Outgrowing Blue Iris?

G

gfaulk09

Getting the hang of it
Jul 19, 2019
127
16
Memphis
Currently, have a great Blue Iris machine running 42 cameras currently. Have it hitting roughly 1500 MP/s. It is for a business, with web ui being viewed about 14 hours per day. When theirs no machine, CPU is at about 25% usage.. Generally with moderate motion, its at 55%. When I go back and replay footage it gets up to 99%. It is a i9-9900k unlocked. GTX 1650 is also installed with unlocked drivers. It is undervolted to prolong its life but generally averages at 50-60% usage..
We are looking at adding about 6-8 more cameras.. I feel that I’ve squeezed the most out of this system. Not sure, if I want to add another graphics card to this setup to handle these cameras (which are hard to find). or just build a new computer.... or try new computer software? I know blue iris starts getting funky after a certain amount of cameras. Just can't remember that number
 
You just need to use the substream options and optimize the system for Blue Iris per the wiki. Will bring you down on MP/s substantially.

A member here is running 50 cameras on a 4th generation at sub 40% because of the substream. Your computer is significantly better than a 4th generation.

Optimizing Blue Iris's CPU Usage

Blue Iris uses a lot of CPU time. In most Blue Iris installations, your CPU is the limiting factor which determines how many cameras you can have. As such, it is extremely important to optimize your configuration to ensure you can get the most out of your system while consuming the least...
ipcamtalk.com ipcamtalk.com
 
  • Like
Reactions: looney2ns, Jessie.slimer, TonyR and 1 other person
wittaj said:
You just need to use the substream options and optimize the system for Blue Iris per the wiki.

A member here is running 50 cameras on a 4th generation at sub 40% because of the substream.

Optimizing Blue Iris's CPU Usage

Blue Iris uses a lot of CPU time. In most Blue Iris installations, your CPU is the limiting factor which determines how many cameras you can have. As such, it is extremely important to optimize your configuration to ensure you can get the most out of your system while consuming the least...
ipcamtalk.com ipcamtalk.com
Click to expand...
sub streams doesn't work well when you are still using web ui to view it majority of the time. I believe it still uses the full resolutions for that view.Could be wrong. I do have a few cameras that are not being viewed on sub streams
 
Last edited:
gfaulk09 said:
sub streams doesn't work well when you are still using web ui to view it majority of the time. I believe it still uses the full resolutions for that view.Could be wrong. I do have a few cameras that are not being viewed on sub streams
Click to expand...
You are wrong. Full resolution only comes into play in single camera view. You are confusing it with limit decoding that is disabled in all camera view by default but can be enabled even in all camera view.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Old Timer, sebastiantombs and SouthernYankee
Web view uses lower res video when watching several cameras, but will switch to a higher res when only one camera is selected.
You can limit the frames per second to the web users also, this will save a bunch.

Make sure you have version 5 and use the sub streams, this will cut the CPU use for background recording and motion detection a TON.
Intel hardware acceleration worked better then using the video card for me, so it's set for intel only.

I also run my system on a SSD and the video records onto a spinner. No moving of the video after recording.
You can format the disk with larger sectors for a little added speed writing to the drive.
 
  • Like
Reactions: sebastiantombs, SouthernYankee, TonyR and 2 others
I have no Web Ui so i can't say anything about that.
is it practical to run a 2nd BI PC? I
may run 2 BI Pc's at work if I upgrade the coax system to IP.
split the 27 cameras 50/50 between boxes.
 
Have you ever run the system without the gtx 1650 in the mix? I noticed a responsiveness difference when i took my nvidia Gt700 out and used intel quick sync. but that was with only 13 cameras. AND before I learned about substreams.
I recently upgrade to an i5-8500 machine from HP and it's running 5-8% CPU at 1.75Gb ram on 13 Cam's. 25-35% on video motions, but I typically have motion almost all the time. 40% when review footage, and when I stream the 2nd dvr thru the PC....and watch/review footage.
 
Flintstone61 said:
Have you ever run the system without the gtx 1650 in the mix? I noticed a responsiveness difference when i took my nvidia Gt700 out and used intel quick sync. but that was with only 13 cameras. AND before I learned about substreams.
I recently upgrade to an i5-8500 machine from HP and it's running 5-8% CPU at 1.75Gb ram on 13 Cam's. 25-35% on video motions, but I typically have motion almost all the time. 40% when review footage, and when I stream the 2nd dvr thru the PC....and watch/review footage.
Click to expand...
I have not because when I got the system, substreams was not a thing. Their was no way for me to keep cpu low
 
It is very easy to lower the CPU with the new features of BI , if you are will to work at it.

How many UI3 sessions are you running at one time ?

Screen shots
1) windows system information, may need two shots to get all info.
2) windows task manager process tab sorted by memory (most at the top), Must contain, memory, disk, network, GPU, GPU engine columns
3) windows task manager performance, GPU (if you have multiple GPUs, then muitiple screen shots)
4) Blue Iris Setting about tab (black out your license key)
5) Blue iris status (lighting bolt graph, upper left corner) clip storage tab
6) blue Iris status cameras tab
7) Blue iris settings clips and archiving tab , for the NEW folder, stored folder, alerts folder. (three screen shots)
8) on two of the camera prosperities the record tab.
 
  • Like
Reactions: sebastiantombs
If the original poster has a bunch of cameras that only have one stream (no substreams) then I think his next move is upgrading the hardware. You can buy a dual CPU or quad CPU server for not too much money that will scale.
 
Last edited:
gfaulk09 said:
Currently, have a great Blue Iris machine running 42 cameras currently. Have it hitting roughly 1500 MP/s. It is for a business, with web ui being viewed about 14 hours per day. When theirs no machine, CPU is at about 25% usage.. Generally with moderate motion, its at 55%. When I go back and replay footage it gets up to 99%. It is a i9-9900k unlocked. GTX 1650 is also installed with unlocked drivers. It is undervolted to prolong its life but generally averages at 50-60% usage..
We are looking at adding about 6-8 more cameras.. I feel that I’ve squeezed the most out of this system. Not sure, if I want to add another graphics card to this setup to handle these cameras (which are hard to find). or just build a new computer.... or try new computer software? I know blue iris starts getting funky after a certain amount of cameras. Just can't remember that number
Click to expand...
Study the blue iris help file. at the top of the page study the wiki on how to optimize a blue iris computer. Be sure you have excluded any blue Irish folders and processes from any antivirus including Windows defender. Drop frame rates to 15 frames per second that's all you need. Blue Iris will handle 64 cameras. Enable substreams, use search to find the using substrings guide.
 
  • Like
Reactions: sebastiantombs and Flintstone61
The problem with the condo is that some things happen and nobody realizes it for 2 weeks (or more) then they come to me asking if I can see it on tape/video etc. The Catalytic converter theft vehicle was dead in my sights on a good camera and by the time she told me about it. It was written over. 15 days. It took a month to realize somebody was using a postal workers key to access mail. So small form factor computers and storage drive capacity come into play if your trying to go out farther in available days. I have 13 TB right now and I'm at 690,000 clips and just about 3 weeks of data. If I were to move the analog camera's to IP and bring them in, that would be 13 more camera's, effectively cutting my avialable days for review in half. to about a week and a half. I think my fps is about 10 on 7 or 8 of the cameras, the outdoor ones are running 15. 7% CPU @ 1.70-2.0 GB memory usage. I don't want to retrieve old video while the processor is writing to 27-28 cameras. My experience with the Dell 7010 i7-3770 was my "welcome to blue iris" machine. Played around with it for a year, while managing the other aspects of my job. I don't know if it was my hardware, but it struggled to smoothly playback video while recording 13 channels. And the wait time for the red dots to populate on the calendar was over 5 minutes. The new machine is much more capable and the wait time is like 25 seconds.
I just dont want to go back to playback hell again. I dont need the security camera's much, but when i do need them I need the machine to be responsive. The analog machine is savng about 22 days right now. and the 3rd dvr out yonder in the garage is saving 2 cameras data for about a month. So I'm pretty good at the moment. but the analog cam locations could def benefit going from under 1 megapixel to something better.
 
Last edited:
Flintstone61 said:
The problem with the condo is that some things happen and nobody realizes it for 2 weeks (or more) then they come to me asking if I can see it on tape/video etc. The Catalytic converter theft vehicle was dead in my sights on a good camera and by the time she told me about it. It was written over. 15 days. It took a month to realize somebody was using a postal workers key to access mail. So small form factor computers and storage drive capacity come into play if your trying to go out farther in available days. I have 13 TB right now and I'm at 690,000 clips and just about 3 weeks of data. If I were to move the analog camera's to IP and bring them in, that would be 13 more camera's, effectively cutting my avialable days for review in half. to about a week and a half. I think my fps is about 10 on 7 or 8 of the cameras, the outdoor ones are running 15. 7% CPU @ 1.70-2.0 GB memory usage. I don't want to retrieve old video while the processor is writing to 27-28 cameras. My experience with the Dell 7010 i7-3770 was my "welcome to blue iris" machine. Played around with it for a year, while managing the other aspects of my job. I don't know if it was my hardware, but it struggled to smoothly playback video while recording 13 channels. And the wait time for the red dots to populate on the calendar was over 5 minutes. The new machine is much more capable and the wait time is like 25 seconds.
I just dont want to go back to playback hell again. I dont need the security camera's much, but when i do need them I need the machine to be responsive. The analog machine is savng about 22 days right now. and the 3rd dvr out yonder in the garage is saving 2 cameras data for about a month. So I'm pretty good at the moment. but the analog cam locations could def benefit going from under 1 megapixel to something better.
Click to expand...

That probably would have been back in the day before you knew about substreams (or they were not available yet).

Substreams not only keep the CPU down during normal usage, but most people do not realize that the substreams help even more during playback as they video replay is substream until you go to single camera or tell it to go mainstream.

Prior to the substreams my 4th generation would max out the CPU, now with substreams it can do live and playback without maxing out.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: sebastiantombs and Flintstone61
Thanks
 
@tgurske

A single app that is not specifically designed to run on a Multiple physical CPU system (like oracle) may actually slow down do to how the internal memory cache operates. Just because it is multi threaded does not mean it will run well on a multiple CPU system.

TEST DO NOT GUESS.
Assumptions made on scanty information are dangerous and should be avoided. (from a coast guard maritime rules of the road 1969 ) words to live by,
 
  • Like
Reactions: Edcfish
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom