Camera motion detection vs BlueIris motion detection

Left Coast Geek

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Right now, I'm using BI motion detection, which I find pretty reasonable to configure, mask out the areas I'm not interested in, tweak the sensitivity, etc. But I know some of these newer cameras have advanced motion detection built into the camera, the catch-22 is you need to configure that with the camera's own junkware, either its web interface, or the manufacturers utilities.

whats common practice ? I have 5 Reolink 5MP cameras installed but have a couple turret cams and a couple more on order, so will be replacing at least some of the Reolinks... I'll probably end up with 6-8 total cameras anyways, cuz why waste them? I've got a HP Elite mini Core i7-6700 (not T) coming in to be my new BI box, right now its running on my main PC desktop, so I should have sufficient horses to do this either way.
 

wittaj

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Most of us if we have cameras with AI in them have found those to be superior (for the moment) than BI motion detection. Recent DeepStack integration helps, but motion detection can be a big CPU hog and if the cameras can perform it reliably, it lessens the load on the computer.

Take a look at this link:



Good move on replacing the Reolinks as they do not play well with Blue Iris....

Blue Iris and Reolinks do not work well together, but the same principles applies for almost any low end consumer grade camera. It is just Reolinks is one of the more consumer end cameras people buy and come to this site as to why it is pointed out often about. I have a cheapo camera for overview purposes so it doesn't matter, but it exhibits this same behavior even though in the settings I can set an iframe...

This was a screenshot of a member here where they had set these cameras to 15FPS within the cameras (I suspect you are missing motion that you do not know you are missing....):

1617133192782.png



Now look at they key - that is the iframes. Blue Iris works best when the FPS and the iframes match. Now this is a ratio, so it should be a 1 if it matches the FPS. The iframes not matching (that you cannot fix or change with a reolink) is why they miss motion in Blue Iris and why people have problems. This is mainly why people are having issues with these cameras and there are many threads showing the issues people have with this manufacturer and Blue Iris. It is these same games that make the camera look great as a still image or video but turn to crap once motion is introduced.

The Blue Iris developer has indicated that for best reliability, sub stream frame rate should be equal to the main stream frame rate and these cameras cannot do that and there is nothing you can do about that with these cameras... The iframe rates (something these cameras do not allow you to set) should equal the FPS, but at worse case be no more than double. This example shows the cameras going down to a keyrate of 0.25 means that the iframe rates are over 4 times the FPS and that is why motion detection is a disaster with these cameras and Blue Iris...A value of 0.5 or less is considered insufficient to trust for motion triggers reliably...try to do DeepStack and it will be useless...

Compounding the matter even worse...motion detection is based on the substream and look at the substream FPS - they dropped down to below 6 FPS with an iframe/key rate of 0.25 - you will miss motion most of the time with that issue...

Blue Iris is great and works with probably more camera brands than most VMS programs, but there are brands that don't work well or not at all - Rings, Arlos, Nest, Some Zmodo cams use proprietary systems and cannot be used with Blue Iris, and for a lot of people Reolink doesn't work well either.

Now compare above to mine and cameras that follow industry standards that allow you to actually set parameters and they don't manipulate them. You will see that my FPS match what I set in the camera, and the 1.00 key means the iframe matches:

1614139197822.png



 

The Automation Guy

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Most cameras have some sort of motion detection built into them. Unless they offer AI motion detection, I use BI instead of the cameras. This is because I find creating masks/layers and different detection schemes easier in BI than on the cameras. However, on cameras that have decent AI detection (I have Dahua 5442 series cameras), the camera AI functionality is much better than the basic motion detection built into BI. So I use the AI detection built into the cameras when available.

BI now supports AI with Deepstack, etc, but that takes effort to set up and computer CPU processing power. Using the AI built into the camera means all of that power is offloaded to the camera (which is designed to handle it) and it's very easy to set up because I have found that I generally don't have to have masks/layers. Just a intrusion zone or perhaps a couple of tripwires, but those are pretty easy to set up.
 
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