IPC-HDW5231R-Z Grey screen on recordings

Philip Gonzales

Philip Gonzales

Getting comfortable
Sep 20, 2017
697
554
When I play back recordings of my IPC-HDW5231R-Z I am getting a grey screen some of the time. Other times it looks fine, and even others it is just a black screen. have tried playback directly from blue iris server and also from blue iris phone app.

Live view looks fine I believe.

Firmware is 2.460.0000.14.R, Build Date: 2017-07-20
Encoder mode is H.265
smart codec is off
resolution is 1080P
Frame rate is 25
Bit Rate Type is CBR
Bit Rate is 2048
I Frame Interval was 50, changed to 25 and still the issue is present

Direct to disk recording
Set max FPS to 30
Blue Iris shows a bit rate of about 340 KBps
Blue Iris shows camera as Generic RTSP H.264/H.265/MJPG/MPEG4
Path: /cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0&unicast=true&proto=Onvif
Recieve Buffer: 6.0 MB
only boxes checked are Sent RTSP Keep-Alives and Use RTSP/Stream timecode.
Audio 64kbps G.711 a-law

Any ideas?
 
Philip Gonzales said:
When I play back recordings of my IPC-HDW5231R-Z I am getting a grey screen some of the time. Other times it looks fine, and even others it is just a black screen. have tried playback directly from blue iris server and also from blue iris phone app.

Live view looks fine I believe.

Firmware is 2.460.0000.14.R, Build Date: 2017-07-20
Encoder mode is H.265
smart codec is off
resolution is 1080P
Frame rate is 25
Bit Rate Type is CBR
Bit Rate is 2048
I Frame Interval was 50, changed to 25 and still the issue is present

Direct to disk recording
Set max FPS to 30
Blue Iris shows a bit rate of about 340 KBps
Blue Iris shows camera as Generic RTSP H.264/H.265/MJPG/MPEG4
Path: /cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0&unicast=true&proto=Onvif
Recieve Buffer: 6.0 MB
only boxes checked are Sent RTSP Keep-Alives and Use RTSP/Stream timecode.
Audio 64kbps G.711 a-law

Any ideas?
Click to expand...
disable hardware acceleration for that camera in blue iris...
 
Philip Gonzales said:
Hi Fenderman,

I have hardware acceleration off under Blue Iris Opotions > Cameeras > Intel HD Hardware acceleration > No

Is there a somewhere else where I should check this setting?
Click to expand...
that is the global setting for all cams...also check the camera properties >video>hw decode...it should be set to default or no...if you have h.264 cameras you should set the global setting to yes and the camera setting to no...there is also a change to h.265 decoding in the latest update...did it just start happening after you updated?
 
I just reread the original post..if this is happening only on playback ensure "also BVR" is unchecked in the video settings next to HW acceleration..
 
fenderman said:
I just reread the original post..if this is happening only on playback ensure "also BVR" is unchecked in the video settings next to HW acceleration..
Click to expand...

Just got the camera yesterday and also did updates so can't really say if it was the updates as I did them before setting up the camera.

H.264 HW decode is set to default and Also BVR is unchecked.

Should I try switching the camera to H.264 instead of H.265?
 
Philip Gonzales said:
Just got the camera yesterday and also did updates so can't really say if it was the updates as I did them before setting up the camera.

H.264 HW decode is set to default and Also BVR is unchecked.

Should I try switching the camera to H.264 instead of H.265?
Click to expand...
Yes
 
fenderman said:
Yes
Click to expand...

Another weird abnormality that happened after the updates/after I added my new camera is that one of my cameras now shows a bitrate of 550 kBps. Other cams of the same model and same settings have a rate of about 140 kBps. They are cheap baby monitor/IP cameras so there is no setting to set bit rate via the camera. This is resulting in 2GB files for every one hour of recording. Other cameras are about 500MB for one hour of recording. Does motion determine bit rate? The fan is on in the room it is recording. I set Encoder options to max bitrate of 1024 in blue iris but it doesn't appear to change the size of the recording. I'm doing direct to disk so I wonder if that's why?
 
Philip Gonzales said:
Another weird abnormality that happened after the updates/after I added my new camera is that one of my cameras now shows a bitrate of 550 kBps. Other cams of the same model and same settings have a rate of about 140 kBps. They are cheap baby monitor/IP cameras so there is no setting to set bit rate via the camera. This is resulting in 2GB files for every one hour of recording. Other cameras are about 500MB for one hour of recording. Does motion determine bit rate? The fan is on in the room it is recording. I set Encoder options to max bitrate of 1024 in blue iris but it doesn't appear to change the size of the recording. I'm doing direct to disk so I wonder if that's why?
Click to expand...
If you are using direct to disk you should not be able to set encoder options...you are doing something wrong....bitrate is set in the camera settings...it can be different if using vbr depending on the scene.
 
fenderman said:
If you are using direct to disk you should not be able to set encoder options...you are doing something wrong....bitrate is set in the camera settings...it can be different if using vbr depending on the scene.
Click to expand...

Ah I see now. Radial button for direct to disk is enabled but encoder options can still be set. Obviously they won't have any affect though.
 
Changing to H.264 appears to have fixed the issue. May be a little too early to tell, but before it was doing it every few minutes it seems like. I will continue to monitor it and will let you know if the issue comes back. Thanks for your help Fenderman.
 
fenderman said:
If you are using direct to disk you should not be able to set encoder options...you are doing something wrong....bitrate is set in the camera settings...it can be different if using vbr depending on the scene.
Click to expand...

Ah OK. So I'm dumb. I'll post my "fix" for the high bitrate "issue" just in case anyone else has this same "issue", or as you would probably call it, normal operation of how a camera works lol. I looked up some information online about my cheap IPCam's, and although the manufacture doesn't list anything, I've found that the bitrate is variable and has a range of 24Kbps～7000Kbps. I emailed support to see if it can be set to a constant bit rate but these things being a toy, I doubt that they can. So my IPCam was pointing at a ceiling fan that was spinning around and around. So the fix for me was to not point the camera at the fan. I guess I turned on the fan at about the same time I did the updates and didn't realize it. All good now.
 
Last edited:
fenderman said:
that is the global setting for all cams...also check the camera properties >video>hw decode...it should be set to default or no...if you have h.264 cameras you should set the global setting to yes and the camera setting to no...there is also a change to h.265 decoding in the latest update...did it just start happening after you updated?
Click to expand...

I also had this problem after the latest update. My cameras (IPC-HDW5231R-Z) were configured for H.265 (see img below) and was getting black on record. I moved moved my encode mode to H.264 and it is now working as expected. What was changed in the BI H.265 decoding?

8YIvfJX.png
 
hevnsnt said:
I also had this problem after the latest update. My cameras (IPC-HDW5231R-Z) were configured for H.265 (see img below) and was getting black on record. I moved moved my encode mode to H.264 and it is now working as expected. What was changed in the BI H.265 decoding?

8YIvfJX.png
Click to expand...
update mentions a change to 265..email support....smart codec should be off.
 
hevnsnt said:
I also had this problem after the latest update. My cameras (IPC-HDW5231R-Z) were configured for H.265 (see img below) and was getting black on record. I moved moved my encode mode to H.264 and it is now working as expected. What was changed in the BI H.265 decoding?

8YIvfJX.png
Click to expand...

I just shot off an email to Ken. We'll see what he says. To me it really isn't a big deal but guess it would be cool to use H.265.
 
fenderman said:
Smart codec is a proprietary format the blue iris does not support...like h.265+...
I have yet to see an sd card fail in a camera...
Click to expand...

I think rado stefano was asking why I should disable H.265?

rado stefano said:
Why?
It works fine on my machine and it saves space on the camera MicroSD which improves the card life span.
Click to expand...

Are you saying H.265 works fine on your machine? Or smart codec? If H.265 do you have the same model camera?
 
Philip Gonzales said:
I think rado stefano was asking why I should disable H.265?



Are you saying H.265 works fine on your machine? Or smart codec? If H.265 do you have the same model camera?
Click to expand...
H265 works fine on BI latest version with 6 Dahua starlight cameras. CPU only 16-20% recording on movement only and direct to disk hw decode no vpp on a i7 4700HQ laptop
 
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