Ghosting/Blur on BI Recording

[LopezEL]

I am getting ghosting/blur on my recordings but only when viewed through BI- both the main windows application and through the server/android app.
The weird thing is that If I export the clip/recording, the ghosting is gone. It plays back normally.

Seems like the direct to disk recording is being saved correctly but BI is not playing it correctly when I view short alert notifications. Very annoying.
I am on BI version 5.3.1.6 (8/10/2020). My hard drive is a WD 4TB purple- relatively new. Only about 4 months old.

All of my cameras are Dahua. Hard wired. FPS and iframe match. No smart codec. Using plain old H264.

I am using AItool to analyze, trigger, and flag my alerts. However, I don't see how this could cause this problem.
Any ideas on what can cause this type of ghosting?

I would post a sample video but as soon as I export, the playback is normal.

 

[bp2008]

Interesting.

What is your CPU and memory usage like?

Are you recording in BVR format or something else?

If you are using hardware acceleration, do you have "Also BVR" checked on the BI camera properties > Video tab? ("Also BVR" is rather poorly named. It means "Also play recordings with hardware accelerated decode"). Hardware acceleration sometimes has a glitchy startup especially when you use Intel acceleration, which could potentially explain the corruption.

 

[SouthernYankee]

Is your bi PC headless ?
What is the frame rate and Iframe value of the problem cameras.
Is on the camera video tab "limit decoding unless required " checked or uncheck.

 

[LopezEL]

Is your bi PC headless ?
What is the frame rate and Iframe value of the problem cameras.

BI pc is headless. No peripherals attached at all. Recording at 15fps. Iframe set to 15 as well. I am recording bvr format with Intel HW acceleration.

I have 8 cameras. All recording direct to disc. Using substreams on 5 of them. Cpu normally stays at 10-15% utilization but jumps up to 60-70 when deepstack is utilizing resources. Memory usage shouldn't be a problem. 16gb of ram and normally only using half of it.

 

[SouthernYankee]

If head less use a hdmi dummy plug like

Amazon.com: HDMI Dummy Plug,Headless Ghost, Display Emulator （Fit Headless-1920x1080 New Generation@60Hz）: Computers & Accessories

Amazon.com: HDMI Dummy Plug,Headless Ghost, Display Emulator （Fit Headless-1920x1080 New Generation@60Hz）: Computers & Accessories

www.amazon.com

https://www.amazon.com/Headless-Display-Emulator-Generation-Single/dp/B07FB8GJ1Z

make sure you have the correct windows power settings.

Power setting Sleep: never
Power Display screen: never

If headless what are you using to see the blur ?

 

[LopezEL]

If head less use a hdmi dummy plug like

Amazon.com: HDMI Dummy Plug,Headless Ghost, Display Emulator （Fit Headless-1920x1080 New Generation@60Hz）: Computers & Accessories

Amazon.com: HDMI Dummy Plug,Headless Ghost, Display Emulator （Fit Headless-1920x1080 New Generation@60Hz）: Computers & Accessories

www.amazon.com

https://www.amazon.com/Headless-Display-Emulator-Generation-Single/dp/B07FB8GJ1Z

make sure you have the correct windows power settings.

Power setting Sleep: never
Power Display screen: never

If headless what are you using to see the blur ?

The power settings have always been as you suggest per the wiki I read on setting up the blue iris machine.
I am seeing the blur on the Blue Iris main console when I remote in, through the UI3 server, and through the BI android app.

I'm going to post a screen recording of the blur I get on my phone and then I'll export it from the Blue Iris console where the blur will be gone.

If I merely need that HDMI emulator, that will be great news. How can I tell if that's the problem? Should I hook up a monitor to it temporarily?

 

[LopezEL]

Wow, I just noticed that when I play this exported clip with VLC, it has the same ghosting. If I use windows media player, it does not ghost.

 

[LopezEL]

This is what it looks like when viewed on the android app, UI3, and the BI console.

 

[Old Timer]

The power settings have always been as you suggest per the wiki I read on setting up the blue iris machine.
I am seeing the blur on the Blue Iris main console when I remote in, through the UI3 server, and through the BI android app.

I'm going to post a screen recording of the blur I get on my phone and then I'll export it from the Blue Iris console where the blur will be gone.

If I merely need that HDMI emulator, that will be great news. How can I tell if that's the problem? Should I hook up a monitor to it temporarily?

We have ran into problems with windows not displaying video properly without a monitor connected to the PC. With a dummy or a pass through, it fools windows into allowing proper boot-up and video, as if it had a monitor on it. I use the pass through, then leave a cable on it so I can plug in a monitor if needed.

Amazon.com: DisplayPort to HDMI Adapter(4K,UHD), STARWARE DP Male to HDMI Female Passive Adapter Supporting up for DisplayPort Supported Computers to Connect HDMI Displays - Space Gray Aluminum: Industrial & Scientific

Buy DisplayPort to HDMI Adapter(4K, UHD), STARWARE DP Male to HDMI Female Passive Adapter Supporting up for DisplayPort Supported Computers to Connect HDMI Displays - Space Gray Aluminum: Serial Cables - Amazon.com ✓ FREE DELIVERY possible on eligible purchases

smile.amazon.com

Have you look in performance monitor to see if there is any bottle neck like desk or network?

 

[LopezEL]

We have ran into problems with windows not displaying video properly without a monitor connected to the PC. With a dummy or a pass through, it fools windows into allowing proper boot-up and video, as if it had a monitor on it. I use the pass through, then leave a cable on it so I can plug in a monitor if needed.

Amazon.com: DisplayPort to HDMI Adapter(4K,UHD), STARWARE DP Male to HDMI Female Passive Adapter Supporting up for DisplayPort Supported Computers to Connect HDMI Displays - Space Gray Aluminum: Industrial & Scientific

Buy DisplayPort to HDMI Adapter(4K, UHD), STARWARE DP Male to HDMI Female Passive Adapter Supporting up for DisplayPort Supported Computers to Connect HDMI Displays - Space Gray Aluminum: Serial Cables - Amazon.com ✓ FREE DELIVERY possible on eligible purchases

smile.amazon.com

Have you look in performance monitor to see if there is any bottle neck like desk or network?

Here is the resource monitor.

 

[Old Timer]

Here is the resource monitor.

View attachment 70286

Do you stay logged in all of the time? Does being logged in affect the stream any?
Ethernet is a little high, as expected, with a good quality switch it is no problem... I am running 52-65% when remote logged in.

 

[LopezEL]

Do you stay logged in all of the time? Does being logged in affect the stream any?
Ethernet is a little high, as expected, with a good quality switch it is no problem... I am running 52-65% when remote logged in.

I do not stay logged into the RDP all the time. Is that what you are asking?
Usually, I am streaming through UI3 on a spare TV but that's it.

I've messed with a bunch of settings...still not sure why I'm getting the blur from the Blue Iris console and android app but not after exporting clips and viewing on windows media player. The only other thing I can think is my hard drive is failing.

I'm going to hook up a monitor to the BI box tonight and run it that way to see if the ghosting stops.

 

[Old Timer]

I do not stay logged into the RDP all the time. Is that what you are asking?
Usually, I am streaming through UI3 on a spare TV but that's it.

I've messed with a bunch of settings...still not sure why I'm getting the blur from the Blue Iris console and android app but not after exporting clips and viewing on windows media player. The only other thing I can think is my hard drive is failing.

I'm going to hook up a monitor to the BI box tonight and run it that way to see if the ghosting stops.

Yea, I was looking for an increase in network activity, or disk activity to slow things down.
Doesn't look like that's whats going on. It's good there is a lot of good guys here, hopefully someone
has ran into it, or knows how to find it.

 

[LopezEL]

For anyone still following this thread... after a lot of troubleshooting and very little sleep last night (I did a clean BI install and had to set up my whole system again). I narrowed it down to two different issues.

First and foremost, my purple WD hard drive was failing. It completely crapped out after the fresh BI install. After formatting, I never could get it to initialize again. It kept telling me, "fatal hardware error." Highly irritated since I literally just purchased this drive in May.

I had a spare hard drive that I popped in for storage. It worked fine but the ghosting persisted. After some more troubleshooting, I noticed that the ghosting only occurred on my exterior cameras- which coincidentally, are the ones that send images to AItool/Deepstack.

Since my spare hard drive is not as large, I was only recording interior cameras when triggered. Those triggered clips were producing ghost free images. Therefore, my problem had to be that Deepstack was maxing out CPU resources and my recordings were dropping frames.

I disabled AItool/Deepstack and all of the triggered clips (inside and exterior cameras) are now recording perfect images.

I'll have to figure out how to run Deepstack on a separate machine on my network... or upgrade my BI box. It's an old Dell Optiplex 9020 with an I5 4570.

 

[fenderman]

For anyone still following this thread... after a lot of troubleshooting and very little sleep last night (I did a clean BI install and had to set up my whole system again). I narrowed it down to two different issues.

First and foremost, my purple WD hard drive was failing. It completely crapped out after the fresh BI install. After formatting, I never could get it to initialize again. It kept telling me, "fatal hardware error." Highly irritated since I literally just purchased this drive in May.

I had a spare hard drive that I popped in for storage. It worked fine but the ghosting persisted. After some more troubleshooting, I noticed that the ghosting only occurred on my exterior cameras- which coincidentally, are the ones that send images to AItool/Deepstack.

Since my spare hard drive is not as large, I was only recording interior cameras when triggered. Those triggered clips were producing ghost free images. Therefore, my problem had to be that Deepstack was maxing out CPU resources and my recordings were dropping frames.

I disabled AItool/Deepstack and all of the triggered clips (inside and exterior cameras) are now recording perfect images.

I'll have to figure out how to run Deepstack on a separate machine on my network... or upgrade my BI box. It's an old Dell Optiplex 9020 with an I5 4570.

use the new substream feature to significantly lower the cpu. See wiki.