Playback painfully jerky, slow and stuttering.

[Corvus85]

I have ran WD purple HDD for my cams for years and when I recently went to add another HDD and shut down everything, I went to try a defrag on that drive it didn't need it. You haven't had this system that long for it to get that defragged....

That does sound worrying.

And also a big pain in the ass, because the chassis I bought can only accommodate 2x 2.5 HDDs. So I guess now I have to buy a new chassis AND a new HDD?

You really think that would explain all the performance issues I'm seeing?

 

[wittaj]

Yes, using drives not designed for surveillance can cause all kinds of issues.

These computers don't move so duct tape the drive to the computer if you need to.

My computer didn't have enough room for another HDD, so I took out the disc player and connected an additional HDD to those wires and found a place where I could get one screw into the HDD. Has been fine for years.

 

[Corvus85]

I recommend you start by disabling HA , even though you don't want to. It's easy enough to try.

Ok, so here's what settings I changed.



And I did the below for every camera.



I rebooted the PC after this.

Here's the stats during playback of a mainstream recording:


This looks comparable to what I had before... And I don't really notice a difference in playback performance either. I mean playing at 1x seems smooth enough, but 1x in reverse is still choppy. When I first started the system, I could play even 4x reverse smooth as anything.

Do you still think it could be a disk thing? Usage shows 1% in the stats.

 

[Vettester]

I replaced my boot drive with an ssd which is Velcro’d to the inside of the case. I then mounted my purple drive in place of the original boot drive.

 

[Corvus85]

These computers don't move so duct tape the drive to the computer if you need to.

Problem is, it's a small form factor case. Just big enough to fit an ITX motherboard and a couple 2.5" drives underneath it. There's literally no room inside the case to duct tape a 3.5" drive anywhere, unless I do it to the underside of the case - but won't that be a fire/heat hazard?

 

[wittaj]

Mine is a SFF and I made it work. Many have tapped them externally with no problem. They don't get that hot (at least the ones designed for 24/7 surveillance.)

When I went to add another HDD, I literally shut the machine down and the existing drives were not hot to the touch.

 

[Corvus85]

I guess that's an option then.

Is there really nothing else I can try before I shell out the money?
Nothing else that can explain the performance I'm seeing?

You mentioned that my CPU usage is through the roof. How could a sub-optimal HDD cause this?

 

[wittaj]

I would reformat the drive and format it to a windows cluster size of 1024K (1 Megabyte). This is a lot larger than the default but it will reduce the physical number of disk writes and decrease the disk fragmentation, and speed up access. These files are large, so it commands a larger cluster size. Could be why yours is already fragmented.

A HDD almost 100% fragmented will require more CPU usage to try to pull the video out and play it.

I think in all your tinkering you ended up setting or checking a box in BI that actually is increasing it's usage, like the "also bvr" box. I would recommend an uninstall and reinstall and do not change anything other than what the wiki says.

We have people here running 50 cameras on a 4th gen at 30% and 18 cameras on a 3rd gen at 14%. So something is terribly wrong in your system somewhere.

And without screenshots of EVERY page in BI, no telling what is set somewhere causing this.

 

[Corvus85]

I would recommend an uninstall and reinstall and do not change anything other than what the wiki says.

I actually did that already when I was messing around with DS - although even though I uninstalled BI, when I reinstalled it, I opened it up and all my settings were automatically intact - even though I manually deleted the folder in Program Files!

Why would it do that? And how else could I do a fresh install?

 

[Corvus85]

And without screenshots of EVERY page in BI, no telling what is set somewhere causing this.

I'm more than happy to do this.

 

[Vettester]

Is there really nothing else I can try before I shell out the money?

Did you restart your cameras after turning off HA?

 

[wittaj]

You need to get a copy of your license key, de-register, uninstall, delete the program from the registry, then reinstall.

 

[Corvus85]

Here's every page in my BI settings:
















Let me know if I've missed anything.

 

[Corvus85]

Did you restart your cameras after turning off HA?

Yep.

You need to get a copy of your license key, de-register, uninstall, delete the program from the registry, then reinstall.

How do I delete the program from the registry?

 

[wittaj]

Open up the registry editor and find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\

and delete Perspective Software\

 

[wittaj]

At quick glance, I don't see anything in your screenshots that looks out of whack. I will compare to mine.

Shut down Blue Iris and the service and let us know what your CPU% is then. It should be 0% with an occasional 1%

 

[Corvus85]

Shut down Blue Iris and the service and let us know what your CPU% is then. It should be 0% with an occasional 1%

Here's what happens when I exit the console and stop the Blue Iris service.

Mind you, I'm still connected to it via Parsec, so I'm guessing that explains the GPU overhead.

 

[Corvus85]

I just don't get how I've turned HA off and still going from 26% GPU usage to this on playback:



Here's my processes:



It doesn't even look like anything is unusual, right?

 

[Flintstone61]

I wonder if he could try a High Performance 2.5" I don't what's out there,,,,,as far as that, I remember laptop hdd's used to have a WD Scorpion (black) 7200rpm drive. not sure if something along those lines is available.
Some 2.5" drives are now Combo drives. part SSD and part platter.

 

[Corvus85]

not sure if something along those lines is available.

I'm open to getting a replacement drive - I'm just skeptical if it's going to solve my performance issues and high CPU usage.

I guess I could do a fresh install with Windows 10 instead, and import my BI settings so that everything is consistent except the OS. That'll rule out if it's Windows 11 screwing things up, right?

I mean I'd rather do that than have to dial in every single setting all over again.