Intermittent RTSP from IPC-HFW2831T-ZS

[najman]

I have 3 Dahua IPC-HFW2831T-ZS for outdoors. I also have an Amcrest for indoor. Both brands have been working fine in BI. I emailed Ken about a camera lag issue I was having with the Dahua's when the CPU was high (loading games/other programs). He emailed back and suggested I use the new sub stream feature in BI 5...so I did.

That's when the big problem started. I now have intermittent access to the RTSP main stream. The sub stream is visible in both BI and VLC. Neither can see the RTSP main stream. I can log into the camera directly from the web browser and see that some stream, at least from the camera, is working but it is choppy every few seconds.

I've tried restarting the PC, BI, updating BI, restarting the camera, restarting the POE, deleting the camera and reinstalling it. No change. I've also tried removing the sub stream from BI and going back to just the main stream, nope.

I gave up last night and went to work. Somewhere in the middle of the night the HD stream came back...I randomly checked on the cameras via UI3 and the image looked remarkable sharp for the sub stream. Got home and verified everything was working. I hadn't changed anything but was happy it was working. Go to bed, wake up today...again NOT working.

In the BI status camera screen it shows the Dahua cameras all in red text. No FPS/key data, but there is Bitrate data. VLC will not connect either, it shows there is data being transferred via the media info statistics, but again no picture. VLC will still connect to the sub stream.

The BI log file just repeats about every 30 seconds for each camera.
1 10/11/2020 5:47:24 PM Sideyard Signal: network retry
1 10/11/2020 5:47:28 PM Driveway Signal: network retry
1 10/11/2020 5:47:30 PM FrontPorch Signal: network retry

The log file shows about 7pm last night the signal was, somehow, restored. Then at about 7am...signal lost and the infinite loop of "signal: network retry" begins. Sunrise sunset? Why?

I went to see if there was a firmware update for the cameras...nope. They are listed as EoL...great.

I've attached a photo of the BI status camera screen.
I have a 6800k OC's to 4.0ghz, 32GB of RAM, 1080ti video card with a 1080 60hz left monitor(for BI) and a 1440 144hz right monitor.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

 

[najman]

TLDR: Changed the buffer back from 1mb back to 6mb.

So...I did stumble on a solution, at least for me. When I was having lagging issues with the Dahua cameras another thread suggested I lower the buffer, a lot. I changed it from 6mb to 1mb. That seemed to help, sometimes, with the cascading lagging issue. I couldn't stop thinking and tinkering with my system for the past week. Somehow in VLC I got through to the mainstream, I was watching the debug log while it was connecting and it changed the buffer, twice. This made me remember I had changed the buffer once before...so I changed it and the cameras immediately came back online.

I suspect the deadlock occurred because the initial handshake of the camera and BI took more than 1mb.

Hopefully someone else will find this helpful. Or not. Perhaps this was just a product of me tweaking too much with the system.