IPC-Color4K-T180 Intermittent 'No Signal' in BI

[smiticans]

I run my 4K T180 at H264 both main and substream, Bit rate of 10240 CBR, 15 FPS and 15 I Frame. Substream is the same except resolution and Bit Rate of 512. I also run my 4K-T and 4K-X with the same settings.

Right before I commented on this post, I updated the firmware on all of my 4k-T's and 4K 180 to the April 2023 firmware and did a factory default (3 times) via the web browser. Since then none of my 4K-T's have dropped out and it's been approximately 48 hours. However, my 4K 180 has dropped out over 15 times in the past two days. I'm thinking it either a bug with the camera itself or maybe the way BI handles the stream. I'm going to have to setup Digital Watchdog on a separate computer and see if it drops out on there.

Has anyone emailed BI support about this issue yet?

 

[wittaj]

I run my 4K T180 at H264 both main and substream, Bit rate of 10240 CBR, 15 FPS and 15 I Frame. Substream is the same except resolution and Bit Rate of 512. I also run my 4K-T and 4K-X with the same settings.

Right before I commented on this post, I updated the firmware on all of my 4k-T's and 4K 180 to the April 2023 firmware and did a factory default (3 times) via the web browser. Since then none of my 4K-T's have dropped out and it's been approximately 48 hours. However, my 4K 180 has dropped out over 15 times in the past two days. I'm thinking it either a bug with the camera itself or maybe the way BI handles the stream. I'm going to have to setup Digital Watchdog on a separate computer and see if it drops out on there.

Has anyone emailed BI support about this issue yet?

Yes people have emailed BI support. The more that do the quicker this issue will be looked at.

 

[smiticans]

Yes people have emailed BI support. The more that do the quicker this issue will be looked at.

I'm going to email BI support tomorrow. I just setup my DW IPVMS server with the 4k-T 180 and I already have 1 dropout on BI. So far no dropouts on DW IPVMS.

 

[Mike A.]

Bi seems a lot more sensitive to slow connections and errors like that. And it takes longer to recover so you notice it more when it goes to the no signal screen. Watch the cam's time closely in DW and see if you can detect any slowing/stalling/jumps. May not be any. But I've seen that with some other cams I have that seem fine while watching via an app or live view. The problem is there, there's just more tolerance for slowdowns.

 

[smiticans]

Bi seems a lot more sensitive to slow connections and errors like that. And it takes longer to recover so you notice it more when it goes to the no signal screen. Watch the cam's time closely in DW and see if you can detect any slowing/stalling/jumps. May not be any. But I've seen that with some other cams I have that seem fine while watching via an app or live view. The problem is there, there's just more tolerance for slowdowns.

Digital Watchdog is very sensitive to packet loss. It has a notification setting for "Network Issues" and a separate one for "Camera Disconnected". Usually a very small amount of packet loss will trigger the "Network Issues" alert on Digital Watchdog and I will get an email. I'll set Digital Watchdog to continuous recording with the T180 and review it at the times BI reports a signal loss.

 

[smiticans]

I configured DW to continuous recording on my T180. I've had multiple no signal errors from BI since then. I reviewed the recording from Digital Watchdog 30 seconds prior and 30 seconds after I get the no signal error on BI. The recording from DW is smooth and has no indication of any packet loss or issue with the camera during the time BI reports a lost signal. I also did not get any notifications from DW reporting an issue with the camera.

Also, Since my firmware update, I haven't received any no signal errors on any of my 4K-T cameras.

I'm going to send BI support an email later regarding this issue. Has anyone who's sent an email heard anything back yet?

 

[digger11]

I have 3 of T-180s, and had recently noticed the video for them freezing in BI. There have been some significant changes in my environment recently, so there seemed to be many potential sources.

1. Replaced Asus router with UniFi Dream Machine Pro.
2. Moved all cameras to a newly created VLAN.
3. Upgraded BI to the latest "stable" version. (On 9/29)

I stumbled across this thread a couple of days ago, so I've been watching things more closely.
I found that the live video stream in the camera GUI never even stuttered during one of these events.
Since that seemed to rule out the network changes, I rolled BI back from 5.7.9.12 to 5.7.8.3.

Going through the October log file I found that from 1 - 6 OCT there were 154 Signal: network retry / Signal: restored events across my 3 cameras.
Since reverting to 5.7.8.3 26 hours ago, there have been a total of 3.
I didn't catch any of those events in progress, so I don't know whether the video stream was actually present or not.

For now I think I'll stay on 5.7.8.3 and keep an eye on this thread for any news.

 

[smiticans]

I emailed BI support a couple of days ago and I received a response today.

My Original Email To BI

"Good evening,

The ipcamtalk community and I are having issues with the IPC-Color4K-T180 working properly with Blue Iris. Multiple times each day, probably more than 10, I get emails indicating that the camera dropped out. It'll read "name of camera" Signal Network Retry. The camera will automatically reestablish connection within 5 to 10 seconds. Other ipcamtalk forum members have set up a continuous ping to the camera to test if the camera itself was dropping connection. The pings were successful to the camera even when Blue Iris was reporting a signal loss.

I also set up a second VMS (Digital Watchdog IPVMS) and ran it simultaneously (on a different computer) with Blue Iris. I set it to continuous record and also created alerts for if the camera dropped out. Over a span of 48 hours, I had about 20 to 30 no signal's from Blue Iris and none from Digital Watchdog. I reviewed the footage from Digital Watchdog 30 seconds prior to 30 seconds after Blue Iris reported a no signal on the camera. The recording was smooth and there was absolutely no indication of packet loss or any issue with the camera. Based on my troubleshooting and troubleshooting of other forum members, it appears Blue Iris is at fault.

Here is one thread directly discussing the issue: IPC-Color4K-T180 Intermittent 'No Signal' in BI

It should be noted that I am running 12 cameras and I do not have this issue on any of them except for the T180.

I'm running the camera at its maximum resolution with a bitrate of 10240, 15fps, 15 iframes and H264."

BI Support Response


Hello **

First a "ping" is a low-level test. Blue Iris is doing much more than that by streaming video. It's very possible for the video stream to be interrupted while still having ping connectivity. Further, as the device and network are handling multiple connections simultaneously, it's always possible that only one is dropped and not another.

The fact that it's just a network retry brings it back quickly means even though the stream was interrupted, it was able to just request the stream again.

One thing to check is Security Software Exemptions, a critical help topic. It's possible the stream may be dropped for any number of other reasons as well. I don't think there's any "code" explanation for this.

Thanks

Ken

My Response Back to BI Support

"Thank you for the reply,

My BI system has been configured according to the "Security Software Exemptions" since I set it up. I just went back and confirmed that all of the exemptions are still in place.

This issue is only with that particular camera that I mentioned in my first email. I have 11 other cameras that don't drop out. In addition, that camera only appears to be dropping out of Blue Iris. It does not drop out of other VMS solutions. On top of that, it appears to be a widespread issue as many forum members have reported having the same issue with that particular camera.

Given all of the facts I mentioned, I'm fairly certain it is not a network issue or configuration issue with my BI computer. Please advise on how we can determine if this is a Blue Iris issue or maybe a firmware issue with the camera as the 10 to 20 signal drop emails each day are getting annoying.

Thank you,"

If anyone else is having this issue and has not emailed BI support please do so.

 

[SOB]

Since I previously seemed to have (somewhat) narrowed the issue down to a framerate or bitrate issue, I've been doing more testing over the last couple week. I tested the camera at multiple framerates, bitrates, and encoder compression settings. Below is a table of my findings. In all cases I ran these tests for at least 12 hours to see how many 'Loss of Signal' errors were produced in that timeframe. At that point I changed settings, reset the BI status screen, and let it run for another 12+ hours. I made no other BI, camera, or Windows setting changes, firmware updates, etc. in this timeframe. I should have better documented an actual errors/hour but I got too far into this before realizing that. So "frequent" means ~3-5 errors per hour, "few mean" ~1 error per hour, and the rest I think you can figure out from there.

As you can see, the H.264H encoder was more 'stable' overall than the H.264 but I got the best results (zero errors) with one of the H.264 tests that I did not see from H.264H. 12 FPS clearly had less errors than 15 FPS and the 4096 bitrate was the best across all encoder and FPS settings. I don't really know what all this means as I'm not a camera guru but in my mind it helps me now figure out what bitrate looks the best in my environment and find the settings that produce the least amount of errors.

 

[smiticans]

I allowed Ken to stream from my T180 and he also had dropouts. He suggested I try a couple of settings to see if one of them would resolve the issue. I enabled "decoder compatibility mode" in BI and I also disabled ONVIF "login verification" within the camera GUI. So far I've gone about 24 hours without a single drop out. I changed both of these settings at the same time so I'm not sure which one fixed it lol. I'm going to disable decoder compatibility mode tonight and see if the issue comes back.

 

[dubber]

I allowed Ken to stream from my T180 and he also had dropouts. He suggested I try a couple of settings to see if one of them would resolve the issue. I enabled "decoder compatibility mode" in BI and I also disabled ONVIF "login verification" within the camera GUI. So far I've gone about 24 hours without a single drop out. I changed both of these settings at the same time so I'm not sure which one fixed it lol. I'm going to disable decoder compatibility mode tonight and see if the issue comes back.

May I ask where in BI are these options located please?

 

[smiticans]

Decoder compatibility mode is located in the same screen in BI where you do the find/inspect. The login verification is in the camera GUI under under Network Settings --> Platform Access --> ONVIF

 

[bradner]

May I ask where in BI are these options located please?

For the camera you want to change: Camera Settings ---> Video tab ---> "Configure..." button ---> bottom right of the screen there's the two boxes you can check/uncheck

 

[SOB]

I allowed Ken to stream from my T180 and he also had dropouts. He suggested I try a couple of settings to see if one of them would resolve the issue. I enabled "decoder compatibility mode" in BI and I also disabled ONVIF "login verification" within the camera GUI. So far I've gone about 24 hours without a single drop out. I changed both of these settings at the same time so I'm not sure which one fixed it lol. I'm going to disable decoder compatibility mode tonight and see if the issue comes back.

Thank you for following up! This is promising news. I'll give this a try now, first with enabling 'decoder compatibility mode' to also help rule out one vs. the other and report back. My bitrate/frame rate test from post #49 didn't turn out to be much as the drop outs have been steadily increasing as it runs longer, even in the "stable" configurations from my table.

 

[dubber]

When I enable "decoder compatibility mode" my PTZ would stop responding to my spotter cams triggering. Even though my spotter cams are triggering, my PTZ won't move to the preset.

As soon as I disable it, everything is back to normal.

 

[smiticans]

I disabled decoder compatibility mode last night and had several dropouts since then. I just re-enabled it so lets see if the dropout stop.

 

[SOB]

6 hours since enabling decoder compatibility and ZERO drop outs. I did not disable ONVIF "login verification". I think we've found a winner! I let this go overnight to be sure and check back in the morning.

 

[smiticans]

About 12 hours since I re-enabled Decoder Compatibility and not a single dropout since.

 

[dubber]

Do you guys have any spotter cams setup and ptz setup?

Any issues with spotter cams triggering but ptz not moving to preset when Decoder compatibility is enabled?

 

[SOB]

About 12 hours since I re-enabled Decoder Compatibility and not a single dropout since.

Just over 24hrs and zero drop outs since enabling decoder compatibility. Today I'm going to try changing bitrate and frame rate to one of the more 'un-stable' configurations from my table in post #49 and see if there's any change.