Is H.265 realistically possible?

foghat

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Hi,

Trying to figure out Blue Iris or Dahua 52xx nvr. I understand many think Blue Iris is the way to go - I’ve read comments like “get a nvr first so you will really appreciate Blue Iris when you switch”, etc.

Fair enough. But what I haven’t seen discussed (I’m sure it has been) is h.265 - insomuch that intel hardware acceleration only works with h.264 and, thus, it is recommended that h.264 be used with Blue Iris - at least that is what have read.

The hard drive space savings of h.265 and 265+ are pretty appealing, but is there an reasonable way to run h.265 with Blue Iris? Thinking 8-10 4mp cameras. Say 15fps - though it would be nice to have the overhead to go higher.
 

fenderman

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Hi,

Trying to figure out Blue Iris or Dahua 52xx nvr. I understand many think Blue Iris is the way to go - I’ve read comments like “get a nvr first so you will really appreciate Blue Iris when you switch”, etc.

Fair enough. But what I haven’t seen discussed (I’m sure it has been) is h.265 - in so much that intel hardware acceleration only works with h.264 and, thus, it is recommended that h.264 be used with Blue Iris - at least that is what have read.

The hard drive space savings of h.265 and 265+ are pretty appealing, but is there an reasonable way to run h.265 with Blue Iris? Thinking 8-10 4mp cameras. Say 15fps - though it would be nice to have the overhead to go higher.
Blue iris does not support and smart codec like + .. You can easily run 265 with the right processor...but really, get the NVR first, it will do you good.
 

foghat

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I assume the ‘But what cpu do I actually buy’ section of the choosing hardware wiki is based on h.264 with HA enabled? If so, what would the right processor be for h.265 and the camera set up noted above.

Not sure if your comment about getting a nvr first will ‘do me good’ is sarcastic or not? If not, other than potentially appreciating Blue Iris more after the fact, why would it do me good vs. Blue Iris from the start?
 

looney2ns

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I assume the ‘But what cpu do I actually buy’ section of the choosing hardware wiki is based on h.264 with HA enabled? If so, what would the right processor be for h.265 and the camera set up noted above.

Not sure if your comment about getting a nvr first will ‘do me good’ is sarcastic or not? If not, other than potentially appreciating Blue Iris more after the fact, why would it do me good vs. Blue Iris from the start?
IMHO Blue Iris stomps all over most any NVR. Not being able to use H265 isn't a big deal. Hard-drives are cheap. And yes that is what @fenderman is implying. Using an NVR will make you appreciate Blue Iris even more. I've reviewed 4 NVR's, I realize that's not a huge data sample, but I'll keep my Blue Iris setup...thank you very much. ;)
 

bp2008

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Well, an NVR (particularly if it is the same brand as the cameras) should support H.265+ for disk space savings. I've never used an NVR myself so I can't comment on their user experience.

You are correct, those MP/s numbers assume H.264 with hardware acceleration enabled. The only way you can accelerate H.265 currently is with an Nvidia graphics card, which is a power hog that I would recommend avoiding unless absolutely necessary.

Anyway, lets see. 4MP x10 @15 FPS. That is ((2688 * 1520) * 10 * 15) pixels per second, or about 613 MP/s. With H.264 and Quick Sync Video, I would say the minimum is a quad core i7 desktop CPU of 3rd gen or newer. But you want H.265. I am not really sure what the performance penalty would be for H.265 vs H.264, but back in early 2018 when I did some hardware acceleration on/off tests, turning it off resulted in slightly more than double the CPU usage(with H.264). I would expect H.265 to require the same or more CPU than H.264.

So for this, I would suggest at minimum an i7-8700K. Or if you are sure you won't use H.264 and therefore don't need Intel Quick Sync Video, you could try an AMD Ryzen 5 3600X or AMD Ryzen 7 3700X. Either of those should be faster and more efficient than anything Intel has for working with H.265 in Blue Iris.
 

foghat

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IMHO Blue Iris stomps all over most any NVR. Not being able to use H265 isn't a big deal. Hard-drives are cheap. And yes that is what @fenderman is implying. Using an NVR will make you appreciate Blue Iris even more. I've reviewed 4 NVR's, I realize that's not a huge data sample, but I'll keep my Blue Iris setup...thank you very much. ;)
Have you tried the Dahua 5200 series? I get that Blue Iris is generally accepted to be a better experience and have more functionality than a NVR, but having no experience in this space and not really having a handle on what is even possible, it is hard to quantify what ‘better’ is/means and if ‘better’ is required for what I am looking to do.


Well, an NVR (particularly if it is the same brand as the cameras) should support H.265+ for disk space savings. I've never used an NVR myself so I can't comment on their user experience.

You are correct, those MP/s numbers assume H.264 with hardware acceleration enabled. The only way you can accelerate H.265 currently is with an Nvidia graphics card, which is a power hog that I would recommend avoiding unless absolutely necessary.

Anyway, lets see. 4MP x10 @15 FPS. That is ((2688 * 1520) * 10 * 15) pixels per second, or about 613 MP/s. With H.264 and Quick Sync Video, I would say the minimum is a quad core i7 desktop CPU of 3rd gen or newer. But you want H.265. I am not really sure what the performance penalty would be for H.265 vs H.264, but back in early 2018 when I did some hardware acceleration on/off tests, turning it off resulted in slightly more than double the CPU usage(with H.264). I would expect H.265 to require the same or more CPU than H.264.

So for this, I would suggest at minimum an i7-8700K. Or if you are sure you won't use H.264 and therefore don't need Intel Quick Sync Video, you could try an AMD Ryzen 5 3600X or AMD Ryzen 7 3700X. Either of those should be faster and more efficient than anything Intel has for working with H.265 in Blue Iris.
Thanks. Just thinking through the different scenarios/options right now - not saying h.264 is a no-go. I actually do have a Nvidia gtx 980 sitting on my desk right now. But, ya, not sure about having that going 24/7.
 

Millstone

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it doesn't matter unless you're decoding the stream. which is not going to be all the time if you set your system up appropriately. You can have 64 H265 cameras if you want.
 
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bp2008

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You can't turn off stream decoding entirely in Blue Iris. I think Millstone was referring to the "Limit decoding unless required" feature, where BI only decodes keyframes from the video stream except in certain live viewing scenarios (such as having a single camera maximized). This will typically let you run an extreme amount of video through BI with minimal CPU usage. A load that would be beyond the capabilities of a system can suddenly be below 10% of the CPU capacity thanks to this feature. The tradeoff is you get very poor live viewing performance, and Blue Iris's built-in motion detection is much less effective. Most people don't want to use this feature for that reason.
 

Millstone

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You can't turn off stream decoding entirely in Blue Iris. I think Millstone was referring to the "Limit decoding unless required" feature, where BI only decodes keyframes from the video stream except in certain live viewing scenarios (such as having a single camera maximized). This will typically let you run an extreme amount of video through BI with minimal CPU usage. A load that would be beyond the capabilities of a system can suddenly be below 10% of the CPU capacity thanks to this feature. The tradeoff is you get very poor live viewing performance, and Blue Iris's built-in motion detection is much less effective. Most people don't want to use this feature for that reason.
Oh you actually want to view the footage? ;)
 

spammenotinoz

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If it helps I don't use H\W decoding, as CPU decoding is fine even for H.265 using a $250 i7 refurb from eBay running 6-8 x 4 MP Dahua's.
I personally don't use any form of H\W decoding, find you MAY experience memory leaks, and \ or dropped frames under a variety of conditions.
For Mobile users (eg: iOS users) I stick to H.264 so they can play them back on their device, otherwise H.265 is the way to go. All my setups have almost real-time cloud sync, so H.265 helps a lot.
Buy a second hand NVR (so you won't loose a lot when you resell), an NVR will work. But really lacking on features and can be difficult to export.
For iOS users, BI's animated GIF's are really good.
 

Walrus

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If it helps I don't use H\W decoding, as CPU decoding is fine even for H.265 using a $250 i7 refurb from eBay running 6-8 x 4 MP Dahua's.
I personally don't use any form of H\W decoding, find you MAY experience memory leaks, and \ or dropped frames under a variety of conditions.
For Mobile users (eg: iOS users) I stick to H.264 so they can play them back on their device, otherwise H.265 is the way to go. All my setups have almost real-time cloud sync, so H.265 helps a lot.
Buy a second hand NVR (so you won't loose a lot when you resell), an NVR will work. But really lacking on features and can be difficult to export.
For iOS users, BI's animated GIF's are really good.
??? What did I just read?
 

aaronwt

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Well, an NVR (particularly if it is the same brand as the cameras) should support H.265+ for disk space savings. I've never used an NVR myself so I can't comment on their user experience.

You are correct, those MP/s numbers assume H.264 with hardware acceleration enabled. The only way you can accelerate H.265 currently is with an Nvidia graphics card, which is a power hog that I would recommend avoiding unless absolutely necessary.

Anyway, lets see. 4MP x10 @15 FPS. That is ((2688 * 1520) * 10 * 15) pixels per second, or about 613 MP/s. With H.264 and Quick Sync Video, I would say the minimum is a quad core i7 desktop CPU of 3rd gen or newer. But you want H.265. I am not really sure what the performance penalty would be for H.265 vs H.264, but back in early 2018 when I did some hardware acceleration on/off tests, turning it off resulted in slightly more than double the CPU usage(with H.264). I would expect H.265 to require the same or more CPU than H.264.

So for this, I would suggest at minimum an i7-8700K. Or if you are sure you won't use H.264 and therefore don't need Intel Quick Sync Video, you could try an AMD Ryzen 5 3600X or AMD Ryzen 7 3700X. Either of those should be faster and more efficient than anything Intel has for working with H.265 in Blue Iris.
An i5, 8th gen or newer will work fine with this. Since it has six cores. I know my low end, 8th gen i5 has no issue with fifteen cameras at 15FPS. Ten 1500P 3MP, three 1500P 4MP, and two 720P 2MP.
Heck even my old 3rd gen i5 works with this. My backup BI machine. But the CPU usage is very high. With my 8th gen i5 the cpu usage is low.
 
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I tested H.264+ and H.265+ with and without Intel hardware acceleration. H.265+ without acceleration need about twice as much CPU % compared with H.264+ with acceleration. It's difficult to say about space savings. They are very much dependent on type of scene, how much movement etc. I think H.265 saves about 40% of space compared to H.264.
If you plan to keep recording for a maximum few weeks then H.264 with acceleration is better and cheaper.
If you want to store years of recordings then buy stronger CPU and you will save on HDD's.

Since few days I have BI on my primary PC with i9-9900K. 500Mps. H.265+ with Intel accereration turned on. BI takes about 13% running with GUI.
Hardware acceleration probably isn't working because when I turn it off CPU % stays similar. I left this setting on, I feel better this way. ;)
 
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