Huge CPU load after upgrading to v5

Nov 12, 2020
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Hi everybody,

I recently upgraded my BI v4 setup to v5. I followed the suggested steps and the install went like a breeze.

It struck me that not all settings survived this migration, some cameras became unavailable en needed a hard reset. A PTZ cam lost its presets and started panning as if in demo mode. But what struck me most is that the interface of BI was much slower. I noticed the CPU load bounced between 85 and 98%. When I had v4 running, it was between 18 and 30%.

I check if the settings for decoding the videostreams may have changed, but they hadn't. They're using Intel+VPP as before.

When I run BI as a service and close the GUI, then the load drops to 80. Still way too high compared to v4, which rarely touched 30 as a service.

I know I could get a new machine with a more modern processor, but that I don't want to do that. In that case I much rather go back to v4, since it suited my purpose perfectly.

So, what has changed between v4 en v5 or what am I doing wrong or haven't done yet?

Thanks in advance!
 
Generally people have had various issues when migrating settings and for some starting from scratch and then configuring the settings has worked for them.

Not saying do or don’t but is worth thinking about. You can always export your current settings before starting from scratch and if no improvement then can restore.
 
Thanks!
So, you're saying it's the settings. Plausible, I admit, but there aren't any more settings I know of that would cause such a steep rise in CPU load. That is why I wondered about the differences between the two versions of BI.

I will look for settings and will report here, hoping it will help others. But I have to say, I doubt that I will find any.
 
Hardware acceleration has changed internally since BI v4. I suggest you try the "Intel" without VPP option to see if that works better. Remember when changing the global hardware acceleration setting, it only takes effect for each camera when that camera is restarted in Blue Iris (or when the Blue Iris service is restarted).

Also double-check that direct-to-disc recording is enabled on all the cameras where it should be. The direct-to-disc setting can now be configured separately for every "profile" you use whereas in Blue Iris 4 it affected all profiles.

Here's the entire wiki page on optimizing Blue Iris: Optimizing Blue Iris's CPU Usage The only thing really new in there since Blue Iris 4 is "sub streams" but it should be possible to get close to your previous CPU usage level without using that.
 
One other thing I'll mention is that recording to MP4 format is still problematic last I checked ... which was quite a while ago. If you are doing any of that it could be related to your elevated CPU usage. BVR is still the best format to record to, and you can export to MP4 later. Although again I've had issues with exported MP4 files so I don't entirely trust it.
 
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bp2008, thanks,, I'll try those setting as soon as I can.

Although I can tell you that I am using BVR and Direct-to-disc H.264. But the load is even without recording.
 
I found something interesting. When I disabled the option "Add text/graphic overlays from Direct-to-disc BVR" on the Webcast tab on all 8 cameras, the load drops from 87% to 57%. So, we're getting there.
Tonight I will go through that wiki page you mentioned hoping to find other optimization methodes.
 
Direct to disc reduces CPU load even without recording. At least last time I checked, which was a very long time ago.