Is 300Mbs too low to stream video in 4k?

[mraidas]

Hi guys,

I have made short video about how my Internet connection is jumping up and down together with a frame rate that makes no possible to stream on any platform.
I have 300Mbs (upload and download) Internet speed here but not sure what makes my Internet act like this. Maybe I need 1Gbs Internet? or a different computer? Please let me know any advice will be highly appreciated.

 

[biggen]

300mbps is plenty.

Wifi?

Ive not watched the videos. You should upload to YouTube so we don’t have to download unknown mp4s.

 

[mraidas]

300mbps is plenty.

Wifi?

Ive not watched the videos. You should upload to YouTube so we don’t have to download unknown mp4s.

Hi @biggen

I'm not using Wi-Fi to my connected equipment.
On my video basically what is happening is that when i try to stream I get YouTube telling me with green light that "Prefect connection" and the after 2 sec grey light "No data" and like this forever and then disconnecting. Looks like data is getting jumped somewhere. I'm still new with BI.

 

[bp2008]

Hi.

Your internet speed is great, absolutely no problems there. The 2160p VBR profile in UI3 only requires about 3 Mbps of bandwidth as a maximum, and on a scene with nothing moving it will usually be streaming at less than 1 Mbps. Besides it looks like you are connected to UI3 over your LAN, not using the internet at all.

Therefore I conclude that the usage spikes on your Ethernet graph are not caused by UI3. Something else on your PC is using most of that bandwidth and creating the "up and down" spikes. That "up and down" pattern is typical of most video streaming services like YouTube, Netflix, etc, where they are buffering ahead a few seconds, then waiting for some of the video buffer to be played before filling it up again. By comparison a video stream from Blue Iris / UI3 will be much more steady.

It is normal for Blue Iris to not be able to reach a full 30 FPS when streaming at 4K resolution through its web server. This is because Blue Iris is encoding that video stream in realtime and 4K @ 30 FPS is a very heavy computational load. Even a fast modern processor struggles with that because the load is not being spread across multiple CPU cores (and there's nothing you can do to change that).

If you were to change the streaming profile in UI3 to "1440p" or "1080p" then I think you would see the frame rate be higher and more steady. If you have an Nvidia graphics card with NVENC support then it may help to turn on hardware accelerated encoding for the Streaming 0 profile in Blue Iris settings > Web server > Advanced. Configure the Streaming 0 profile and use the "Nvidia" option for Hardware Acceleration. In my experience the "Intel QSV" option does not work here.

 

[mraidas]

Hi.

Your internet speed is great, absolutely no problems there. The 2160p VBR profile in UI3 only requires about 3 Mbps of bandwidth as a maximum, and on a scene with nothing moving it will usually be streaming at less than 1 Mbps. Besides it looks like you are connected to UI3 over your LAN, not using the internet at all.

Therefore I conclude that the usage spikes on your Ethernet graph are not caused by UI3. Something else on your PC is using most of that bandwidth and creating the "up and down" spikes. That "up and down" pattern is typical of most video streaming services like YouTube, Netflix, etc, where they are buffering ahead a few seconds, then waiting for some of the video buffer to be played before filling it up again. By comparison a video stream from Blue Iris / UI3 will be much more steady.

It is normal for Blue Iris to not be able to reach a full 30 FPS when streaming at 4K resolution through its web server. This is because Blue Iris is encoding that video stream in realtime and 4K @ 30 FPS is a very heavy computational load. Even a fast modern processor struggles with that because the load is not being spread across multiple CPU cores (and there's nothing you can do to change that).

If you were to change the streaming profile in UI3 to "1440p" or "1080p" then I think you would see the frame rate be higher and more steady. If you have an Nvidia graphics card with NVENC support then it may help to turn on hardware accelerated encoding for the Streaming 0 profile in Blue Iris settings > Web server > Advanced. Configure the Streaming 0 profile and use the "Nvidia" option for Hardware Acceleration. In my experience the "Intel QSV" option does not work here.

Thank you for your input bp2008
Hello.

Good to know that 300Mbps is enough running in UI3 I have no problem with that just one thing I notes that every 3 second I got like 0.5sec lag. The places I will move my PTZ camera is 360 clear view with different obstacles some busy streets some are not busy pictures. As I would like to set my camera for YouTube not sure if it will be enough 300Mbps for a quality streaming 4K video. :O as YouTube states .

Yes but mean time my biggest problem is "up and down" spikes and YouTube stating that no data available even seconds later tells that connection is Prefect.

Even I try to change my frame rate and stream to 360 or 480p I get same bad results. My laptop got Nvidia 980M video card that has NVENC support and to do all this changes not helping.

I have attached some pictures of my BI configuration. Maybe that will give some more clue what is going on. Thank you in advance

 

[bp2008]

Sorry I can't be of more help.

Based on your last few screenshots it looks like hardware acceleration might not be working for encoding or decoding.

If you are indeed running Blue Iris on a laptop, that could be a factor contributing to poor performance. Laptops often are not designed to run a heavy load continuously, and usually do not achieve as high of clock speeds as desktop processors. Especially after a few years worth of dust builds up in their heatsinks and fans.

I see that you turned "Limit decoding" on. This can cause problems. I would recommend leaving it turned off.

every 3 second I got like 0.5sec lag

I don't know what this means without seeing it.

As I would like to set my camera for YouTube not sure if it will be enough 300Mbps for a quality streaming 4K video. :O as YouTube states .

When YouTube says

• Video Bitrate Range: 13,000-34,000 Kbps

it means it recommends 13 Mbps to 34 Mbps.

Blue Iris is going to re-encode your video stream to send to YouTube anyway, so you will be limited to 8192 Kbps (about 8 Mbps) bit rate unless you turn OFF the bit rate limit which I don't recommend. Honestly your camera probably won't encode more than about 8 Mbps anyway so having Blue Iris encode a higher bit rate than that would be mostly worthless.

 

[mraidas]

Sorry I can't be of more help.

Based on your last few screenshots it looks like hardware acceleration might not be working for encoding or decoding.

If you are indeed running Blue Iris on a laptop, that could be a factor contributing to poor performance. Laptops often are not designed to run a heavy load continuously, and usually do not achieve as high of clock speeds as desktop processors. Especially after a few years worth of dust builds up in their heatsinks and fans.

I see that you turned "Limit decoding" on. This can cause problems. I would recommend leaving it turned off.



I don't know what this means without seeing it.



When YouTube says

• Video Bitrate Range: 13,000-34,000 Kbps

it means it recommends 13 Mbps to 34 Mbps.

Blue Iris is going to re-encode your video stream to send to YouTube anyway, so you will be limited to 8192 Kbps (about 8 Mbps) bit rate unless you turn OFF the bit rate limit which I don't recommend. Honestly your camera probably won't encode more than about 8 Mbps anyway so having Blue Iris encode a higher bit rate than that would be mostly worthless.

Thank you bp2008 for you input,


Yes I agree now 300Mbps should be enough to stream 4K;

After I turned "Limit decoding" off I notes better BI performance and slightly less lag ;

Funny part is that even I down graded my video from 4K settings to 1080p and changed a bit rate type from VBR to CBR and encode mode from H.265 to H264H as YouTube recommends I still get no data going from BI to YouTube or if it gets then for very little few seconds or a minute. Any thoughts?

PS. I got included pictures of settings and actual video of stream and Task Manager show in the screen

 

[bp2008]

Turn off Smart Codec (first screenshot). Blue Iris has problems with this.

As long as you use Blue Iris to send the video to YouTube, most of the camera's encoding settings will not directly affect what YouTube receives. Blue Iris will re-encode the video according to the configuration specified in Blue Iris camera properties > Webcast > Flash Media Live Encoding > Configure. So on the camera you could use H.264H or H.265. Then to get the highest quality, set it to CBR and set the highest bit rate allowed. I-frame interval should be between 2 and 4 times the frame rate. YouTube won't see this i-frame interval.

The settings which directly affect what YouTube gets are in Blue Iris camera properties > Webcast > Flash Media Live Encoding > Configure. Note Blue Iris calls the i-frame interval "Maximum keyframe interval (GOP)" so don't get confused by the naming. I would set it to double your camera's frame rate based on YouTube's advice. Since your camera is 25, that means set the keyframe interval to 50. Here's a screenshot of how I would try to configure that:



You could try Hardware acceleration on or off, but try it off first.

Now Blue Iris has a tendency to set the video resolution to 1280 x 720 when it encodes H.264 and I don't know if the resize output frame setting will increase that in this particular case as I have never streamed to YouTube before.

If you can't make Blue Iris do the streaming properly, then you could search for different software to do it. Almost any other software will simply send YouTube the exact video which the camera encoded, which helps keep the CPU usage very low and the video quality as high as possible. If you do the streaming through other software, then the encoding settings in the camera's web interface will be what YouTube sees.

 

[bp2008]

It makes sense that lowering the resolution (in the camera's web interface) to 1080p helped with video streaming stability. That stream is only 25% as difficult to work with as a 4K stream. It is unclear to me exactly what problems you have at 4K, or why. But I'm guessing if you tried it on a more recent and more powerful computer, then 4K would work better.

 

[mraidas]

It makes sense that lowering the resolution (in the camera's web interface) to 1080p helped with video streaming stability. That stream is only 25% as difficult to work with as a 4K stream. It is unclear to me exactly what problems you have at 4K, or why. But I'm guessing if you tried it on a more recent and more powerful computer, then 4K would work better.

Good morning bp2008,

thank you for your time and advices, you absolutely right. I did try your advised settings for BI, non of this do any change for streaming my cam from Bi to YouTube. What I did next is like you said used other streaming software like OBS and I have had no problem to stream my camera on different settings and even did test to reach picks on my 300Mbps bandwidth with 4K. I loved it and I came up with conclusion that I still need 1Gbps speed from my Internet provider (I will fix that today ) cos to get true 4k I need to push bandwidth to 60-85Mbps and of course by doing that I will need some bandwidth to use for home use that's why 1Gbps is must for me. In Lithuania it cost less then 25$ a month so I guess it is worth it. How much is 1GB Internet speed cost in USA?
Also I will need to look for new metal, I mean PC this is more difficult for me to choose right one. I guess need to invest in 2 most important things like I9 Intel processor and Nvidia one of the latest video card something 2000 + number. So to get it is a task for me also don't want to spend a fortune like 2-4k for it. Cos I'm going to use this computer just for YouTube streaming 4K, no games, no browsing... nothing else I will do on that PC. So to find this kind of pc is a task I looked and kinda liked this one, what do you think ?
Intel NUC 9 Extreme Kit (Ghost Canyon)

Back to Blue Iris software. I do believe it is great security software for your cameras but sadly it is not made for streaming you cameras on YouTube (maybe I don't know something) but what I see is that BI makes rtmp connection with YouTube but then not passing data over rtmp to YouTube and I get NO DATA respond from YouTube and I realize that it is nothing to do with the settings or bandwidth or Internet speed it is purely software programing thing on Bi side. I'm not even talking about 4k settings which is another 21 century thing for BI. I can not get even 360, 420 resolution trough. And it is sad because I wanted to stream from BI and use they weather overlay to transmit my weather station data. I can not do that in OBS. I wish I could use BI Tools in OBS.

So I'm making a trip today to get 1G Internet and look around for new server pc for my stream. What do you think?

 

[bp2008]

I still think you don't need faster internet. Your camera probably can't encode more than 10-20 Mbps anyway.

In the USA, 1 Gbps internet is around $70 USD per month at its cheapest. But this is available almost nowhere. For example in my town I pay $109 USD per month for 80 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload which is the fastest I can get.

Anyway, I would not recommend buying a NUC. They are slower and more expensive and less expandable than traditional form factors. If you wanted to run Blue Iris on something newer, you should get a real desktop computer with a CPU like i5-10600K or higher. But I don't think this would help get the stream onto YouTube. Like you said it is purely a software issue. I just tried to do a live stream to YouTube from Blue Iris and did not even get as far as you did.



OBS is very powerful software and should be able to include overlays, although it would require some learning and work to set it up.

If you want a dedicated computer for streaming your IP camera to YouTube then honestly even a Raspberry Pi would be enough. The trick is using the right software, which is ffmpeg. You won't get to add any overlays though. You would be only passing through the original video stream from the camera. Maybe you can figure out a way to get the camera to embed your weather information. Cameras do usually have the ability to embed custom text that can be set via an API request.

 

[mraidas]

I still think you don't need faster internet. Your camera probably can't encode more than 10-20 Mbps anyway.

In the USA, 1 Gbps internet is around $70 USD per month at its cheapest. But this is available almost nowhere. For example in my town I pay $109 USD per month for 80 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload which is the fastest I can get.

Anyway, I would not recommend buying a NUC. They are slower and more expensive and less expandable than traditional form factors. If you wanted to run Blue Iris on something newer, you should get a real desktop computer with a CPU like i5-10600K or higher. But I don't think this would help get the stream onto YouTube. Like you said it is purely a software issue. I just tried to do a live stream to YouTube from Blue Iris and did not even get as far as you did.

View attachment 71704

OBS is very powerful software and should be able to include overlays, although it would require some learning and work to set it up.

If you want a dedicated computer for streaming your IP camera to YouTube then honestly even a Raspberry Pi would be enough. The trick is using the right software, which is ffmpeg. You won't get to add any overlays though. You would be only passing through the original video stream from the camera. Maybe you can figure out a way to get the camera to embed your weather information. Cameras do usually have the ability to embed custom text that can be set via an API request.

Hello bp2008,

Wow Internet is not cheap on your side of the world Don't want to upset you but I pay 20$ for 300Mbps up and down, for extra 5$ I will get 1GBps up/down and to get 100MBps you just pay 12$. No wonder we have a great competition over here in small country with few providers. Actually we are number 1 in the worl by public Wi-Fi speed.


Again I'm thinking you are absolutely right, with NUC and BI. After I came back from store I found out better options with getting a new desktop I will include pictures below and maybe you can tell me pls your opinion.

OBS is fun but they don't have weather overlays or something mix of different data. Mostly all for gaming streaming needs.

Well I have very little knowledge about Raspberry operating system even I know that my TEMPEST weather station is written for Raspberry and if I know how to use it I could setup this overlay on my new Raspberry machine. would be pretty great. And if you think streaming IP cam to YouTube is better then windows then i really must consider learning this operating system.

3a pic 2145$, 2a pic 2168$, 3a 2240$ Check this setup

what's your thoughts?

 

[bp2008]

Don't buy a computer with an expensive graphics card for Blue iris. That is unnecessary for Blue Iris. Get the cheapest graphics card available, or none at all if the PC has integrated graphics from the CPU. An i5-10600K is more than enough for Blue Iris. NOT i5-10600KF as that does not include integrated graphics. You could get an i7-10xxx or i9-10xxx CPU instead, your choice, but you probably would not need the additional cores.

I looked at the

https://itwork.lt/

site but they don't specify which CPU model is actually included in their Intel systems. There is no CPU model ending in "K/F" with a forward slash in the name like that.

There is nothing special about Linux or Windows that makes streaming an IP cam to YouTube better. I just mentioned raspberry pi because there are many tutorials written for how to set up the streaming with that device and operating system. So you might find it easier to get it working reliably than if you did it on Windows.