How hard does your GPU work?

[Robert G.]

I have OpenALPR (now Rekor Scout) running under Windows 10.

My CPU is an older Intel i7-3555LE @ 2.50GHz, it has 2 cores & two threads.

I have a GTX 1060 GPU.

I am processing 2 cameras, have tried different resolutions.

The CPU is always stressed, like 80% + 100%

The GPU is essentially doing nothing, usually 2% - 7%

In OpenALPR I have motion detection enabled & have masks defined to exclude areas where I know plates will never show up - in an attempt to reduce the effort the system has to go through to find plates.

What kind of GPU usage are others seeing? I'm wondering if my system is really working to the best of it's ability.

 

[mlapaglia]

Do you have hardware acceleration set to gpu? I have a ryzen 3950x with alprd running in a docker container, it uses around 2 cores constantly. I don't have gpu acceleration enabled.

 

[Robert G.]

Yes, I have GPU acceleration enabled.

With the settings I was running (25fps x 1080 resolution) the CPU would be at 80% the GPU at about 5%.

If I disable the GPU then the CPU would be maxed out at 100%. So there is some difference, but just does not seem to be so great.

 

[mlapaglia]

How fast are cars driving by your cameras? Cars on my street are going by around 25mph, and 720p resolution and 15FPS works well for that. Lower fps and resolution would mean less CPU usage.

 

[Robert G.]

Yea, cars go about 25 - usually.

I find with a higher FPS I am able to get better accuracy and catch more vehicles. The more images it can view, the more changes to figure out the plate - at least that is my logic.

 

[mlapaglia]

Can you upgrade your CPU? the i7-3555LE is pretty old.

 

[Robert G.]

I don't want to upgrade the CPU, that is why I am curious what others are getting for GPU usage. If others are seeing their GPU working at 35% and the CPU is only at 10% then I know something is wrong in my setup.

 

[samplenhold]

Do you have an installed graphics card? A cheep Nvidia card may provide more processing power than the processor built in GPU.

 

[mlapaglia]

He said he has a GTX 1060

 

[whoami ™]

I can tell you this, just set up a Nvidia Quadro P400 yesterday to process images through DeepStack and set Windows policies to use GPU to render graphics for remote desktop sessions and 16% is the most load I've seen it put on the GPU. Your 1060 is equal to 8 Quadro P400's.

 

[samplenhold]

He said he has a GTX 1060

Yeah, sorry missed that.

I wonder if he is selecting that in the video decode menu?

 

[whoami ™]

Open task manager and in the processes tab click the GPU column to sort by process using the most GPU. If Blue Iris isnt in that list you know your set up is wrong and CPU is doing all the work.

 

[Robert G.]

OH, you guys are using Blue Iris for LPR? How are you doing that?

I am using OpenALPR (paid, home edition) for doing OpenALPR. The logs say it is using GPU:'

2021-06-25 23:01:36 alprd 3736: INFO - GPU Acceleration detected
2021-06-25 23:01:36 alprd 3736: INFO - Initializing analysis thread # 1 on GPU 0


But it sure seems stressed, which is why I started this thread.

 

[samplenhold]

OH, you guys are using Blue Iris for LPR? How are you doing that?

Sorry, did not realize you were talking about openalpr. I have not used that.

 

[Robert G.]

Thought I would post a follow-up to this thread.

I spent a few hours messing with OpenALPR, trying different settings, messing with FPS, constant-vs-variable streams, x264 vs x265 etc. etc.

In the end, I know for sure OpenALPR is using my GPU, no question. Just a bit disappointed how high the CPU usage is even when it is using the GPU.


Also, FYI, for any other OpenALPR users.

It appears they just released a new version in the past few days (June 16th), the current release is 4.1.1. I have tried it, since it says improved GPU performance on Windows, that may be true but the difference was not noticeable on my setup.

There is also a fairly bug I have noticed. I have two cameras (up & down the street) to catch both sides of the vehicles. They have a 'grouping' option that is able to use the input from multiple cameras to improve accuracy etc. It worked well previously for me, but no longer functions in the new release. It now captures both the front & back of the vehicle plates and no longer groups them.

 

[wittaj]

Where was the grouping option - I haven't seen that?

And what plan are you on, maybe it is for the next level up.

 

[Robert G.]

Where was the grouping option - I haven't seen that?

And what plan are you on, maybe it is for the next level up.

I am on the home plan (or whatever it is called). The option is under advanced settings:

plate_groups_spam_cameras: Combine all reads from all cameras on this agent to one group. This is useful when the cameras are viewing the same vehicles at the same time.

It worked very well in the last release, not at all anymore for me.

 

[wittaj]

Thanks I will give that a try. And hopefully it doesn't update my agent - did your do it auto or did you manually update to the latest release?

 

[Robert G.]

Here is an example where the grouping function is needed and worked well.

It sees the front of the vehicle and comes up with KD382F



Now the other camera grabs the back of the plate. It comes up with KD382F - which is correct.



There is no doubt in my mind, had the grouping function still be working I would have ended up with a single entry (and single photo) along with the correct plate number.

 

[Robert G.]

Thanks I will give that a try. And hopefully it doesn't update my agent - did your do it auto or did you manually update to the latest release?

I did a manual upgrade, I did not even know it had an automatic update feature.