Norcal Hikvision Nightmare

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corkangel76

Getting the hang of it
May 11, 2015
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Hi All, I've recently installed 4 Hikvision DS-2CD2332 2.8mm 1080p POE cameras, and have been futzing with both the iVMS4200 and Blue Iris software, trying to figure out what would be the better of the two for a PC based NVR solution.

The iVMS software doesn't use near the PC resources of that of blue iris, however I've found that the HikVision software keeps saying "Can't find record file" after recording about 100 instances of motion. The blue iris software, while much more stable (I'm using the eval version for another few days before it craps out) works great, but doesn't do the pre-recording and seems to lag for about 1-2 seconds before triggering on motion.

My NVR system is a Quad Core i5 4400 series, 16GB of RAM, 120GB SSD for Windows/Blue Iris, and a 1TB Seagate Surveillance Drive (SATA) for the data files storage, with 4 cameras going at full 30fps, the system under blue iris is about 75% utilized, where as the iVMS software, only about 25%.

Suggestions on which software is better, more reliable? or should I just scrap the whole PCNVR based idea and go with a regular POE NVR instead? I'm a network engineer by trade, so naturally I chose the PC route instead because of my geekability... was this a mistake?

Thx in advance for any feedback/advice.
 
With Blue Iris you often have to sacrifice frame rate to lower CPU usage. You'll probably cut that usage in half if you change the camera to 15 FPS (change the frame rate in each camera's web interface, and then in Blue Iris also). 15 FPS is still more than enough for video security. I get by with 6.

To make Blue Iris do pre-recording you need to go to the Camera Properties, Record tab and set Pre-trigger frame buffer size. This needs to be set fairly high, since the number you enter is the number of frames (not the number of seconds) to pre-record. So imagine you have a camera set to 30 FPS, a frame buffer size of 150 would be required for 5 seconds of pre-recording.

Another way to reduce CPU usage is to enable Direct-to-disc which is in the File format and compression button under the Record tab. If you enable this, there are some side-effects you should be aware of:

  • Most of Blue Iris' video encoding settings will not apply.
  • Blue Iris will not be able to rotate the video stream when recording
  • Blue Iris will not be able to add text or image overlays to the recording
  • The recording can only begin at an i-frame. So you need to increase the pre-trigger frame buffer size by an amount at least equal to the i-frame interval of the camera, in order to not miss anything. For example if the camera's web interface has the iframe interval configured to 120, you'd add 120 to Blue Iris' Pre-trigger frame buffer size.
  • If the camera ever sends a higher frame rate than Blue Iris is expecting (even temporarily), there can be dropped frames in the recording, causing video corruption. So it can be ideal to sometimes set the frame rate in Blue Iris to be a little bit higher than it is set in the camera, to reduce the chance of this happening. I can only guess why this matters. It seems completely foolish for Blue Iris to throw away h264 video frames during direct to disc recording. Yet it is the way it is.
 
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corkangel76 said:
Hi All, I've recently installed 4 Hikvision DS-2CD2332 2.8mm 1080p POE cameras, and have been futzing with both the iVMS4200 and Blue Iris software, trying to figure out what would be the better of the two for a PC based NVR solution.

The iVMS software doesn't use near the PC resources of that of blue iris, however I've found that the HikVision software keeps saying "Can't find record file" after recording about 100 instances of motion. The blue iris software, while much more stable (I'm using the eval version for another few days before it craps out) works great, but doesn't do the pre-recording and seems to lag for about 1-2 seconds before triggering on motion.

My NVR system is a Quad Core i5 4400 series, 16GB of RAM, 120GB SSD for Windows/Blue Iris, and a 1TB Seagate Surveillance Drive (SATA) for the data files storage, with 4 cameras going at full 30fps, the system under blue iris is about 75% utilized, where as the iVMS software, only about 25%.

Suggestions on which software is better, more reliable? or should I just scrap the whole PCNVR based idea and go with a regular POE NVR instead? I'm a network engineer by trade, so naturally I chose the PC route instead because of my geekability... was this a mistake?

Thx in advance for any feedback/advice.
Click to expand...
Blue iris is fantastic and much more versatile than ivms...you are correct about the higher cpu use..
To reduce cpu use, use direct to disk recording...properties>record>file format
remember to match your iframe interval to that of your fps (in the camera)
In blue iris set the fps to one step above your cameras settings..if your camera is 15, set blue iris to 20...
Blue iris can absolutely do pre-recording...its the pretrigger frames in the record tab...these are frames so if your camera is running at 15fps and you want 3 seconds you need to set it at 45.
EDIT: bp2008 beat me to it..do what he says :)...he is way more detailed than i can ever be :)
 
@fenderman

Call me a n00b, but if I spent the money on 1080p 30fps HD cameras, why would I want to drop them to 15fps? To me in my humble opinion, that cuts their effectiveness by 50% doesn't it? Thanks for the insight gang on the pre-buffer, that helps quite a bit as well.
 
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Also, you actually may gain a little bit of image quality by reducing the frame rate, since that means there are fewer frames to divide up your total bit rate.
 
I believe that when most of us start out we all want to run 30fps; I know that I did and I certainly had a hard time letting 30fps go. I run Blue Iris on a dedicated i7 box and I'm running 20 cameras (17 @ 3mp + 2 @ 2mp + 2 @ 1mp). Almost all of them run @ 4fps and I'm satisfied with that.
 
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