Out of memory error?

[erkme73]

The HDMI PLUG allows for GPU operations when there is no monitor. Some software disables the GPU when there is no monitor plugged in.

I currently believe that your performance problem and memory problem are caused by the number of files in your folders. My understand is that windows 10 will need to cache the contents of the folder directory. As it adds files it needs to read the folder directory to verify that the file is not there, that is a lot of traffic over a USB also it is a lot of memory, and a lot of CPU to search the directory.

I do not use alert jpg, so i do not known where to set the file naming.

Ok, well then the consensus seems to be to shuck the drive and make it an internal one. I'll do that tomorrow (or tonight if I have the opportunity).

I can only imagine shortening the record interval from 8 hours to 2 or 3 hours will only increase that number. The other thing that is happening is with each restart, the clips start over. So under ideal circumstances, I'll have three 8-hour clips (albeit, only the length of actual triggered record time). But now, with the frequent restarts, I'm seeing upwards of 6-10 clips for the day.

 

[IAmATeaf]

Could the problem be a result of drive fragmentation?

Having 8 hour files to me makes no sense, when BI deletes it would need to delete the entire file whereas if you had it set to 1 hour it would only remove 1 hour at a time.

 

[erkme73]

I used to have each clip length set to 24 hrs to keep the recordings tidy. Never had issues but as ui3 became my primary client, it became difficult to scrub to specific points in a day with so much time covered in the width of the screens scrub bar. That's when I moved to 8 he intervals - for more granularity. Never had this issue even with it at 24 hrs... And back then I was alternating between USB HDD and NAS.

 

[erkme73]

I think I'm gonna reach out to Ken with these errors in my log to see if there is something obvious we're missing.

 

[SouthernYankee]

The file size limit on time recording is for continuous recording. Not motion detection files. Windows performance degrades with the number of files in a folder., so you need to balance the file size verses the number of files in a directory. I believe that your main problem is the USB drive, then the number of files in the alert folder, then the number of files in the NEW folder.

On the normal BVR files i would recommend building a directory tree of subfolders for your files. Place each camera in a separate folder under the NEW folder. Use &CAM, see the help file. Another option is to use multiple disk drives, and assign cameras to different drives.

I do not know how to build a tree for alerts, as i do not use alert images.

 

[erkme73]

The file size limit on time recording is for continuous recording. Not motion detection files. Windows performance degrades with the number of files in a folder., so you need to balance the file size verses the number of files in a directory. I believe that your main problem is the USB drive, then the number of files in the alert folder, then the number of files in the NEW folder.

On the normal BVR files i would recommend building a directory tree of subfolders for your files. Place each camera in a separate folder under the NEW folder. Use &CAM, see the help file. Another option is to use multiple disk drives, and assign cameras to different drives.

I do not know how to build a tree for alerts, as i do not use alert images.

That sounds like a great idea. I'll just append that to the file path for each camera. That'll be a bit less invasive than shucking right away.

 

[kklee]

The file size limit on time recording is for continuous recording. Not motion detection files. Windows performance degrades with the number of files in a folder., so you need to balance the file size verses the number of files in a directory. I believe that your main problem is the USB drive, then the number of files in the alert folder, then the number of files in the NEW folder.

On the normal BVR files i would recommend building a directory tree of subfolders for your files. Place each camera in a separate folder under the NEW folder. Use &CAM, see the help file. Another option is to use multiple disk drives, and assign cameras to different drives.

I do not know how to build a tree for alerts, as i do not use alert images.

Interesting, I just tried this for my New folder and I use Alerts. BI automagically created subfolders in the Alerts folder as well using the path configuration for New.

 

[erkme73]

Interesting, I just tried this for my New folder and I use Alerts. BI automagically created subfolders in the Alerts folder as well using the path configuration for New.

How old is your installation? I wonder if new installations automatically append the the camera name to the path. My system started with BI3... And with each subsequent major release, I did upgrades/updates/imports, so I suspect my path is still based on the original "all in one bucket" approach.

In any case, I've just changed the path so all new recordings go into their own folder under new, and I manually moved all the files out of the main New director into their respective camera folders. I now have zero files under new. I've deleted the database, and it is rebuilding now.

FWIW, I did notice under Windows, when pulling up the directory folders, there was a noticeable delay in populating each directory with thousands of files. I may very well have hit some sort of time-out error due to the list taking too long to populate within BI.

As for the images under alerts, under the recording tab, there is an option to specify alert path, but I have those all unchecked. The images, I thought, were coming from the trigger tab, where I've specified "database only". Of course, there's no option to specify a path, and I suspect that these are actually stored under the c:\blue iris\db folder. I have to figure out where those 20k images under alerts are coming from if I have the jpg option disabled under record

 

[kklee]

How old is your installation? I wonder if new installations automatically append the the camera name to the path. My system started with BI3... And with each subsequent major release, I did upgrades/updates/imports, so I suspect my path is still based on the original "all in one bucket" approach.

In any case, I've just changed the path so all new recordings go into their own folder under new, and I manually moved all the files out of the main New director into their respective camera folders. I now have zero files under new. I've deleted the database, and it is rebuilding now.

FWIW, I did notice under Windows, when pulling up the directory folders, there was a noticeable delay in populating each directory with thousands of files. I may very well have hit some sort of time-out error due to the list taking too long to populate within BI.

As for the images under alerts, under the recording tab, there is an option to specify alert path, but I have those all unchecked. The images, I thought, were coming from the trigger tab, where I've specified "database only". Of course, there's no option to specify a path, and I suspect that these are actually stored under the c:\blue iris\db folder. I have to figure out where those 20k images under alerts are coming from if I have the jpg option disabled under record

I have a fairly old installation, upgraded from v4 and continuously upgraded. Having said that, I reconfigured all the paths a few weeks ago due to a hard drive failure. I have over 64,000 files in an archive folder on a NAS and BI seems to handle it okay, although the DB rebuild takes a very long time (had to do that after the drive failure).

If you're referring to the JPEGs setting in the Recording tab, I do not have that configured. As far as I know, the Alerts path is configured in the Clips and archiving tab, so it applies to all cameras and is enabled by the "When Triggered" field in the Trigger tab, I have it set to "Hi-res JPEG files".

 

[erkme73]

Ok. I have min set to Database only vs. hi-res jpg. Still, my alert images are all being dumped into a single directory.

 

[erkme73]

The file size limit on time recording is for continuous recording. Not motion detection files. Windows performance degrades with the number of files in a folder., so you need to balance the file size verses the number of files in a directory. I believe that your main problem is the USB drive, then the number of files in the alert folder, then the number of files in the NEW folder.

On the normal BVR files i would recommend building a directory tree of subfolders for your files. Place each camera in a separate folder under the NEW folder. Use &CAM, see the help file. Another option is to use multiple disk drives, and assign cameras to different drives.

I do not know how to build a tree for alerts, as i do not use alert images.

@SouthernYankee - Your suggestion to limit the number of files in the new and alert directory has paid dividends. Not only have I not had a single error or restart since making the change, my CPU has been back down in the 20's.

And, per your recommendation, I've placed an order for the HDMI dummy plug for the headless system. I have had issues while using VNC where suddenly the screen would go black, and no keystrokes would work. Remote CTRL-ALT-DEL wouldn't even work. The only fix is to power-cycle the PC. That's happened several times yesterday as I was modifying each of the cameras' record paths. In fact, on several occasions, as I saved changes to a given camera, and it restarted the camera (rainbow screen), it would come back "no signal". After several of those in a row, the VNC became unresponsive. Perhaps that's the system flaking out without a monitor.

In any case, THANK YOU to you and to everyone else who helped me get to where I am right now. I realize using an external USB HDD is sub-optimal, but it's humming along just fine now with fewer files per directory.