Hi from another Australian

IPCT_123

n3wb
Feb 8, 2022
4
6
Australia
Hi all,

I've done the usual and purchased devices before getting advise - apart from You Tube "reviews".

Anyway, have got a couple of Reolink 820a cameras and installed them.

Am getting fairly good recordings based on people or vehicle motion and also set them to FTP to a new WD Purple HDD - all seems to be working fine.

Now looking at making use of Blue Iris (and Deep Stack??) to do the whole, record continuous in low quality then kick into 4k mode when motion detected.

My question is, how should I have the cameras set up in terms of, do I still need them set to "record" and FTP?
Or do I "disable" that on the camera and use Blue Iris to "control" how they are used?

Am thinking that to leave the "record" option set in camera would then just "double up" on what is being recorded and chew through disk space.
Or do I just stop the FTP feed from the cameras?



Should I be posting the above under a different section (say Blue Iris??)?

Thanks.
 
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Did you purchase said Reolinks based on the YouTuber the Hookup LOL?

Those cameras are your problem. Reolinks do not work well with Blue Iris and is even worse with DeepStack if you ever decide to go that route.

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.

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 (and look some of the sub FPS were dropped to 5 and KEY of 0.25 which is a recipe for missed motion):

1638963936767.png



Now look at the key - that is the iframes ratio. Blue Iris works best when the FPS and the iframes match. Now this is a ratio, so it should be a 1.00 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...we have seen people come here where the reo/BI combo missed them pulling their car into their garage, so it would probably miss your little thief LOL.

A key of 0.25 means that if the object can be in and off of your camera view in under 4 seconds, it will miss the motion. Folks have seen the key drop to 0.10 with these cams, which means if an object is not on your screen for longer than 10 seconds, it will miss the motion.

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...DeepStack probably won't work at all...

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:

1638964131845.png



Return them if you can.

Here is the unofficial thread showing all the issues folks have with Reolinks. Despite our repeated attempts to ask people to share a good quality night time motion video, as you will see, it doesn't exist. If all you care about knowing is what time something happened, then maybe these are the right cameras if the person is in the field of view long enough, but you will never be able to IDENTIFY them...


Feel free to add to this thread video samples of the "fairly good recordings based on people or vehicle motion" that you get at night time - that is when the Reo's typically fail and it is a ghost or a blur.

 
Hey, thanks @wittaj for the reply.

I appreciate that you are looking out for a newbie. Cameras are a done deal though :(.
There is a setting for Iframe on the cameras now after a firmware update.

The question(s) that I had though were more if I should leave the cameras set to record and or FTP and also set something up via Blue Iris?
Or, do I set the cameras to not record or send via FTP and just configure that through Blue Iris?

Just trying to determine best way to not chew up disk unnecessarily with two systems both trying to take data out of the camera.
Will do a little testing over the weekend and see what happens.

Thanks again.
 
Hey, thanks @wittaj for the reply.

I appreciate that you are looking out for a newbie. Cameras are a done deal though :(.
There is a setting for Iframe on the cameras now after a firmware update.

The question(s) that I had though were more if I should leave the cameras set to record and or FTP and also set something up via Blue Iris?
Or, do I set the cameras to not record or send via FTP and just configure that through Blue Iris?

Just trying to determine best way to not chew up disk unnecessarily with two systems both trying to take data out of the camera.
Will do a little testing over the weekend and see what happens.

Thanks again.

Hi @IPCT_123

Most of us seem to prefer continuous recording in full resolution, as we do not want to miss the critical frames we may need.
 
 
Thanks for all the replies and the info.
I've had a bit of a muck around with the software, had a few issues with it at some point where cameras were dropping out every minute or so.
Also had issues with memory and the desktop manager dying.
Windows did have some updates (but I didn't know this happened until after as pc rebooted in there somewhere) and I had also updated from 5.5.4.4 to 5.5.5.9 plus did a camera firmware update around the same time.
Did an uninstall and reinstall, reupdated and deleted cameras then put them back in.
Seems to be running better now so will buy the registration key
 
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