Blueiris NVR conundrum

[TonyR]

And then in a couple of months, they can try the demo of BI and start down the journey of running both!

Many do that as you can feed the NVR into BI so the NVR essentially becomes a POE switch with redundant recording.

I currently have 2 installs like that.
In both cases the cameras worked and looked great but the owner didn't like the clip review process in the NVR. One's an Amcrest NVR and the other a Zmodo.
Both BI servers were put in within a few months of the owner putting in the NVR.

 

[bigredfish]

It’s been scientifically proven that using BI is responsible for male pattern baldness .. just sayin

 

[bigredfish]

Did nobody look at the 4 examples of how to find and download a clip on an NVR I posted?

I must be on more ignore lists than I thought

 

[TonyR]

It’s been scientifically proven that using BI is responsible for male pattern baldness .. just sayin

I have male pattern baldness and I use BI...but also am married and have a stepson....just sayin'

 

[wittaj]

Did nobody look at the 4 examples of how to find and download a clip on an NVR I posted?

I must be on more ignore lists than I thought

I did. But apparently I was the only one that this was one of the reasons I prefer BI lol.

Maybe everyone else just uses the take video with cell phone option

While I still can't get the mp4 video to play on other devices, I will now say if someone knows the time something happened, the export feature can be quick with an NVR, so thanks for the videos showing that.

Now if I can only get the real images to show up and get the mp4 to play on another device lol

 

[bigredfish]

I can do it on any Dahua NVR you let me access. At any location.
Literally millions of people do this with Dahua NVRs

 

[bigredfish]

I did. But apparently I was the only one that this was one of the reasons I prefer BI lol.

Maybe everyone else just uses the take video with cell phone option

While I still can't get the mp4 video to play on other devices, I will now say if someone knows the time something happened, the export feature can be quick with an NVR, so thanks for the videos showing that.

Now if I can only get the real images to show up and get the mp4 to play on another device lol

No need to know the time something happened

Post in thread 'Blueiris NVR conundrum'

Oct 30, 2024

Here's using the NVR AI Search
(mine is an older 5216-16P-4K2SE)

This camera is using Video MetaData so I get pics (Face, human, vehicle) AND the clip

View attachment Recording 2024-10-30 220556.mp4




View attachment NVR_ch8_main_20241030160040_20241030160100(2).mp4

• bigredfish

 

[wittaj]

No need to know the time something happened

Post in thread 'Blueiris NVR conundrum'

Oct 30, 2024

Here's using the NVR AI Search
(mine is an older 5216-16P-4K2SE)

This camera is using Video MetaData so I get pics (Face, human, vehicle) AND the clip

View attachment Recording 2024-10-30 220556.mp4




View attachment NVR_ch8_main_20241030160040_20241030160100(2).mp4

• bigredfish

In this case I was looking there was because it was one big long event and I didn't want to watch thru it LOL.

 

[Flintstone61]

okay @wittaj there may be mixed feeling about our guy at " the hookup" but he might be able to guide a newbie thru the blue iris install, to get things just going enough to comeback here ask more tuning questions.

 

[Flintstone61]

 

[Flintstone61]

 

[Flintstone61]

Start with both. An NVR and BI. Then in 6 months, report your findings.
When you think 1 is a pain in the ass try the other.
I started with a Costco DVR from Nightowl, a very cheap piece of garbage with a shitty Smartphone App that connected, maybe, sometimes, or not at all.
I frustration, I connected all the cams to a Dahua knockoff ( amcrest) 8 channel DVR and ran the Amcrest View Pro App with great reliability on my iPhone.
But reviewing recording on the phone was labor some and clunky and the number of alerts would drive a sane man to the Looney bin.
I was already happy with Blue Iris @ work and finally got it working alsongside the DVR at home.
But I knew i wanted IP cameras for their tunability, not Analog DVR cameras that only had a few settings.
fast forward a couple years and I'm running 10-11 IP cams at home, with a 16 channel Amcrest and a Nice Blue Iris PC with 10 Terabytes of storage, and a BI Mobile App that is working great for remote viewing from Work.

For whatever reason, BI as a Service, on my PC, will reboot after a power failure per BIOS settings, BUT 3 times now, mine waits for an Admin log in to resume recording.
The Nvr starts back recording on its own in about a minute after a power failure. So if anything noteworthy occurs, I have a redundant recording of about 4-5 days to fall back on on the NVR hard drive.
( I did not see this behavior on the older Dell 7020 I ran on windows 7 or 8.1 without Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 chips.)

 

[BlueWave]

I've been running both a Dahua WizMind NVR & Blue Iris for the past 5+ years and I've spent an estimated 200+ hours tinkering with Blue Iris over that time and have upgraded both my cameras and NVR and of course stayed on top of Blue Iris changes.

For me, the #1 thing I wanted when I installed my CCTV system was "accurate" motion alerts when someone was approaching my property. This was a bit harder with my specific setup because my property is surrounded by 50 palm trees and a German Shepherd which made it rather complex to disregard false motion alarms, especially on windy days due to the shadows that would be cast on the ground and sway with the wind. I started my project with just an NVR. The NVR was just picking up too many false positives and it would take 10-30 seconds for a notification to hit my iPhone which sorta defeated the purpose of being alerted as someone is approaching your home. Also when I wanted to check my camera feed I found that opening the app, selecting the desired camera, and loading the full-screen feed often took anywhere from 15-30 seconds each time which was incredibly annoying if I noticed someone approaching the house and wanted to view a live feed to identity the subject. So we are talking anywhere from 30-60 seconds from motion event to viewing live feed which in many cases is too long. I wanted faster motion alerts, and less false positives and I wanted to be able to view a live feed quickly from my iPhone... this is when I found Blue Iris.

Blue Iris itself is easy to install, just like any other Windows app. Loading the cameras was originally very hard for me because I had them directly connected to the Dahua NVR and finding the NVR rtsp link to supply into BlueIris took probably 20+ hours to figure out (I had a newer NVR at the time so information wasn't so readily out there) but eventually I got it working thanks to help from this forum. Before DeepStack AI it was simply the built-in Blue Iris motion filters to tinker with which took me a (blind estimate) of 40+ hours to configure in a way that allowed me to cut out most false alerts but also not miss the real alerts and I had the accuracy to maybe 90%, however on windy days the accuracy would drop to maybe 60% due to the palm trees going wild in the wind. I spend countless hours tweaking the sensitivity & threshold settings trying to get the accuracy up but I either set it too tight and missed real events or too loose and get too many false positives. Then when DeepStack AI and now CodeProject AI came into play the accuracy of motion alerts remained around (estimated) 98% even on windy days and both day and night which gave me the results I was really searching for. For the most part, I can receive an alert to my iPhone within 5-10 seconds of the motion event, and loading the live feed may take another 5-10 seconds. So from motion event, AI review, alert via Pushover to viewing the live feed maybe 10-20 seconds (give or take) compared to 30-60 with the NVR.

However, I still utilize my Dahua NVR and set the most sensitive cameras to record 24/7 and I don't really foresee myself dumping the NVR anytime soon for a few reasons. For one, I like having a backup as both the NVR and Blue Iris PC are in separate locations so god forbid something nasty happens there is an increased chance of recovering evidence (Plus PushOver is in the cloud so alert images could survive a house fire). Also, when I had an actual "incident" that required me to extensively review CCTV footage I found that while Blue Iris successfully captured most "motion" events, it was missing some events & sounds that the NVR successfully recorded. (To be fair, I do not set BlueIris to record 24/7 and instead only record alerts) so in this one case where I really needed evidence, my NVR was there to save me with additional footage & audio. Of course, one can make the argument that if I simply had BI set to record 24/7 in addition to the motion alerts I would have not needed my NVR as backup and I couldn't argue against that other than saying I still do love having my cameras record to two separate locations on separate drives providing me some redundancy.


So my recommendation after 5+ years and 200+ hours of tinkering with Blue Iris.....

• Use a basic NVR with 24/7 recording for all your hardwired camera feeds. Preferably buy 3+ drives and use Raid 5. No "need" for fancy AI features here.
• Plug your cameras into a POE switch and NOT into your NVR.
• Use Blue Iris & CodeProject AI for live feeds & accurate motion alerts
• If you have a NAS, set Blue Iris to auto-export motion alerts older than X days to your NAS for long-term storage (Totally optional)
• Keep the NVR and Blue Iris PC in separate locations if possible.
• Battery backup for your POE switch (and NVR) will ensure your cameras continue to record during a power outage.

Now this one still strikes me as totally odd to this very day.... I have two Ring cameras mounted on a palm tree that I primarily use to send notifications to Alexa that someone is approaching my home and these are INCREDIBLY accurate right out of the box and reasonably fast to alert Alexa "Motion Detected at the Driveway" and I can also set it to automatically bring up a live camera feed on my brand new LG C3 TV. I wanna say that in the past 5+ years of having these Ring Cameras, I can't recall a single false alert. I probably missed some "real" alerts, but I've NEVER received a motion alert for trees in the wind or a dog passing by...etc. Why don't I switch to all Ring Cameras.... well because loading the live feed is slow & the solar panel is ugly (luckily it's in a tree so not as visible) and the camera quality is not nearly as good as the 4K wired cameras... but for motion alerts, they're incredibly accurate right out of the box.

 

[bigredfish]

• My NVR alerts take 3-5 seconds
• Opening my app and choosing a camera to replay takes about the same time as it does to open a BI app and select a camera to play
• I get almost Zero false alerts using NVR/IVS
• I can view the live feed within 3-5 seconds on the same app I get the alert video on
• I have found no downside to using the NVR poe ports, but I also use an external switch for some cameras.

There is next to Zero time difference in accessing alerts, playback, live view, or downloading footage. None

 

[saltwater]

For whatever reason, BI as a Service, on my PC, will reboot after a power failure per BIOS settings, BUT 3 times now, mine waits for an Admin log in to resume recording.

I've created a Windows task whereby every Monday morning (7.34 am) the computer shuts down and re-starts, then Blue Iris resumes.. I've also had a few power failures over the last four years, and after power failures the computer turns back on and Blue Iris resumes. I'm wondering if the user account that Blue Iris is connected to is an Admin account, I've forgotten, and can't check at the moment.

 

[bigredfish]

BI DOES have some features that are cool and a few that NVRs dont have and it has great support. I have nothing bad to say about it.
None of those are enough for me to dedicate a computer to and the maintenance involved in doing so as a normal residential or SMB owner.
To some, especially those with mad computer skillz and who derive satisfaction from tinkering with them, or it is their primary hobby, great, knock yourself out.

But making less than accurate statements about current day NVRs to champion BI isnt helpful to anyone.

And if its been 5+ years since you used an NVR, dont assume you know what they're capable of or how everything works. They are at least as intuitive to operate as BI, IMHO much more so.

At then end of the day we can argue whether it takes 1:30 to download a video event or 1:50. I think 99% of users wont care unless they're told they should.
As to detection. false alerts, ease of downloading a clip (I showed 4 ways in this thread ), live viewing, app viewing, and ease of making settings, ..there is little benefit one over the other, its what you get used to.

I would estimate that 90%+ of the "problems" or "lack of capability" that I see here relative to NVRs is overwhelmingly, Lack of User Knowledge

 

[wittaj]

I would estimate that 90%+ of the "problems" or "lack of capability" that I see here relative to NVRs is overwhelmingly, Lack of User Knowledge

The same can be said about BI too lol

 

[bigredfish]

I'm quite sure that's the case, I dont use it everyday so I dont bad mouth it

 

[BlueWave]

• My NVR alerts take 3-5 seconds
• Opening my app and choosing a camera to replay takes about the same time as it does to open a BI app and select a camera to play
• I get almost Zero false alerts using NVR/IVS
• I can view the live feed within 3-5 seconds on the same app I get the alert video on
• I have found no downside to using the NVR poe ports, but I also use an external switch for some cameras.

There is next to Zero time difference in accessing alerts, playback, live view, or downloading footage. None

If you don't mind me asking, what app are you using? Maybe the NVR app I was using is outdated and I need to try something new.

 

[tigerwillow1]

I've been running both a Dahua WizMind NVR & Blue Iris for the past 5+ years and I've spent an estimated 200+ hours tinkering with Blue Iris over that time

We have a lot in common!

"For me, the #1 thing I wanted when I installed my CCTV system was "accurate" motion alerts when someone was approaching my property. This was a bit harder with my specific setup because my property is surrounded by 50 palm trees and a German Shepherd which made it rather complex to disregard false motion alarms, especially on windy days due to the shadows that would be cast on the ground and sway with the wind."

Similar for me except the trees are junipers and no German Shepherd. We're in the middle of a storm and I've had over 1,000 false IVS alerts in the last 24 hours. I do not use the human/vehicle filters which I assume would eliminate most of the false alerts. Even the S3 camera with the human/vehicle/animal filter enabled is throwing many false alerts. The only one than doesn't is the thermal camera. I found CPAI, for me, to be more trouble than it was worth. When IVS triggered on a frame that included my parked utility trailer, CPAI would pass it as a fire hydrant, the greenhouse as a vehicle, fence posts as people, and so forth. And on the frames with small animals, which I want, CPIA often saw nothing.

I skimmed through all the false alerts in about 15 minutes with UI3. Can't imagine how many hours it would be with the NVR.

Best of all worlds would the the NVR working with UI3, and all cameras thermal ($$$$$).