Hw decoding breaks recording

[nicopolous]

Been using BI4 for years. Use direct to disc and runs perfectly. Added some more cameras recently and to reduce CPU usage I turned on HW decoding. All works except one camera that doesn't record anything when triggered and just saves an empty file. All other cameras fine.

I tought that HW decoding only affected decoding of streams to use motion detection and shouldn't affect recording when using direct to disc. Am I correct? If so I don't know why one camera won't record, but works fine if I turn off HW decoding.

Help very much appreciated.

 

[fenderman]

Been using BI4 for years. Use direct to disc and runs perfectly. Added some more cameras recently and to reduce CPU usage I turned on HW decoding. All works except one camera that doesn't record anything when triggered and just saves an empty file. All other cameras fine.

I tought that HW decoding only affected decoding of streams to use motion detection and shouldn't affect recording when using direct to disc. Am I correct? If so I don't know why one camera won't record, but works fine if I turn off HW decoding.

Help very much appreciated.

Are you using a smart or + codec

 

[nicopolous]

Sorry I don't know. Is that determined by the camera? I thought if I was using direct-to-disc, then it doesn't matter how BI is decoding as it's the stream direct from the camera written to disc (so shouldn't matter how BI is decoding). Sorry if I've missed something!

 

[looney2ns]

Sorry I don't know. Is that determined by the camera? I thought if I was using direct-to-disc, then it doesn't matter how BI is decoding as it's the stream direct from the camera written to disc (so shouldn't matter how BI is decoding). Sorry if I've missed something!

Yes in the cam, You can't use any smart or + codecs in the camera own setup page.

 

[fenderman]

Sorry I don't know. Is that determined by the camera? I thought if I was using direct-to-disc, then it doesn't matter how BI is decoding as it's the stream direct from the camera written to disc (so shouldn't matter how BI is decoding). Sorry if I've missed something!

it matters.
post a screen shot of your camera video settings.

 

[nicopolous]

It's a (fairly old) Foscam FI9901EP and I can't see anywhere to change the codec. The only relevant settings page I could see is the above.

Thanks for the help!

 

[nicopolous]

When it was recording (ie with HW decoding OFF), this is the details of a video file it recorded:

 

[fenderman]

View attachment 60620

It's a (fairly old) Foscam FI9901EP and I can't see anywhere to change the codec. The only relevant settings page I could see is the above.

Thanks for the help!

There are known issues with some foscams. Dont know if that is one of them. If you are running the latest version of bi4 you can try upgrading to bi5 to see if it resolves the problem. That camera is low res low frame rate so the benefit if HA is minimal.

 

[nicopolous]

Thanks both, much appreciated.

While testing just now, I noticed that I get really bad ghosting on the cams that are recording when I have HW decoding on. Very strange, guess I'm going back to software decoding...

 

[fenderman]

Thanks both, much appreciated.

While testing just now, I noticed that I get really bad ghosting on the cams that are recording when I have HW decoding on. Very strange, guess I'm going back to software decoding...

There are threads that explain how to resolve this. Hardware decoding. has been updated in version five.

 

[SouthernYankee]

Hardware acceleration works with H.264 in BI4. It does not work with Mpeg-4