Choppy playback, even worse fast forwarded, for HD cameras

[m_listed]

I have a 4MP camera recording at 30 FPS, and when playing back recordings at anything above 1x (and sometimes even at 1x), I drop most of the frames; I'm getting like 1.5 FPS at 4x using the iPhone app. This happens both on the local LAN and remotely over the Internet, regardless of the quality of the stream or the size of the picture. The live stream works perfectly.

I have looked at the disk usage to see if Blue Iris is overloading the HDD, but the reads are at normal levels. When I export the recordings, I get a perfect 30 FPS. I can only conclude that this has something to do with real time seeking in the file. I'm using Direct to Disc. This effect becomes less severe if I drop the FPS on the camera, but I can't do that.

The CPU stays at less than 30% the whole time, and RAM usage is at 25%.

Is there a way to isolate what's causing the bottleneck and choppy fast forward playback?

 

[fenderman]

I have a 4MP camera recording at 30 FPS, and when playing back recordings at anything above 1x (and sometimes even at 1x), I drop most of the frames; I'm getting like 1.5 FPS at 4x using the iPhone app. This happens both on the local LAN and remotely over the Internet, regardless of the quality of the stream or the size of the picture. The live stream works perfectly.

I have looked at the disk usage to see if Blue Iris is overloading the HDD, but the reads are at normal levels. When I export the recordings, I get a perfect 30 FPS. I can only conclude that this has something to do with real time seeking in the file. I'm using Direct to Disc. This effect becomes less severe if I drop the FPS on the camera, but I can't do that.

The CPU stays at less than 30% the whole time, and RAM usage is at 25%.

Is there a way to isolate what's causing the bottleneck and choppy fast forward playback?

Check your webserver settings...you should be getting a much smoother image...and you can certainly drop your frame rate to 15....there is never a need for 30fps....

 

[m_listed]

Check your webserver settings...you should be getting a much smoother image...and you can certainly drop your frame rate to 15....there is never a need for 30fps....

Thanks for being so helpful on this forum. I did go through every little setting in the Web server settings, but the frame rate for the playback doesn't change whatsoever. I even played around with the "Maximum keyframe interval" and "Maximum B-frames between P-frames", as well as "HLS (sec)" (which isn't documented in the documentation, so I have no idea what that is), but no change. So this must be a local issue instead of a web server one.

Blue Iris is uploading at only a fraction of my network bandwidth, and it's reading at only 300 KB/s when this choppy playback is occurring. My RAM is at 970 MBs used, and CPU is at 30%. I just don't understand what's causing the choppy playback.

 

[fenderman]

Thanks for being so helpful on this forum. I did go through every little setting in the Web server settings, but the frame rate for the playback doesn't change whatsoever. I even played around with the "Maximum keyframe interval" and "Maximum B-frames between P-frames", as well as "HLS (sec)" (which isn't documented in the documentation, so I have no idea what that is), but no change. So this must be a local issue instead of a web server one.

Blue Iris is uploading at only a fraction of my network bandwidth, and it's reading at only 300 KB/s when this choppy playback is occurring. My RAM is at 970 MBs used, and CPU is at 30%. I just don't understand what's causing the choppy playback.

What is your max bixrate set to in the webserver?

 

[m_listed]

What is your max bixrate set to in the webserver?

There is no max bitrate set. I tried putting it down to 4000, 1000, 500, and even 100, but no change. The videos skip at almost exactly the same points no matter what. The Blue Iris connections viewer shows that I'm not saturating the bandwidth. At 4x fast forwarded playback, it's using a fraction of what it uses at 1x playback.

 

[fenderman]

There is no max bitrate set. I tried putting it down to 4000, 1000, 500, and even 100, but no change. The videos skip at almost exactly the same points no matter what. The Blue Iris connections viewer shows that I'm not saturating the bandwidth. At 4x fast forwarded playback, it's using a fraction of what it uses at 1x playback.

disable use bvr for playback..

 

[m_listed]

disable use bvr for playback..

I unchecked "Also use for BVR playback" in the Video tab for the camera, but it didn't change anything. I don't think this computer can do hardware acceleration anyway, since the stream refuses to stream and throws an error if anything except "Default" or "No" is selected for that.