its own cannot stream to YouTube.

It can stream to OBS. Using OBS it can display live streams from YouTube as a camera!

It has a built-in web server, UI3, that is viewable on browsers in most PC's, tablets and smart phones and is customizable in so many ways.

It can display and record a chosen camera feed from another BI server at a remote location as well.....just the tip of the iceberg.
Click to expand...
Lots of good features just hope I can understand them to set up. Thanks for the reply.
 
Thank you to all the great information received mucho appreciated. I think I'm swaying more to an NVR for ease. You never know I might relook at BI sometime in the future. Thanks everyone
 
Not at all clunky. This isn’t 2012. And you’ll be a long time learning all of the features.

There are various sizes and models. If you buy one for $150 it won’t have the same capabilities as the one for $300

Same as computers
 
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Recommend matching brands on your NVR and cameras. I don’t know HiK gear that well, find someone who does to help you pick one out
 
tigerwillow1 said:
I agree with "conundrum". My NVR comments are for Dahua but I have a gut feeling that they're also applicable to Hikvision. I assume you already know that if you use an NVR, the camera and NVR manufacturers should be the same for compatibility reasons. I find the BI vs. NVR situation on the forum to be kind of like politics, in that it's two dug-in teams with few independents in the middle. I'm in the middle. BI has a huge list of capabilities over the NVR. With that comes complexity and a fairly steep learning curve for setting it up when learning it from scratch. Once it's set up and you don't need to change anything, it's pretty easy to use. The NVR is pretty easy to set up and get going, at the cost of less configurability and flexibility. As a Dahua-only comment (Hikvision may or may not be the same with this), BI has a vastly superior user interface for scanning through event triggers. I sometimes get a lot of false triggers on outdoor cameras and the time savings with BI is huge. On the other hand, the newer NVRs are gaining some AI capabilities that give some advantages over BI.

If the NVR had the ease of scanning through clips that BI has, I'd say go with NVR. If BI had the simplicity of the NVR I'd say go with BI. At the present I'm running both in parallel and am not sure what will kick me off the fence. As a career computer person, it was s snap to set up the NVR, and difficult for me to set up BI. I may have failed without the generous support from forum members who thoroughly know BI. Now that I've learned a lot, setting up again wouldn't be awfully hard, but still more difficult than the NVR. To answer your question, unless you're totally not capable of understanding computer things (some people are, they're just wired that way), you can probably set up BI successfully with the help of forum members to answer questions when you're stuck. But it will take longer than spinning up the NVR.

Also, if you use BI, buy another computer that's dedicated to it. With a perfectly good used one it costs less than the NVR.
Click to expand...

What are your thoughts on exporting out a clip with each version.

We had an incident today.

In BI I found the incident and downloaded it with a few mouse clicks all in under 1 minute.

Tried to pull the video from my neighbors NVR of same incident. Not so fast LOL.

Between having to line up the overly sensitive timeline line and then finding it and then trying to export it out, to find out the mp4 file wouldn't play on another computer, it was a frustrating afternoon.

Gave up with SmartPSS so then logged into the NVR GUI. Same struggles and issues.

I just don't find it very intuitive on how to export out what I want quickly. A couple hours later I gave up and did the ole record the monitor with my cellphone LOL.

I would love to see the NVR fan do a screen record from before they open up SmartPSS or the NVR GUI and show me their steps and how many screens and how long it takes to export something out. Say pick an event like a car or person that went by at say 2pm.

I suspect it cannot be done in under a minute....someone please prove me wrong.
 
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