I made a better remote-live-view page [OLD]

[nejakejnick]

I had it disabled, but enabling it actually improved the playback by moving the penalty to the preview

I will look into the javascript to see what could be done... And diagnose what's the cause of such latency by putting an SSD into the NAS, and using a local HDD.


But I noticed another problem with preview enabled - while playing a clip, hovering the mouse over some previous clip thumbnail, BI returns an image from that previous clip to the playback. Requests seemed ok, only the response contained a wrong image, so the issue is in BI imho.
Can you reproduce it? It is best visible by hovering over a clip from the same camera, different camera clip causes to return a black image. BI 4.3.9.5.

 

[bp2008]

I had it disabled, but enabling it actually improved the playback by moving the penalty to the preview
View attachment 11661
I will look into the javascript to see what could be done... And diagnose what's the cause of such latency by putting an SSD into the NAS, and using a local HDD.

Good point. That makes sense. Just be careful not to mouse over other clips while you are watching one, because it is really bad for the frame rate. I've asked Ken (the Blue Iris developer) if this can be handled more efficiently so at least it is on his radar and it may work better in the future.

But I noticed another problem with preview enabled - while playing a clip, hovering the mouse over some previous clip thumbnail, BI returns an image from that previous clip to the playback. Requests seemed ok, only the response contained a wrong image, so the issue is in BI imho.
Can you reproduce it? It is best visible by hovering over a clip from the same camera, different camera clip causes to return a black image. BI 4.3.9.5.

You are right that it is a BI bug. I've seen it before on two occasions. The first time, it eventually got fixed, but this time the cause is hardware decoding being used for clip playback. I reported it to Ken but this time his solution (hopefully just a temporary one?) was to give us a checkbox in camera properties, Video tab:

So if you experience clip playback issues like black frames, wrong clip, or wrong time offset, uncheck this for all your cameras.

 

[actran]

Hi bp2008, Thank you for this awesome web UI.

Question: When I playback an alert, I sometimes need to see some frames before the trigger point. I use the "reverse playback" button to go back in time. The problem is that UI stops video at trigger point and doesn't keep going back in time. Is there any tweaks I can make to tell it to continue reverse playback? (I've tested both Firefox and Chrome.)

As a comparison, I can do this with original web UI, using ActiveX plug-in.

 

[pozzello]

you can set or increase your 'pre-trigger video buffer frames' in BI's camera/record tab.
then the recordings will start a bit earlier, making it less likely you'd need to scroll back.
(this apparently won't help if you are recording continuously, however)

 

[bp2008]

@actran hello. No, it is not possible to seek outside the bounds of an alert in UI2 unless you load the clip containing the alert and seek to the desired time. Blue Iris does not, and to my knowledge, never has provided the necessary information for UI2 to do this the way the activex plugin does. At this point, I am content to leave it working as-is, even if that information becomes available in a future Blue Iris patch.

Like pozzello said, I'm also not sure if increasing the pre-trigger video buffer frames will help but it is worth a shot.

 

[actran]

Yes, I have played with the pre-trigger option before and yes, because I am recording continuously, it doesn't help.

 

[actran]

@bp2008, thanks again for UI2. It's great stuff.

 

[jbrown]

Great extension!

Would it be possible to add a "film strip" view to the seek bar? Essentially show a collection of thumbnails taken at regular intervals along the length of the bar. Bonus points if there's a way to narrow the range of interest.

 

[bp2008]

Great extension!

Would it be possible to add a "film strip" view to the seek bar? Essentially show a collection of thumbnails taken at regular intervals along the length of the bar. Bonus points if there's a way to narrow the range of interest.

I like the idea, but when I have experimented with "film strip" style visualizations in the past, the thumbnails loaded way too slowly. With a clip actively playing at the same time, it would be much worse. I will keep this in mind though; I've suggested to Ken that he figure out an efficient way to deliver a set of thumbnails to the browser, because there are a lot of fun things like this that I could do with them.

 

[jbrown]

There's all sorts of interesting things that could be done with thumbnails but they might require more server-side support to generate efficiently. We could perhaps configure BlueIris to automatically generate periodic low-resolution snapshots for this purpose.

Heck, I'd be willing to wait a minute for a page to load up containing a tiled minute-by-minute (or even finer resolution) thumbnail summary of an entire clip as a means of coarse navigation. It would still be faster than watching the whole recording (or missing important details when accelerated). I already have BlueIris configured to chop my clips into hour long segments just to make it easier to seek.

I like the idea, but when I have experimented with "film strip" style visualizations in the past, the thumbnails loaded way too slowly. With a clip actively playing at the same time, it would be much worse. I will keep this in mind though; I've suggested to Ken that he figure out an efficient way to deliver a set of thumbnails to the browser, because there are a lot of fun things like this that I could do with them.

 

[m_listed]

For a few weeks now (perhaps due to a Blue Iris update), UI2 now reports the too short of a length for all recorded clips and so cuts off all clips before they're completely played. For example, I have a 29 second clip that plays normally for 29 seconds in Blue Iris's native console and the original web interface, but UI2 thinks the clip is only 19 seconds long and doesn't play the remainder of the clip. Playback always ends at (wrong_seconds).999 seconds. So the clip is 29 seconds long, but UI2 claims it is 19 seconds long and the last frame of the playback is 18.999 seconds in.

EDIT: Just found that this doesn't happen when accessing UI2 with cookies disabled. Now to hunt down which setting is causing this...

EDIT 2: Started from zero and re-enabled all my settings, but none of them caused this misbehavior again. Seems like cookie rot.

 

[bp2008]

For a few weeks now (perhaps due to a Blue Iris update), UI2 now reports the too short of a length for all recorded clips and so cuts off all clips before they're completely played. For example, I have a 29 second clip that plays normally for 29 seconds in Blue Iris's native console and the original web interface, but UI2 thinks the clip is only 19 seconds long and doesn't play the remainder of the clip. Playback always ends at (wrong_seconds).999 seconds. So the clip is 29 seconds long, but UI2 claims it is 19 seconds long and the last frame of the playback is 18.999 seconds in.

EDIT: Just found that this doesn't happen when accessing UI2 with cookies disabled. Now to hunt down which setting is causing this...

UI2 doesn't store anything in cookies except the session string. But when you disable cookies, you probably also inadvertently disable a thing called local storage, which is what UI2 uses for settings.

Probably what is happening is you were looking at Alerts when you were noticing the durations being off, and Clips when you thought the durations looked right. I'm not certain why, but the alert durations on my system are roughly 10 seconds shorter than their associated clips. Perhaps this is the pre-trigger video buffer's fault. Blue Iris may not be adding the pre-trigger time to the alert's duration data. UI2 is the only interface which actually attempts to stop playback at the end of an alert, which is why you don't see it happen with other viewing methods. I actually can't have UI2 keep playing to the end of the clip even if I wanted it to, because Blue Iris doesn't provide sufficient information! My only alternative to the current behavior would be to take away the seek bar and have the alert playback loop indefinitely like it does on jpegpull.htm.

Let me know if this explains what you've been seeing.

 

[Rice]

Hi bp2008,
Did you ever get anywhere with the re-designed user interface?
Only asking as the mock ups looked really good!

rice​

 

[bp2008]

Yeah, it isn't presentable or anything, but ruppmeister and I are working on it slowly. It will happen.

 

[piconut]

I know how to create a direct link to a camera group and make it fullscreen, but I'm trying to figure out how to link to the "auto-cycle" of that group. Here is my link to the weather_cams group. How do I add the auto-cycle into the link (or what is the name of the auto-cycle group)?

192.168.myip:1234/ui2.htm?cam=weather_cams&fullscreen=1

 

[bp2008]

The auto cycle group name is the group name with @ preceding it.

e.g. all cameras is "index" so all cameras cycle is "@index".

You can find out what any camera or group's ID is by right clicking on the live view of it, and choosing Open image in new tab. The ID will be in the URL.

 

[m_listed]

UI2 doesn't store anything in cookies except the session string. But when you disable cookies, you probably also inadvertently disable a thing called local storage, which is what UI2 uses for settings.

Probably what is happening is you were looking at Alerts when you were noticing the durations being off, and Clips when you thought the durations looked right. I'm not certain why, but the alert durations on my system are roughly 10 seconds shorter than their associated clips. Perhaps this is the pre-trigger video buffer's fault. Blue Iris may not be adding the pre-trigger time to the alert's duration data. UI2 is the only interface which actually attempts to stop playback at the end of an alert, which is why you don't see it happen with other viewing methods. I actually can't have UI2 keep playing to the end of the clip even if I wanted it to, because Blue Iris doesn't provide sufficient information! My only alternative to the current behavior would be to take away the seek bar and have the alert playback loop indefinitely like it does on jpegpull.htm.

Let me know if this explains what you've been seeing.

You were right, I went to the Alerts playback and ran into the same cutoff. So that's why! I get the pre-trigger not being added, but still don't get why it would be cut off at X.999 seconds towards the end. So it's cutting from both the beginning and the end. I'll make sure to stay on the Clips tab from now on!

 

[bp2008]

You were right, I went to the Alerts playback and ran into the same cutoff. So that's why! I get the pre-trigger not being added, but still don't get why it would be cut off at X.999 seconds towards the end. So it's cutting from both the beginning and the end. I'll make sure to stay on the Clips tab from now on!

The reason the progress number often ends in .999 or similar is because it is showing the time index of the most recently requested frame.

Imagine you have a 21 second clip (21000 milliseconds). The last time index in that clip is at 20999 milliseconds (or 20.999 seconds). And this is why you see:

I realize this would make more sense to people if I just tweaked the playback numbers by 1 millisecond so they went from 1-21000 instead of 0-20999. Perhaps in a future update.

 

[cbass]

For some reason it appears as though my login is being cached. Using Chrome, when I logout it brings me to the login screen which is expected. But if I manually change the URL and point it at ui2.htm it brings me right to that page. In fact if I clear my cache in Chrome and go to ui2.htm it doesn't prompt me to login at all and I can view my cams. Is there a setting for Blue Iris's web server or something to force the logout? Thanks!

 

[bp2008]

Check your Authentication mode in Blue Iris Options > Web Server tab. It is normal for you to be able to go straight to ui2.htm without logging in if your authentication setting doesn't require you to log in...